By Natalia Albert*
What it's actually like at the coalface
In 2023 I stood for the Opportunities Party (now the Opportunity Party) in Wellington Central. No funding, no profile, 14 years of formal political science behind me, and none of it bought me a minute of media attention. I worked harder for less coverage than I've ever worked for anything in my life and still walked away with 5.5% of the party vote in my electorate, a result I wear as a badge of honour by the way.
Nationally, TOP got 2.22%. No seats. Three years on, under new leader Qiulae Wong, the Opportunity Party is polling higher than it ever has. What the Opportunity Party is trying to do is the hardest thing in politics. That’s the story, not whether they deserve the media they are getting. Which is an incredibly narrow way of debating this moment.
The Opportunities Party decade of learning the hard way
This is the Party's fourth go at this, and the current strategy is working better than anybody thought it would. New board, new constitution, more candidates, focus on party vote and effective fundraising strategy.
When Gareth Morgan launched the party in 2016, he threw an estimated $2 million to $4 million of his own money into it, which is a shit ton of money. They ran a campaign built almost entirely around his own profile and his controversy, the “lipstick on a pig” comment about Jacinda Ardern and of course, the cats.
For that amount of money, the result was appalling, hitting narrowly: 2.4% in 2017, immediate relevance with nothing to show for it. Then Morgan resigned the leadership three months later, pulled his funding entirely within two years, and publicly trashed the people left running the party on his way out.
The Opportunities Party nearly deregistered. It limped into 2020 with 1.5%, its worst result ever. The whole operation had been built around one man's money and shitty political strategy.
The Conservative Party under Colin Craig lived a similar version of this story on a compressed timeline. Self-funded, high-profile, controversial from day one. In 2014, it hit 3.97% of the party vote, the closest any minor party without an electorate seat has come to the 5% threshold in the MMP era. Then it collapsed. Craig resigned within a year, and the party never cracked 1.5% again.
The Opportunities Party and the Conservative Party are, in effect, two versions of the same story: a minor party built around one wealthy, combative figure can spike fast, but then inevitably crash.
In 2020: 1.5%, then in 2023: 2.22%, the Raf Manji era, my era, still no seats. Three elections since Morgan walked away, no clear upward trend, until now. The current approach, Wong as leader and Iain Lees-Galloway running operations separately as general manager, no single mega-funder who can close a cheque book and gut the whole thing, is a direct response to exactly what killed the party the first time.
There's a second precedent worth flagging. For most of the 2000s and into the 2010s, ACT survived on the Epsom electorate alone, polling under 1% in the party vote for years at a stretch. It looked like a dead party walking. Then, from 2017 onward under David Seymour, it rebuilt into a multi-election political force, not off one news cycle, but off sustained organisational work across several elections. Outstanding efforts, regardless of what you think of the leader or the party.
Politically ACT is a masterclass for small parties. That's the model the Opportunity Party would need to be following for its current numbers to mean anything lasting.
A word on the media debate: yes, and no
There's a live argument right now, including from commentators like Ani O'Brien, about whether the Opportunity Party is getting more coverage than ever, especially compared with parties like the New Conservatives, who've sat in a similar range for years without anything like the same attention. As Ani mentions. Sure, but also it’s not that simple.
Sure, because the Opportunity Party's current coverage probably is more favourable in tone than its raw polling alone would predict. No, because the comparison flattens two very different eras into one story, and that flattening is problematic, and exactly the kind of oversimplification I think is the biggest risk in political commentary this year.
In 2017, the Opportunities Party got outsized coverage for the same reason Colin Craig's Conservatives did: a wealthy, combative founder generates news. That's spectacle and money buying attention, not journalists quietly favouring the Opportunities Party politics. It's a cleaner explanation than a simple affinity theory, and it applies equally to a right-leaning party and a left-leaning one.
But Morgan is gone. There's no equivalent figure driving the Opportunity Party coverage now, no cheque book, no scandal-a-week routine. If the Opportunity Party is still getting heavy, favourable coverage in 2026 without that mechanism, the “controversy and money” explanation doesn't work.
I don't think it's the question that decides whether the Opportunity Party succeeds, media attention can and is critical to generate momentum, but it is absolutely not easy to get nor can it be manufactured. It takes a laser sharp stagey, a leader that can deliver said strategy and a series of stars and vibes that need to align.
The real barrier
New Zealand's political system is built in ways that make it extraordinarily hard for any new party to survive, let alone become influential. The threshold is too high. The funding model favours whoever already has money or profile. The media economics reward spectacle over patience. The Opportunities Party hit all three walls under Morgan. Craig's Conservatives hit the same walls from a different angle. ACT only got through by David Seymour grinding slowly and patiently for the better part of a decade.
For scale: across all seven MMP elections to date, minor parties that made it into Parliament and contested more than one election have averaged; 7.7% for the Greens, 7.6% for NZ First, 3.9% for ACT, 1.8% for the Māori Party. Even the Opportunity Party's best current polling sits around or below that long-run average for parties that succeeded at all.
That's the real story here, not whether Wong is getting a fair shake from the press gallery. Whether the Opportunity Party breaks through this time or not, the structural barriers that make this nearly impossible for any small party aren't going anywhere. What's changed is that the Opportunities/Opportunity Party has spent the better part of a decade slowly working out how to survive them. Will they make it in? Can this political momentum materialize into votes? These are the debates worth having and understating, not whether Q deserves media attention or not.
*Natalia Albert is a political scientist living in Wellington exploring how to govern divided societies in diverse, liberal democracies, with a focus on New Zealand politics. She writes weekly on her Substack, Less Certain. Albert stood as a TOP candidate in the 2023 election.
31 Comments
To someone like me, who has usually been a left-of-centre voter, TOP look like an economically progressive version of labour and a socially rational form of the Greens.
Unfortunately, that also makes me believe there is a strong probability they will become as much hostage to small special interest groups within the party structures and then get just as lost in unsubtle Manichean ideologies and intolerant identitarianism.
What also doesn't help my confidence is the involvement of people like Iain Lees-Galloway, the ex-Labour politician, as TOP's general manager, and rumours about the involvement of other Labour people. It feels like a left wing version of the New Zealand Party that was set up by Bob Jones as a spoiler for National in 1984's election.
A lower threshold for entry in to parliament would cause a proliferation of parties run by intolerant zealots, on very particular issues: essentially a reflection of the partisan and adversarial nature of our society.
To someone like me, who has usually been a left-of-centre voter, TOP look like thieving communists.
Tbf kknz. Everybody looks like a thieving communist to you lol.
They're everywhere...
I strongly disagree, KKNZ2025, with your comments.
You're entitled to your own opinion, as am I.
Since it's foundation TOPs policy platform rests on stealing by stealth from the homes NZdrs have worked all their lives to be able to provide for themselves and their families to handout as a UBI to people who can't be bothered getting up off the couch.
Most of the as you put it "couchies" are getting benefits one way or the other. Why stop yourself and your kids getting it?
Kia ora Gomel, thanks for the comment. I don't agree with the way you're thinking about this. It's fair to have hesitations, but being cynical enough to assume this party, and most, will also just fall into the grip of interest groups misses the point. All parties have to do that to survive; to some point, it's embedded into the system in a very formal way. A topic for another day. That's not a reason to deny them a chance.
At some point, as voters, we have to take responsibility for the fact that arguments like this are exactly what keeps the status quo in place. I'd implore you to think about it more creatively and with a more open mind.
Your last point is loaded with the same cynicism, and I find it unhelpful. Not everyone trying to serve is an asshole. Most NZ politicians are good people with a real vocation for service, and I'll die in that ditch.
Nat
I respect your well reasoned opinion, but must disagree.
Our political parties have small memberships, shadows of their former selves in the case of the established parties, and that necessarily selects for true believers. Who, without a bee in their bonnet, would now join a political party?
From that diminished gene pool of undoubtedly well intentioned people-with-a-cause are our leaders selected and I don't think that is a good thing for disinterested, rational decision making.
We also do not have strong institutions, such as binding referendums or recall legislation, that equip the citizens to actively take responsibility or create transparency of practice, and play any role beyond voting in elections.
The psychopathology of people who actively pursue power needs examination and I agree with Plato: Only Those Who Do Not Seek Power Are Qualified To Hold It. I would not see how that is cynical, but much more a useful realism, rooted in observable human behavior, and supported by our history.
People aren't being "assholes", but they are human, not rational maximisers and few are genuinely altruistic, whether they understand their unconscious desires or not.
There is a very strong argument for selecting leaders by sortition - by lot - rather than aspiration and popularity contests. That would look nothing like the status quo.
And Gomel?
"and the current strategy is working better than anybody thought it would"
A likeable female leader running a centre left party at a time when the other centre parties are very unpopular - they should be doing a lot better really. Their tax policy really limits their voter base.
If they don't get elected this election they really need to give up or make big changes, it's been handed to them on a platter.
Their tax policy really limits their voter base
Their tax policy is their appeal for many. Just not for the 10% who profit off the current system
Their polling limits their voter base
Change their tax policies to something more palatable to a major party voter and you have no way to differentiate them from the two incumbents
They do well standing for what they stand
Exactly. The land tax and UBI are the reason for Opportunity existing. Without them there would be nothing to vote for.
Their tax policy is their appeal for about 2% based on past performance
Kia ora DaniCrisis, I agree and thanks for the comment. Nat
Kia ora JimboJones, thanks for the comment. I disagree that anything's been handed to them on a platter. Small parties climb the steepest hill while getting hit in the head with relentless boulders. Nothing comes easy to them. I'm also not sure what a 'female' leader has to do with their chances. Fair enough on their tax policy, but they're attempting the hardest thing in politics, so I'd implore folk to cut small parties some slack. Go hard at the big ones with all the money. Labour, for example, has six of the weakest policies I've ever seen. Unacceptable for a legacy party like them, with a 'male' leader. Nat
50% of voters are female, and they are more likely to relate to a female leader (generalisation of course). That leaves Green and now Oppertunity.
I think there is a big opportunity (parden the pun) for a centre party alternative to the highly unpopular big 2 at this election. Winnie is polling well also. If Opportunity can't win this one I suspect they won't get another similar chance.
David Seymour was looking educated, well spoken and rational until around 1 year before the previous election. He then sided with national and became more and more extreme which shunned away many of his voter base, attracted a more disgruntled portion of the country, and made National seem less outlandish in comparison. This IMO was his strategy.
Shame, as he now appears a eccentric, excessive fool in the public eye who talks down to the public in casual language as if nobody could tell everything is a caricatured performance.
Kia ora interesting1234, thanks for the comment. On David Seymour, my point is more about the strategy he's run over the past ten years. Look at TOP: a different leader, different policies, a different direction, and now a different name every election cycle. It's really hard to tell a coherent political story from that. Seymour was focused, disciplined, steady, and to some extent consistent with his values. Whether you agree with him or not isn't the point I'm making. It's the strategy and the consistent direction he showed, and the result it got. He made it into Cabinet, as Deputy Prime Minister, with a coalition agreement. No small party has achieved that besides NZ First. Not the Greens, not TOP, not anyone. And that's worth learning from if you want to get a small party into government, right or left. Nat
The recounting of ACTs history would appear well off the mark for the purposes of comparison considering it was started by high profile MPs and its first foray gathered over 6% of the vote...Seymour has returned it to around the same level after almost 2 decades of almost oblivion staved off by the Epsom sweetheart deal with National
Kia ora Frank, thanks for the comment. Fair, but that's not the point I'm making. My point is much simpler; it's about consistency. Seymour held a clear, disciplined line for ten years. TOP has changed leader, policies, direction and now its name almost every cycle. Origins and safe seats don't explain that difference. One party knew what it was and stuck to it; the other still doesn't. That's all I'm saying. You are right about ACTS' origin story, but for this specific argument I'm making, it doesn't matter. Nat
Lol...well i guess you can choose to apply whatever fantasy to an argument if you desire it.
I suggest you would serve Opportunity better if you remained true to the facts.....they are offering an alternative when the existing is less than popular
I've voted TOP three times, is that how long they've been around?. I don't nessacarily agree with all their policies, for me it's looking for change in the way forward which none of the parties in parliament offer in the slightest.
Trouble is they're almost sounding a bit more mainstream now which would turn me off. In which case not voting at all would become more enticing to me.
Agreed. Same. They are getting a lot more press and thus profile. The tax policy is much needed for an immutable source of govt revenue and to rebalance the cost of shelter in this country. Aka price down.
The only people who dont like it are the over leveraged property stackers. People who structure to avoid tax at all costs while pushing the cost of shelter to historic price to income levels. Neither are good for NZ inc.
Change is coming.
If not Oppotunity, then who? We need to make some changes, the most important being to take a long term view.
As has been seen from the article above it's very difficult to create a party for any change without a very good number of people being ready for it. 5% has proven huge as 95% are either indoctrinated by the status or scared of any change or just stuck.
To answer you, no bloody idea. So I'm hopeful for TOP.
In a normal population distribution, 50% will be below the mean. After all, 5% captures 2 std deviations outliers eg TOP & ACT
5% is not mainstream, it is the bare minimum and a good start to give them a chance for NZ to see something different for a change. They come across as mature, reasoned, educated, academically driven and willing to be honest with the public unlike any other party in parliament currently. People need to vote for change to get it, instead of backing out last minute due to silly reasons.
I think my daughter will vote from them, doing law, thinks housing is too expensive and taking away the final year of free uni pushed her away from National.
Kia ora, redcows, I hope you still vote for them. Not because I back them as a party, but because I'm desperate for a strategic party to disrupt the status quo, and TOP is the only real option I can see right now. Nat
How does a bunch of labour and green has been wets disrupt the status quo? They are the, MSM anointed, status quo! Oh for a genuine disruptor rather than the incestuous beltway gang.
They look like a Labour construct, will Labour gift them a safe seat? they could walk into power and labour would welcome the land tax to balance the books
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