A first-term government should be performing better, a political scientist has said, as a new poll shows next year’s election could result in a hung parliament.

Lara Greaves, associate professor in politics at Victoria University of Wellington, also said she expects the next election to be “really exciting”, as the country awaits any announcement from Labour on its campaign against the current government.

The latest Taxpayers’ Union-Curia Poll released this morning shows Labour as having overtaken National as the largest party, gaining 2 points to 33.6%, while National drops 2.1 points to 31.8%.

The Greens are up 0.4 points to 9.8%, Act is down 0.5 points to 8.6%, New Zealand First is down 2 points to 7.8% and Te Pāti Māori is down 0.3 points to 3.2%.

In preferred prime minister ratings, Luxon and Labour leader Chris Hipkins are level on 20.2%.

Greaves said she would expect a first-term government to be polling better than this.

She also said that Labour still had work to do to “get it together”, with the party yet to announce its team or policies.

Associate professor in politics at Victoria University Lara Greaves. Photo / Michael Craig

She said the big decider will be the economy – not just where it is at, but how people feel about the state of it this time next year and who they blame for it.

“[It’s about] their evaluations of the economy and who caused what and who’s at fault for what and, you know, Trump’s the other thing that’s concerning for any government.

“We can see anecdotally the Canadian and Australian elections affected by Trump, but political science research is starting to come out to show that, yes, Trump does have a huge effect on other democracies.” 

On why Labour is remaining tight-lipped, Greaves said she believed they had internalised the idea that “timing is everything”.

“The longer that the current government have knowing what that policy is going to be, the longer they can test and figure out how to peg something on them.

“But they’re going to think of some way to really phrase the capital gains tax as affecting the middle class, as affecting New Zealanders and affecting the economy and paint Labour a certain way.”

Greaves believed it was “quite unusual” for Chlöe Swarbrick to raise her hand for the Finance Minister’s job. She believed the Greens were trying to take up as much airspace as possible before a capital gains tax announcement.

“Because I think once there is some kind of capital gains tax policy announcement from Labour, that’s all we’re really going to be talking about for a while.”

Speaking to Newstalk ZB’s Mike Hosking this morning, Prime Minister Christopher Luxon dismissed the latest poll results, saying he does not want to speak about himself, and all Kiwis want is for National to fix the economy.

“I mean, I don’t go into polls because every time there is a different poll every week in this country, and people don’t want me to talk about myself or polls,” he told Hosking.

“I think the big trend is pretty obvious. People expect us to fix the economy. It’s as simple as that. So fix it, and then in 2026, they’ll make their call.”