Analysis by Keith Rankin.
Role: Economic historian.
Keith Rankin, 29 October 2026 – Here I present four scenarios for this year’s New Zealand general election. The scenario we have become most used to is the semi-strategic one, and probably this will once again be closest to next month’s reality. Though the outcome of a semi-strategic election in 2026 may look more strategic than in the past, because of a genuine fall in support for the two ‘major’ parties Labour and National. In past elections the voting for the Right has probably been more strategic than voting for the Left, but disguised by the combined major-party vote being in excess of 60%.
I expect some pattern of strategising to continue, leading me to consider two extreme outcomes that are technically possible.
Strategic voting occurs under all voting systems. In the 2024 UK election – a plurality ‘first-past-the-post’ FPP election – there was much vote ‘lending’, especially between Labour and the LibDems. New Zealand’s electorate vote is also a plurality election; to win a candidate only needs a plurality (as in United Kingdom and United States), not a majority (as in Australia). In the recent electorate poll in Te Tai Tokerau, the leading candidate had just 24% support, enough to give her a plurality win, even if all the undecideds split their support among the other candidates.
(We note that in the Oscars, the ‘best film’ only needs a plurality win out of seven candidates all of which are in contention. So, it is technically possible for the ‘best film’ to win with just 15% of the vote.)
In New Zealand, the 2002 election was especially marked by both National and Labour supporters lending the centrist United-Future their votes. And in 2023 there was a degree of lending votes to New Zealand First (NZF), with centre-left voters preferring a CENTRE-Right government to a Centre-RIGHT government.
Definitions
I take purely unstrategic voting to be ‘two-tick’ voting. This would mean that people vote both for their favoured party and also for the candidate representing that party. (Yes, in a few cases there will be no candidate for the preferred party. But only one or two percent of cases.) In this unstrategic voting scenario, people planning to vote for a Te Pati Māori (TPM) candidate will also vote for Te Pati Māori.
In pure strategic voting – the extreme strategic scenario – the people divide the seven major parties into ‘list parties’ and ‘electorate parties’. For the 2026 election, the list parties would be New Zealand First, Act, Green, and Opportunity; with the first two being part of a ‘Right’ coalition and the other two being understood to be part of a ‘Left’ coalition. The electorate parties would be Te Pati Māori, Labour, and National. In this strategy, everyone votes for both a ‘list party’ and an ‘electorate party’; by definition of this strategic scenario, the two votes must be for different parties.
In the semi-strategic scenario, Labour and National supporters vote for their party, and – unless the sitting MP or a strong contender is from a third party – also vote for their Labour or National candidate. Te Pati Māori candidate voters in the Māori electorates would do as they have done before; about 35% for the Labour Party candidate and 65% for Te Pati Māori candidate. The party votes would fall about 30% TPM, 30% labour, 30% Green, 10% for the Right bloc. Voters for New Zealand First and Act would vote about 90% for the National candidate. Voters for Green would vote about 90% for the Labour candidate. Voters for Opportunity would vote about 90% for either a Labour or a National candidate; more Labour than National.
For simplicity, I am presuming that all other parties will be insignificant in this election; so in all scenarios I am assuming that other parties each get zero percent of the vote.
The Purely Unstrategic Scenario
The electorate seats would fall very much as they would for a first-past-the-post election; in those ‘olden days’ elections, the candidate vote (the only vote) was a de facto party vote. In my unstrategic scenario, the general seats split between Labour and National, and the Māori seats would split between Te Pati Māori and Labour.
The latest TVNZ Verian poll gave 29% support to National and 27% to Labour. The electorate percentages are generally amplified versions of major party support. If I give four electorates to TPM, that leaves 67 electorates to split between National and Labour; my best estimate is 37 of these to National; and 30 to Labour, including three Māori seats. Thus the 71 electorates would be 37 for National, 30 for Labour, 4 for TPM.
In the unstrategic scenario, 3% of the party vote goes to TPM, lowering Labour and Green by two percentage points compared to that Verian poll. Based on that poll, the Right parties would get 51% of the party vote (29% for N, 12% for A, 10% for NZF) and the Left 49%. To accommodate this Māori party support, Opportunity would stay at 6%, Labour would be 26%, Green would be 14%, and TPM 3%.
National would earn 35 seats in total, meaning an overhang of 2 seats. Labour would earn 32 seats, giving them two list MPs. TPM would have 4 seats, no overhang, no list MPs. Green would get 17, Act 15, NZF 12, Opportunity 7. 122 MPs in total. The Right would have 62, the Left 60. The Right could govern. But we note, based on the TVNZ Verian poll, the Right did have more Party support, so the overhang would not be problematic.
The Semi-strategic Strategy
In this strategy, the party percentages are 29(N), 27(L), 14(G), 12(A), 10(NZF), 6.5%(O), 1.5%(TPM) adding to 100%. On the basis of proportionality, this gives 61 seats to the Right and 59 seats to the Left. But TPM win five electorates, giving them an overhang of three, making it 61 seats to the Right and 62 to the Left. The Left wins, thanks to this overhang.
In this strategy, I will allow Green to win its three electorates, Act to win Tamaki, NZF to win Northland, and Opportunity to win Mt Albert. For these last two, semi-strategic voting would give us the 1999 Coromandel scenario, which had Jeanette Fitzsimons for Green winning Coromandel. This would mean that NZF and Opportunity would keep their proportionally allocated seats even if their party vote falls below 5% of the total party vote.
And I have Paul Goldsmith winning Epsom, and Chris Bishop winning Hutt South, on the basis that the voters will expect David Seymour and Ginny Andersen to be returned as list MPs.
On the basis of these smaller-party electorate seats, I predict no additional overhang under the semi-strategic strategy. This would leave the final result as 62 to the Left and 61 to the Right. Probably National would have zero list MPs, though.
There would be pressure on Opportunity to go Right, however, reflecting the higher party vote for the Right parties, and reflecting that National would have more MPs than Labour.
Extreme Strategic Scenario
Here I assume that three parties – National, Labour, TPM – receive only electorate votes. And the other three parties receive only party votes. Further, I will give all seven Māori electorates to TPM.
This situation would create 71 overhang seats; ie all electorates would be overhang seats. There would be 64 electorates contested by National and Labour, and 7 for TPM. There would be 120 list seats to be contested between Act, Green, NZF, and Opportunity. Parliament would have 191 MPs.
Based on the latest TVNZ Verian poll, I would transfer National’s 29% to Act and NZF. My prediction would be 27% party votes for Act (32 seats), 24% for NZF (29 seats). I would transfer Labour’s 27% to Green and Opportunity. My prediction would be 35% party vote for Green (42 seats), 14% for Opportunity (17 seats). As before, we note that the Right has a small edge in that Verian poll.
The critical factor would be the purely FPP election taking place in the 64 non-Māori (general) electorates. While I would be inclined to go 36 for National and 28 for Labour, some of these electorates could be a toss-up, largely determined by local issues within each of these electorates.
In this 191-seat Parliament, the Left would have 28+42+17+7=94. The Right would have 36+32+29=97. Christoper Luxon would be invited by the Governor General to form a government.
But imagine if the FPP ‘toss-up’ falls 34 for National and 30 for Labour. That would give the Left 96 and the Right 95. Mārama Davidson – the senior Green leader – would be invited to lead a Left coalition. Opportunity would be courted by the Right, most probably; but Qiulae Wong would probably be more comfortable with Mārama Davidson than Christopher Luxon. With the Green Party having a ‘winning’ plurality of seats, Wong’s first party to negotiate with would be Green.
We note that, with a 191-seat parliament, the debating chamber would have to operate like the House of Commons, without enough seats for every MP. There would have to be British-style ‘hot-seating’; something the Brits are well used-to. Extra office accommodation could easily be found in nearby buildings, given the present depressed state of the capital city. And the extra consumer demand from extra MPs and their staffs could revive the café scene in and around Pipitea, Wellington. Wellington could be saved from becoming one of Shamubeel Eaqub’s zombie towns.
Asymmetric Strategy Scenario
Finally, I consider the possibility that Labour, Green and Opportunity voters pursue an unstrategic strategy, and that National, Act, NZF, and TPM voters pursue a highly strategic strategy. In this case I am giving TPM 7 electorates (all 7 overhang), and Green 3 electorates, and Act one electorate (Tamaki). I would give Labour 20 electorates. That would mean 40 electorates to National (39 overhang, considering Epsom).
Further, National’s 29% support would transfer to Act and NZF. (Given rounding issues, I give Act 28% and NZF 24%.)
There would be 46 overhang seats, making a Parliament of 166.
My total seats for the Left would be 7+32+18+7=64, including 30 electorates.
My total seats for the Right would be 40+34+28=102, including 41 electorates.
A clear majority in the new parliament for the Right.
Solutions for 2029 or 2032
If either an extreme or asymmetric scenario happens, there would be an urgent public conversation on electoral reform. A decision to reduce the number of electorate MPs relative to list MPs might be enough to quell the reaction. And removing the fixed-electorate quota for the South Island, a bizarre relic from the past; a relic which incrementally reduced the number of list MPs from 1996 to 2023.
A more comprehensive change would be to switch to multi-member electorates, with an ability to allocate fewer MPs per electorate when the electorate vote is too different from the party vote. I call this ability ‘dynamic allocation’.
And trifecta voting. This is Australian-style preferential voting – remember the New Zealand flag referendum, which used this – but limited to just three preferences. Multi-member electorates with trifecta voting and dynamic allocation should completely solve the overhang problem.
We might note that, with MMP elections, trifecta voting could address the ‘wasted party-vote’ problem caused by the 5% threshold. If a voter’s first preference party didn’t reach the 5% threshold, then the vote would transfer to the second-preference party; or to the third-preference party if the second-preference party didn’t make it either.
Conclusion
The actual election results will reflect a mix of these less-strategic and more-strategic scenarios. Whatever that mix turns out to be, there should be no reason for panic. New Zealanders are good at adapting in the medium term, and accepting the legal result in the immediate-term.
Clearly, asymmetric strategising – which is what many fear – would give a distorted result. Once. We adapt, either by changing the rules or by encouraging strategising on all sides of the political spectra and accepting more MPs. (Ireland, with the same population as New Zealand, has 174 MPs; plus 60 senators.)
About the writer:
Keith Rankin (keith at rankin dot nz), trained as an economic historian, is a retired lecturer in Economics and Statistics. He lives in Auckland, New Zealand.