The Opportunity Party is in the kingmaker position, with the latest RNZ-Reid Research poll showing neither the coalition nor the opposition would have the numbers to form a government without its help.

The party has tipped over the 5 percent threshold for the first time in this poll, changing the seats in the House calculations, and the make-up of Parliament altogether.

If replicated on polling day, the right bloc would have 59 seats and the left bloc 55 - both needing Opportunity's 6 to get over the line.

Labour has been unable to capitalise on National's recent woes, and has taken a dent as the government parties ramp up the tax attacks.

The party is still in the lead, on 32.2 percent.

However, its drop of 1.8 points since July has put Labour on its lowest result in this series since the election.

National has emerged from its aborted coup with a slight bump in support, but remains stuck in the twenties, now on 29.1 percent, up 0.4 points.

The other parties are all riding steady.

Winston Peters' widely-condemned comments towards a Green MP and Paul Henry's star power have not shifted the dial for New Zealand First or ACT.

New Zealand First is on 11.9 percent, up 0.4 points, the Green Party is on 10.2 percent, down 0.1 points, and ACT is on 7.7 percent, also down 0.1 points.

Te Pāti Māori is on 3 percent, up 0.7 points, but the party has confirmed it wants people's candidate votes, not their party votes.

Opportunity is on 5.3 percent, up 0.6 points from the previous poll, and above the 5 percent mark for the first time.

Undecided or non-voters made up 4.6 percent of respondents.

If the results were replicated at the election, Labour would have 39 seats, the Greens 12, and Te Pāti Māori 4, making 55 seats for the left bloc in total.

National would have 35 seats, New Zealand First 15, and ACT 9, or 59 in total for the right bloc.

Opportunity's 6 seats would mean it holds the balance of power, deciding whether the left or right bloc forms the next government.

Those projections are based on party vote and assume no overhang seats. If National won more than 35 electorates, or if Te Pāti Māori picked up more than 4, it would create an overhang.

Both Christopher Luxon and Chris Hipkins have taken hits to their personal popularity, with the prime minister recording his lowest approval rating to date.

In the preferred prime minister stakes, Hipkins remained in the lead on 21.3 percent, but that is a 2.6 point drop on the previous poll.

Luxon is on 19.9 percent, a drop of 0.1 points.

Winston Peters is in third on 11.1 percent, another who has taken a hit, down 2.1 points.

Chlöe Swarbrick is fourth on 7.4 percent, and David Seymour rounds out the top five on 6.2 percent.

Approval ratings for both Luxon and Hipkins have slumped, with Hipkins in the negatives for the first time.

Luxon continues his downward trend, with 30.3 percent of respondents saying he is performing well as prime minister, compared to 53.2 percent who think he is performing poorly. This gives him a net approval rating of -22.9.

Hipkins, meanwhile, is on -3.8, his first negative result since leading the party, with 34.4 percent saying he is performing well, and 38.2 percent saying he is performing poorly.

That malaise is reflected in voters' opinions on how the country is tracking.

The results showed 30.8 percent of respondents thought the country was heading in the right direction, while 51.8 said it was going in the wrong direction.

This produced a net score of -21, down from -11.8 in the previous poll in July.

Another 15.2 percent said it was neither, while 2.2 percent did not know.

This poll of 1000 people was conducted by Reid Research, using quota sampling and weighting to ensure representative cross section by age, gender and geography. The poll was conducted through online interviews between 14-21 August 2026 and has a maximum margin of error of +/- 3.1 percent at a 95 percent confidence level.