Six weeks of campaigning, politicking, and debates have officially concluded, and New Zealand has voted. Over the next few hours, the country will learn the results of what has been billed as one of the tightest elections in recent memory - a contest so close that the polls have spent weeks shrugging at the mere concept of a clear coalition path for anyone, left or right. Voters, seemingly unimpressed by National and Labour, have been flirting with the smaller parties, particularly the centrist Opportunity party. Tonight, Opportunity could end up as kingmaker - unless all that pre-election hype fails to translate into actual votes, which is the traditional way hype works.
Some senior National heavy hitters will, remarkably, be out of a job if National's party vote goes badly tonight. The list includes Nicola Willis (finance minister), Chris Bishop (like Willis, tipped as a potential future leader of the party), Paul Goldsmith (justice minister), and Gerry Brownlee (speaker of the house). All pre-election polls looked bad for any National MP relying on the list vote to return them to parliament - such as Willis and Brownlee, who are list-only candidates. Goldsmith (Epsom) and Bishop (Hutt South) are engaged in tense, marginal electorate battles. If either loses, they are then reliant on winning via the list. So, no pressure.
With 20% of the vote counted, the seat tally in the house stands at: National 42, Act 13, NZ First 12 = 67 seats; Labour 35, Greens 16, Te Pāti Māori 5 = 56 seats. Currently, it is projected there would be 130 seats in the house - a number that makes sense if you've been following our overhang coverage, and a number that makes no sense if you haven't.
Some Labour party candidates are locked in neck-and-neck races, with tensions high at the Labour party event watching the candidates in Hutt South. With more than 20% of the vote counted, Labour's Ginny Anderson has edged just ahead of the incumbent, National MP Chris Bishop, by just a handful of ballots - the kind of margin that makes you want to recount your own grocery list. Green MP Julie-Anne Genter is just holding off Labour challenger Craig Renney in Wellington North, while Labour's Kieran McAnulty is winning against National's Mike Butterick in Wairarapa. Elsewhere in Wellington, Labour party MP Ayesha Verrall was hoping to win Wellington North off the incumbent Green MP Tamatha Paul, but early votes suggest this won't be the case. Paul is leading comfortably, at almost twice Verrall's count in an electorate where Green is also leading the party vote.
Another key feature of this election has been the possibility of an overhang - where a party wins more electorates than its share of the party vote. If that occurs, more seats will be added to parliament to make up the difference and could dictate which coalition can form a government. Te Pāti Māori (the Māori party) has been calling on supporters to engineer an overhang for its party - by voting for its candidates in the Māori seats, and not giving them a party vote. This could benefit the left bloc. Meanwhile, if National holds on to a good portion of its seats but its party vote falls short, that will give the party an edge to form a government but could see some of its most prominent MPs out of parliament. Democracy: it's complicated.
With 17% of the vote counted: National are on 30.5%, Labour 29%, the Greens 13%, Act 11.1%, NZ First 9.8%, Opportunity 5.4%, and Te Pāti Māori 0.5%. We're going to need to start discussing the prospect of overhang seats, as it is heading towards that scenario. We'll have a post on this soon - because nothing says "election night" like a explainer on parliamentary math.
The race between Act leader David Seymour and National's Paul Goldsmith in the Epsom seat is narrow - a matter of a few dozen votes. National supporters chanted "Goldsmith, Goldsmith" when the results appeared on two giant screens flanking the podium at the Viaduct Events Centre. Elsewhere in the Upper Hutt Cosmopolitan Club, punters were ordering crate bottles of local beer Tui and listening to a band kick up a rendition of Tennessee Whiskey. For Hutt locals, the Cossie Club is a social hub; karaoke on Thursdays, bingo on Sundays, and a jug of lager for $14 during happy hour. Priorities.
While everyone spoken to by The Guardian voted for Hipkins in the Remutaka electorate - "he's a local boy" - party votes were otherwise split between Labour, the Opportunity party, and NZ First. "I've always voted Labour, Chris knows that," said Gladys Cooney, 96. "I haven't heard anything from them this election, I don't think anyone has gone deep enough." The cost of living was appalling, she said. "Everything you touch has gone up." Fellow local Paul O'Riley also voted for Hipkins, but party voted NZ First. "I worked for 50 years in this country as a truck driver, Winston [Peters] does the most for us."
Seven of the seats in New Zealand's 120-seat parliament are Māori electorates. Voters of Māori descent can choose to vote on the Māori roll - allowing them to vote for these seats - or the general roll. More than half of Māori voters are on the Māori roll. They still get two votes; one for the electorate, and one for their preferred political party. Last election, Te Pāti Māori won six of the seven seats. But internal turmoil has plagued the party since. Tonight, eyes will be on Te Tai Tokerau - covering the geographical area from New Zealand's most northern point in Cape Reinga to West Auckland - where the Green's candidate Hūhana Lyndon could help the party nab their first Māori seat. Latest polls put her leading the race, followed by Labour's Willow-Jean Prime and Te Pāti Māori candidate Aperahama Edwards. Te Pāti Māori remain ahead in most other electorates, aside from Ikaroa-Rāwhiti and Te Tai Tonga (the biggest electorate, covering the entirety of the South Island and Stewart Island) where Labour candidates lead polling.
In an election night that has come down to Chris vs Chris, it's important to know the difference. Christopher Luxon, 56, the incumbent, leader of the National party and PM since 2023, is the former chief executive of the country's national airline, Air New Zealand, and previously worked a slew of corporate jobs worldwide. He entered parliament in 2020, winning the Auckland electorate of Botany. A father-of-two, he is Christian but doesn't discuss his faith, and has emphasised his business credentials - in 2023, his party was elected on its economic pledges. Chris Hipkins, 48, the career politician who leads the center-left Labour party, is having a second crack at being PM tonight. Following the resignation of Jacinda Ardern in January 2023, Hipkins, also a father of two, took the reins for nine months ahead of that election, which his party lost. He's held the Remutaka electorate in parliament since 2008. Some voters still associate him with Covid-19 and strict lockdown measures, while others connect with his pledges for better healthcare and improved cost of living.
Cheers from a rowdy group of National supporters after early results show Chris Bishop may hold on to his Hutt South electorate. National party faithful are starting to trickle into its event at the cavernous Viaduct Event Centre on Auckland's waterfront. The room is awash in blue light. People are grabbing drinks and milling around. The reaction is flicking between nervousness and excitement as the first numbers show the race is - as predicted - neck and neck.
As the first results of the night flashed up onto the big screen, Labour party volunteer Jasmine, 22, who works in the public service and didn't want to use her last name, stopped talking mid-sentence. A hush fell over the room as the first poll results show the main parties neck and neck. "That's close," she said, exhaling. "It's great that Opportunity is over 5%, I'm happy about that. It's just overwhelming; this is years of work, and that's real numbers." She's been working for the party since she was 16. Cheers are going up in the room as electorate results begin to come in. About 200 party supporters are expected here tonight.