Continuing the recent run of elections, New Zealand goes to the polls tomorrow to pass judgement on the government of prime minister Christopher Luxon, in office since 2023. Its prospects of retaining a majority are not good, but it’s not clear whether or not its opponents will be able to muster the numbers to replace it.
At the 2023 election (see my report here) the three parties that went on to form the governing coalition – Luxon’s centre-right National Party, the free-market ACT and the far-right NZ First of the idiosyncratic Winston Peters – won 52.8% of the vote between them and 68 of the 123 seats.* In opposition to them, Labour, the Greens and the Māori Party together won 41.6% and 55 seats. The remaining 5.6% went to parties that failed to reach the threshold (5% of the proportional vote, or winning at least one electorate seat), chiefly the centrist Opportunities Party with 2.2%.
Partly because of the competing pressures from his two coalition parties, Luxon’s prime ministership has not been regarded as a great success. His colleagues launched a challenge against his leadership last August, although they were unsuccessful. National’s polling numbers over the three years show a remarkably steady decline, although in recent months Labour has been declining somewhat faster.
ACT and NZ First have been holding their support fairly well, both apparently up slightly on last time. The Greens are also up, as is the Opportunities Party – now just called “Opportunity” – which this time looks like making it over the 5% mark. The Māori Party has dropped badly, but will still return to parliament if it can maintain its grip on some of its electorate seats.
If Opportunity gets in it’s quite likely to hold the balance of power between left and right. In that case it has promised to negotiate with both sides; while Labour is keeping its options open, Luxon has said he’s not interested. But a leader who has taken in NZ First is clearly not very picky about his partners, so expect him to find a way of modifying that commitment should it turn out to be necessary.
Without Opportunity in the mix (and perhaps even if it is), the prime minister looks to have the edge: even voters who are underwhelmed by his performance may balk at evicting a first-term government, something that hasn’t happened since 1975. It’s also fair to say that Labour is not offering any radically different alternative; both major parties stick pretty close to the centre. But whether this will lead voters to conclude that change can be safely risked, or alternatively that it’s not worth bothering with, remains to be seen.
Polls close at 7pm local time (5pm in south-eastern Australia), and counting of the on-the-day vote is generally pretty fast – you can check out the electoral commission website here. But postal and absentee votes are counted later, and no figures for them are reported until the process is completed, which takes more than two weeks. It’s common for them to yield an extra seat or two for the left-of-centre parties, which in a close election can matter a lot.
.
* Technical note: There are nominally 120 seats, but three additional, or “overhang”, seats were added last time. Firstly because the Māori Party, whose vote entitled it to four seats on a proportional basis, actually won six electorate seats; it gets to keep the extra two. Secondly, because the electorate seat of Port Waikato, won by National, was filled at a supplementary election due to the death of a candidate; its votes were already counted in allocating the proportional seats, so the electorate MP was extra.
