Election 2026: Opportunity Party will get into Parliament, latest Poll of Polls forecasts
The Opportunity Party will slip into Parliament if an election were to be held today, according to the latest modelling in the NZ Herald-Motu Research Poll of Polls.
In recent polling, two Roy Morgan results put Opportunity at 6% and 6.5%. Verian had the party at 4.6% while the most recent RNZ Reid Research poll and Talbolt Mills both put Opportunity at 4.7%. Taking those polls - plus the polling history for the party into account - the model predicts Opportunity is more likely than not to enter Parliament (with a 56.1% probability).
Its average predicted party vote is 5.3%, above the 5% threshold parties need to hit in order to enter Parliament without winning an electorate seat.
The latest modelling comes after the National Party ruled out working with Opportunity, claiming it could not support a party that wanted to introduce new taxes.
With the model forecasting Opportunity could enter Parliament, Ryan Bridge TODAY‘s Katie Bradford asked leader Quilae Wong whether her party’s candidates were ready.
“Very conscious we still have a long way to go until the election, but all of the polls are trending in the right direction, so we’re really encouraged by that.”
While the party list was still under wraps, Wong said several Opportunity candidates already had public service experience in both local and central government.
“We will be announcing our list very soon, so people can get a good idea of who those six or seven potential MPs will be, should we get over the threshold.”
The probability of the current Government bloc of National, Act and New Zealand First returning to power remains steady at 64.8%, up slightly from the 62.9% probability predicted in mid-July. However, that’s still below the 89.6% probability of re-election the bloc had in May.
Had National, Act and NZ First been willing to work with Opportunity and turn their coalition into a foursome, the parties would have had a 91.3% chance of winning power.
The model shows a Labour, Greens, Te Pāti Māori combination – those parties in Parliament currently in Opposition – has just a 5.7% probability of taking office. That’s down a nudge from 7.6% a couple of weeks ago.
If that left-leaning group was willing to work with Opportunity, the four parties would have a 26.6% probability of governing.
Looking at other parties’ average predicted party vote, the model puts Labour at 30.8%, slightly above National at 29.8%.
New Zealand First is at 13.5%, while the Green Party is at 10.4% and Act is at 7%. Te Pāti Māori is at 2.3%, though this modelling assumes it wins at least one electorate. The model also assumes there is no overhang.
The Talbot Mills poll, which this Poll of Polls is now updated to include, had Labour on 33%, down a point since last month’s poll. National was up 2 points to 31%, NZ First was steady on 12%, while the Green Party was down 4 points to 9%, Act was up a point to 7% and Te Pāti Māori hadn’t changed on 3%. Opportunity rose 1.4 points to hit 4.7% in this poll.
The NZ Herald-Motu Research Poll of Polls uses data from public polls and other private or less frequent polls and inputs them into a computer model using polling data going back to 2014.
It uses this data to run 4000 election simulations, which are used to form probabilities of various election outcomes.
Jamie Ensor is the NZ Herald’s chief political reporter, based in the press gallery at Parliament. He was previously a TV reporter and digital producer in the Newshub press gallery office. He was a finalist in 2025 for Political Journalist of the Year at the Voyager Media Awards.