NZ Election Too Close to Call as National Leads Slim Coalition Path; Final Result Awaits Special Votes

Just before midnight on Saturday, in a room full of supporters at Auckland's Viaduct events centre, New Zealand's prime minister, Christopher Luxon, told them the election was "too close to call". The count was nearly complete, and it had not given either the governing right-wing coalition or the opposition left bloc a clear win.

On preliminary results, with almost 100% of regular votes counted, Luxon's centre-right National party holds 42 seats. Its traditional partners, the libertarian Act party and the populist New Zealand First, have 13 and 12. Together that makes 67 seats, a wafer-thin majority. The left bloc trails by just three seats. National edged Labour in the party vote by 0.02%.

The lead is fragile because special votes have yet to be counted. These include overseas ballots and ballots cast outside a voter's own electorate. In 2023 about 600,000 were cast, 21% of the total, and they tend to favour the left: that year they gave Te Pāti Māori and the Greens three extra seats between them. Official results are due on 27 November, so the country faces a two-week wait for the special votes, followed by the possibility of weeks of coalition negotiations. Luxon said National remained the largest party and had "a pathway to forming the next government", but that the special votes had to be counted before negotiations could begin. He added that established caretaker conventions apply and "the daily business of government will continue".

Labour, led by Chris Hipkins, won 35 seats. Its usual partners, the Greens and Te Pāti Māori, won 16 and five. Even adding the seven seats of the centrist newcomer Opportunity, the left bloc is three short of a government. Speaking to a rowdy crowd at the Cosmopolitan Club in Upper Hutt, north of Wellington, Hipkins joked that New Zealand had spoken but "it may take a bit longer to work out what they've said". He said it was clear the shape of the next government would not be known for a little while, and promised Labour would get "straight to work" if the final count fell its way.

Opportunity is the story within the story. At 5.9% it has cleared the threshold for entering parliament, a first. Since New Zealand adopted the mixed-member proportional system in 1996, no new party has managed it; every other minor party has come from MPs or groups splitting off from larger parties. Pre-election polls had Opportunity as the likely kingmaker. For now the right bloc does not need it, but if special votes change the picture, that role could still materialise. Its leader, Qiulae Wong, told supporters in Auckland she was "stoked" and said, "It's looking very promising for us. Let's just see how the rest of the votes fall."

Behind the result is a weakening of the two big parties, amid a sluggish economy and stubbornly high inflation. That has fed record support for Act, New Zealand First and the Greens, and helped carry Opportunity into parliament.

The arithmetic is complicated by overhang. Voters cast one vote for an electorate MP and one for a party, and the system aims to make parliament mirror each party's national share. When a party wins more electorate seats than its party vote entitles it to, it keeps the extras. National won more than its party support allows, which could bring it five extra seats. Te Pāti Māori picked up five overhang seats.

That helps National's route to power but carries a cost. Four of its most senior ministers, Nicola Willis, Paul Goldsmith, Chris Bishop and Gerry Brownlee, will not return to parliament, because they lost their electorate contests and the party did not win enough votes to bring in list-only MPs.

With the extra seats, the next parliament could have 130 members, a record under MMP, which would put the bar for a governing majority at 65. Official results on 27 November will show who clears it.