The latest Newshub-Reid Research Poll shows voters do want minor parties at the table.
The poll asked 'Would you prefer to see a single big party govern alone or a Government that includes minor parties?'.
39.8 percent said they'd prefer just one party in Government. A majority - 53.8 percent - want a combination and 6.4 percent said they 'don't know'.
When you look at those that support the major two parties, a majority - 53.4 percent of Labour voters - want a combination of parties in Government. But only 42.3 percent of National voters do.
But to do so you've gotta get across the line and the minor parties are struggling - scrapping for survival and scrapping with each other.
The latest Newshub-Reid Research Poll shows the Greens on 5.7 percent, New Zealand First on 2 percent and ACT on 3.3 percent.
The New Conservatives are on 0.9 percent, Māori Party on 0.4 percent, and The Opportunities Party on 0.4 percent.
Earlier this week 37-year-old ACT Party leader David Seymour took aim at 75-year-old New Zealand First leader Winston Peters' age and anti-immigration rhetoric.
"Peters himself will soon be retired and will require a care worker to help him get dressed and go for a walk. He'll discover that such facilities can't function without migrant workers," Seymour tweeted.
Peters fired back, promising if he and Seymour ever got in the ring, he'd put him in an ambulance with a single punch. He followed that up the next day by calling Seymour a "political cuckold".
On Sunday Billy Te Kahika's NZ Public Party announced it had merged with Jami-Lee Ross' new party Advance NZ, making Te Kahika the co-leader.
The Public Party is anti-1080, and according to their website are sceptical of "5G, fluoridation, vaccines, pharmaceuticals, poisons... electromagnetics, industrial products and waste, consumer products, food products". It also believes the United Nations is eroding New Zealanders' property rights "without any vote, referendum, or legal recourse".
Jami-Lee Ross's pitch is he'll make sure it's not just Labour and National in Parliament but they won't go near him.
"Definitely not. Ever. Never. Not happening," National leader Judith Collins told Newshub.
The latest Newshub-Reid Research Poll was conducted between 16-24 July 2020. One thousand people were surveyed, 700 by telephone including both landlines and mobiles and 300 by internet panel. It has a margin of error of 3.1 percent.
