New Zealand faces weeks of political uncertainty after Saturday's general election produced no clear winner, with Prime Minister Christopher Luxon's centre-right National Party and Chris Hipkins' centre-left Labour Party finishing almost level on the party vote and the fate of the next government hanging on hundreds of thousands of special votes still to be counted.
With almost all of the preliminary count complete, the two main parties each held just under 30 per cent of the party vote, separated by only a few thousand ballots. National stood on 29.3 per cent, according to the Electoral Commission figures reported by Nikkei Asia, a sharp fall from the 38 per cent it won when it came to power in 2023. Labour finished a fraction ahead of National on the party vote, but National's stronger performance in individual electorates delivered it more seats in parliament.
On the preliminary seat projections, National would take 42 seats in the 130-seat parliament, ahead of Labour on 36, the Greens on 16, the libertarian ACT party on 13, the populist New Zealand First on 12, the centrist Opportunity Party on seven and the indigenous rights-focused Te Pati Maori on five. Sixty-six seats are needed for a majority, and Luxon's three-party coalition of National, ACT and New Zealand First is projected to hold 67 — a majority of just one seat. The Labour-led bloc of Labour, the Greens and Te Pati Maori is projected to hold 57 seats.
Addressing supporters in Auckland on Saturday night, Luxon said his coalition had a path back to office but refused to declare victory. "National is once again the largest party in parliament, and we have a pathway to forming the next government," he said. "But right now it is too close to call." He said he would run a caretaker government until the final votes were tallied in the coming weeks.
Labour leader Chris Hipkins struck a lighter note as he addressed supporters in Wellington, joking about the inconclusive result. "Tonight, New Zealand has spoken. It may take us a little bit longer to figure out exactly what it is that you've said," he said. He added that the country's politicians would need to find "common ground" in the days ahead, as neither main party looked likely to win an overall majority.
The result will not be settled for weeks. Around 300,000 special votes remain to be counted, Luxon said, with some estimates putting the figure as high as 500,000 to 700,000. Special votes are cast by New Zealanders living abroad, by voters travelling, or by people voting outside their home electorate, and they have historically favoured the left — so the wafer-thin margin could still move in either direction. The Electoral Commission is not expected to declare the final official result until 27 November, and there is no fixed timeframe for forming a government after that.
One of the night's biggest stories was the breakthrough of the Opportunity Party, a centrist newcomer that cleared the five per cent threshold needed to enter parliament without winning an electorate seat and is projected to take seven seats. With neither bloc holding a comfortable majority, the party could yet emerge as a kingmaker in coalition talks, and its rise underlines how far voters have drifted from the two big parties.
The campaign was dominated by the cost of living and a struggling economy, and was at times dubbed the "supermarket election" as grocery prices and supermarket competition became a central battleground. Luxon hoped his right-wing coalition could cling to power on promises of no new taxes after three fractious years in office, including two failed bids by his own National Party to oust him as leader. Labour, by contrast, promised help with living costs, from free doctor's visits and prescriptions to a cap on public transport fares, in a campaign that pitched Hipkins as the steadier hand on household budgets.
What happens next now depends on the special votes and on negotiations between the parties. If the final count confirms the preliminary figures, Luxon would need to hold his existing coalition together to govern with the slimmest of majorities, while Labour and its allies would need a substantial swing from the special votes to have any chance of forming a government of their own. Either way, coalition talks are expected to run well beyond the final declaration on 27 November, leaving the country in political limbo in the meantime.
The election was the second in a row contested by two men named Chris, and it laid bare a deep disillusionment with both major parties: together, National and Labour took barely 60 per cent of the vote between them. Parliament will also grow to a record 130 seats, after National and Te Pati Maori won more electorate seats than their shares of the party vote entitled them to. For now, New Zealanders will have to wait — first for the special votes, then for the negotiations — before they know who will lead the country.
