Preliminary election results put National, ACT and NZ First on 67 out of 131 seats, one more seat than the 66 needed to govern.
Final results are due on 27 November once 399,365 special votes have been counted. Labour, the Greens, the Maori Party and Opportunity were on 64 seats.
In the previous three elections, National had lost two seats once the special votes were counted. However, because voters could no longer enrol on election day, there were a third fewer special votes this election. RNZ modelling had the coalition narrowly holding onto a majority.
Labour led the party vote with 29.36%, against National’s 29.21%. Despite this, National had 42 seats while Labour was sitting on 36. National’s party vote earned it 35 seats, but because the party was winning 42 electorates, there was a seven-seat overhang for National. The Maori Party was also looking at a four-seat overhang.
National MP Mike Butterick led Labour MP Kieran McAnulty by 139 votes in Wairarapa, and former Labour MP Michael Wood led National MP Carlos Cheung by about 260 in Mt Roskill.
National had campaigned for the party vote, but its 706,680 party votes were not adding a single MP. Every 20,000 of those votes would have been worth another MP to ACT or NZ First. Sovereign NZ Leader Joshua Riley told RCR the National Party’s call for both votes was “an integrity issue”. Without list seats, National was set to lose Finance Minister Nicola Willis, senior ministers Chris Bishop and Paul Goldsmith and Speaker Gerry Brownlee.
Vote splitting appeared to have kept the coalition in front, according to an RNZ analysis. ACT and NZ First voters had backed National candidates in their electorates. In National-led electorate seats, its candidates polled on average 17.2 points above the National Party vote. ACT was on track for its best result at 10.9%, and NZ First had climbed from 6% to 9.8%. Frank Newman said National had opposed vote splitting because it would “rather be the stronger party in opposition than a weaker party in government”. Former ACT leader Rodney Hide said RCR had warned of the overhang, and if more people had listened, “we’d probably be getting a different result”.
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon said “we’ve got a mandate” and “we believe we can actually form a government with NZ First and ACT”. NZ First leader Winston Peters said people should wait to find out “what the results actually are, rather than the hopeful speculation of what it might be”. Deputy leader Shane Jones ruled out working with the left.
Luxon said National was “highly unlikely” to need Opportunity, but it was “entirely appropriate to build a relationship” with Opportunity leader Qiulae Wong and her party. ACT leader David Seymour said Luxon should call Wong, and that he had “always been a little confused by the position he took” in ruling Opportunity out during the campaign. Asked on Q+A about working with Opportunity, Jones said to wait for what the specials revealed.
Green co-leader Chloe Swarbrick said Opportunity “don’t get to sit on the fence any more”. Maori Party co-leader Debbie Ngarewa-Packer said “there’s an ability for all four of us” to govern, with Labour, the Greens and Opportunity. Wong said she would talk first to the party with the most seats, which on the preliminary results was National, but said “just because we speak to the largest party first doesn’t guarantee anything”.
This story has been republished with permission from RCR Bites. For news like this direct and free to your Inbox every day, go to biteme.news to sign up for RCR Bites.
If you are a media outlet interested in republishing RCR Bites stories, please contact inbox@rcr.media.
