Days ahead of New Zealand’s election, polls show the governing centre-right National Party and the opposition centre-left Labour Party neck and neck, with neither on course to win enough seats to govern alone. The outcome of the November 7 election could be decided by smaller parties under the country’s unique electoral system. New Zealand holds a general election every three years under a mixed-member proportional (MMP) system.
Voters cast two ballots: one for a candidate in their local electorate and one for a party. Winning candidates in each of the country’s 71 electorates take their seats automatically. There are seven electorates reserved for Maori, New Zealand’s Indigenous people.
Maori voters can choose to enrol on either the Maori electoral roll or the general roll. The party vote decides how many seats each party gets overall. About 49 more seats are filled from party lists so that each party’s share of parliament matches its proportional share of the vote.
A party needs either 5 percent of the party vote, or one electorate win, to get a seat. In New Zealand’s 120-seat parliament, a majority usually means 61. If a party wins more electorates than its share of the party vote entitles it to, it keeps them and extra seats are added to parliament.
That happened in 2023, when Te Pati Maori won six of the seven Maori electorates, but had only 3.1 percent of the overall party vote. Because seats in parliament closely track with the party vote, one party rarely wins a majority. Every government since the MMP system was instituted in 1996 has been a coalition headed by Labour or National, except in 2020, when Labour under then-Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern won big and governed alone.
Incumbent Prime Minister Christopher Luxon is seeking a second term. A former Air New Zealand chief executive, he entered parliament in 2020 as the MP for the Auckland seat of Botany and became leader of the National Party a year later. He led National back to power in 2023, promising better economic management and ending six years of Labour-led government.
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