Election 2026

Labour's leader's not expecting a vote on the leadership tomorrow, but says one is required soon. 

The current coalition's in the box seat to form Government - with 67 seats - although Chris Hipkins says there's still hope for the left, which is on 57 seats, with 400,000 votes still to be counted. 

Newstalk ZB senior political correspondent Barry Soper says Hipkins is presuming the Opportunity Party could align themselves with Labour, but things could change.

LISTEN ABOVE

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Christchurch's new and returning MPs have been reflecting on their election results after the release of the preliminary count.

National MPs Hamish Campbell and Matt Doocey said they have "bittersweet" feelings towards the result, with the centre-right bloc well placed to form a government after the special votes are counted, but several high-ranking National MPs, including Nicola Willis, Chris Bishop, Paul Goldsmith and former Ilam MP and Speaker Gerry Brownlee unlikely to return to Parliament.

Labour's Reuben Davidson and Tracey McLellan thanked voters for their support, with McLellan flipping Banks Peninsula red after losing the seat to National's Vanessa Weenink in 2023.

New MPs George Hampton and Dominik Yanzick are now preparing for life in Parliament, heading to Wellington today for their induction.

National's re-elected MP for Selwyn, Nicola Grigg, was unavailable for an interview.

LISTEN ABOVE

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On Saturday afternoon, a mate asked me what I thought was going to happen in the election.

I said that I thought Labour would win the party vote but National would win more seats. And that Opportunity would get in with a 5.2 percent share of the party vote.

That was as much as I was willing to predict. And I was pretty much spot on.

Although, yes, at this point Labour is ahead on party vote. But it’s pretty much neck-and-neck.

Labour is on 29.36% and National is on 29.21%. So technically, Labour is ahead. But there are a minuscule number of actual votes between them.

I was right too about National getting more electorate seats than Labour.

The preliminary results show National having 42 seats. All of them electorate seats. And Labour has 36. Of those, 21 are electorate seats and 15 are list seats.

And, despite other commentators saying otherwise, I was right about Opportunity getting into Parliament. I predicted that they would get 5.2 percent. At the moment, they’re sitting on 5.96 percent.

So, no surprises on those fronts.

What I am surprised about, though, is the way National leader Christopher Luxon has reacted compared to his coalition partners.

NZ First’s Winston Peters and ACT’s David Seymour have been somewhat reserved. Especially when you consider that David Seymour, in particular, has a bit to crow about, with ACT having its best result.

He’s pitching himself as the next Finance Minister. But, overall, I think the ACT and NZ First leaders are conducting themselves as they should, given how things are after the weekend.

Christopher Luxon, though. What a bombastic showing he made on Saturday night.

It was midnight before he took to the stage after shaking hands and hugging every Tom, Dick and Harry at the National Party event in Auckland.

Yesterday, he was at it again. Telling reporters that he thought National had run a great campaign. Despite the fact that its party share at the moment is down 9 percent on the last election.

Luxon needs to listen to the advice he gave reporters yesterday. He told them to calm down. He needs to do that too.

He’s now also looking like going back on his word not to work in any way, shape or form with the Opportunity Party. Which doesn’t surprise me at all.

We all knew when he was ruling them out so emphatically during the campaign that he’d be on the phone to Qiulae Wong if he needed to.

My pick is he’s talking the way he is after Mark Mitchell and Erica Stanford both said on Saturday night, before Luxon had even turned up at the event in Auckland, that National would have to look at working with Opportunity.

As soon as they said that, Christopher Luxon had no choice. Otherwise, he’d be ousted sooner rather than later.

That could still happen. But the olive branch might have bought him a bit more time.

Speaking of time. Labour leader Chris Hipkins is well and truly on borrowed time. Like Luxon, he has nothing to crow about, either.

LISTEN ABOVE

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

And here we are, right back where we started on Friday. I hope you had a wonderful weekend and you got along and voted. We went as a family on Saturday and there was a sausage sizzle at the local school and it was all very straightforward. Showed my voter card, my smart voter card on my phone and in we went and all went off and did our own thing really.

I think there was one clear winner on Saturday night and that would be the pollsters. They got it bang to rights all the way through. I took some screenshots of polls leading into election night just to see and they were pretty much bang to rights. People are fed up with the two main parties, Opportunity was always going to get in and too close to call between the right and left blocks.

The second winner for me on the night and I don't want to blow smoke up his designer jeans, but I have to say Mike and Barry and Maurice and the team who put together the election night coverage did a fantastic job. And I guess that's what it comes down to is that ultimately election coverage is a radio job. There's nothing to see until the leaders' speeches and that's much, much later in the night. In the absence of anything to see, if you're a television channel, you manufacture things to see, like panels. And then everybody sits there and has their reckons and fills in time until the votes start coming in and the seats start coming in thick and fast.

And really, I think the telly coverage is all a bit forced and manufactured. Radio with pictures, we watched it on YouTube. The ads were annoying, yes, but then you could always sign up to be a YouTube premium watcher, but the ads were a little bit annoying, but I much preferred that because if there's one thing Mike Hosking knows how to do, it's radio. And that's what election coverage should be, on the radio really. And I think no discredit to the presenters of the different television shows, they were just doing what they do best, standing there and trying to present a show, but when there's nothing to see, what is the point of television?

Anyway, however you saw it or heard it or what have you, the results are in and none of us is really any the wiser as Chris Hipkins put it so beautifully.
Tonight New Zealand has spoken. It may take us a little bit longer to figure out exactly what it is that you've said.

Brilliantly put. Winston Peters also sounded a note of caution. He's not his first rodeo, is it? Hey?
A lot of people are getting carried away right here, right now about what the outcome means. It'd be very wise if they held their counsel for a bit longer.

Well, quite. Qiulae Wong, Opportunity, they were the story of the election really.
You have voted to change New Zealand politics for good. I cannot express how grateful I am to all of you that have put your faith in us tonight.

And the Greens, they had a good night.
Tonight you made history. This is the biggest result the Green Party has ever achieved. And tonight we are also seeing an historic Green wave in the Māori seats and Māori support.

Yes, and before Chloe starts throwing her weight around about rigging elections, maybe she should have a long, hard look at just how the Greens did so well. And for Christopher Luxon, yet again it was a win that wasn't a win that was almost a win but was also a loss.

Some of the hardest phone calls tonight have been to colleagues and friends who look unlikely to make it back into Parliament. And in particular, I'm thinking of our most incredible deputy leader, Nicola Willis. I want to thank you, Nicola, for your dedication, for your determination and for your years of service to our party and this great country of ours. I'm also thinking of my friends Paul Goldsmith and Gerry Brownlee, Melissa Lee, Nancy Lu and Vanessa Weenink who've also missed out tonight.

So yes, where do we go from here? They'll cobble together some sort of government depending on the results. We're waiting for the specials that do tend to go left, but all of the pundits are saying it would have to be every single one of the specials would have to before anything would change. Probably National will cobble together a coalition that will be much the same as we had last time except they'll be just a little bit more demanding, I imagine New Zealand First and ACT because they've got a few more votes.

I did think Shane Jones was sounding very statesmanlike when he was saying people have said to him very, very clearly that they want less of the squabbling. People are fed up. And I think you can certainly look at the election, look at the results for the parties, look at the low voter turnout. Maurice Williamson had us all thinking it was the most amazing and the biggest and a record turnout.

Apparently the Electoral Commission got the numbers wrong on the website, but I was thinking, wow, well there you go, people are obviously really engaged in whatever side they want, they know they have to get out and vote. No. No. We did have a very, very good rate of enrolment, 93.7% of the population were registered to vote, but only 74.6 chose to cast their vote. Voter suppression again, Chloe cool your jets. There were 3.7 people enrolled to vote.

The fact that only 74.6% of them chose to cast a vote means that unless the voters were held at gunpoint inside their homes, there was no suppression of voting. How absurd is that? They just couldn't be asked. They were uninspired, completely and utterly uninspired by what the parties had to offer. Helen Clark has called for a thorough review into New Zealand's electoral system, looking specifically at campaign funding and disenfranchising enrolment changes. Should we look into whether vote splitting should be allowed? Should we go back to voting on the day? I don't think so.

I like the fact that people have to take it seriously and understand that there's an election coming up and they have to vote. They have to think about it. Campaign funding, well Opportunity benefited enormously from campaign funding. It was certainly ACT does a good job at getting money into the into the war chests, maybe. But the vote splitting, yeah, I don't think we're going to put up with having 130 MPs in Parliament, are we? Maybe we should be looking at that. But it's both sides that did it, both the left block and the right block. Te Pāti Māori started it, the Greens certainly benefited from it as referenced by Marama. Harry Mowbray, well a bit of thanks would be nice. You've had your moment in the sunshine.

I don't know. I think both National and Labour need a major refresh, a major refresh. They cannot rely on old party loyalties, they cannot rely on history. They have to make themselves modern and relevant, otherwise they will die. They will just become a footnote in history. Should both Chrisses keep their jobs? It'll be hard to get rid of whoever leads the next government, very hard to get rid of somebody who is the Prime Minister, but I give the one who forms the government 18 months. I give the one who doesn't about enough time to clean out his desk. And which way should Opportunity go?

I'm kind with the pundits who think they should go on the cross benches and learn the ropes, learn where the loos are before they start throwing their political weight around.

LISTEN ABOVE

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The MMP system has faced criticism in recent elections, but some believe the 2026 election exposed it's shortcomings. 

Earlier this year, NZ Initiative Executive Director Dr. Oliver Hartwich did a deep dive into MMP and wrote a research paper titled "Unravelling MMP: How the 2026 election could break the voting system from two sides".

He joined Kerre Woodham to reflect on the research paper, and what this election tells us about the current system. 

LISTEN ABOVE

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Outgoing National MP Nicola Willis says tomorrow will be her “last hurrah” with her colleagues.

The former Finance Minister lost her seat in Parliament on Saturday after National’s number of electorate wins left no room for list MPs to get any seats.

She told Newstalk ZB’s Mike Hosking Breakfast that tomorrow will be her last caucus meeting with the National Party.

"That’ll be my last hurrah with my colleagues and I’m sure (it) will be filled with emotion.”

LISTEN ABOVE

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

THE BEST BITS IN A SILLIER PACKAGE (from Monday's Mike Hosking Breakfast) Just Look What You've Gone and Done/MMP Explained/Back Here Again In 3 Years? No Thanks

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Obviously we will work through the machinations later but lets just run through the winners and losers of the night.

The winners:

1) Opportunity

5% is hard and they did it, just. It’s a big victory and a slick campaign. I hope they are smart enough to ease in, don’t go mad, learn the ropes and be there for a good crack in 2029.

2) The pollsters

Yes there were some ropey numbers, but overall by the end of the night they were more right than wrong. They should be pleased.

3) Act

They increased their presence in Parliament, survived and thrived in our first true MMP Government.

4) NZ First

Ditto. We need to move past the idea that small players can't grow, and in growing they inevitably take votes off their major partners. Why was that a surprise to so many?

5) National

Because their electorate MP's saved the day. 42 seats is an amazing result, hence the overhang.

6) The split vote campaign

If you look at the party vote in any given electorate for National, and the electorate vote for the local MP, it's night and day. Hundreds of thousands of votes went to the MP, not the party.

7) The Maori Party

Given what they did to themselves, five seats is more than most of us would have thought. It must have been devastating for Labour.

The losers:

8) Labour

Their path remains this morning as hard, if not harder, than it was all campaign. A lot needed to go their way and chances are it hasn’t.

9) The Greens

They should be happy but they aren't, because they're not likely part of a Government. But they also believed the polls and at 16%+ the polls were never real.

10 Nicola Willis, Paul Goldsmith, Chris Bishop

In an unusual election three very experienced heavyweights watch their party most likely head back to the Beehive without them. It's one thing to lose your job when your party loses the election, but that hasn’t happened. It's pretty much a first.

11) Turnout

Still not too sure. At 700,000 estimated specials it looked like a massive turnout, but there are only 400,000. If you take that as a percentage it may be the turnout wasn’t anything big at all.

12) MMP

Not sure if it’s a winner or not. Big Parliament, big overhang. In 30 years we are still discovering the vagaries of a system we voted twice for and yet too many still don’t get it.

Democracy aye? What a ride.

LISTEN ABOVE

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Potential kingmaker's the Opportunity Party has had phone calls but only from one side of the aisle. 

Leader Qiulae Wong says she's had a couple of calls from Labour Leader Chris Hipkins and Greens co-leader Chloe Swarbrick. 

She's heard nothing from the right wing parties including National. 

But Wong told Mike Hosking she doesn't blame them, as they're probably taking stock of their situation. 

LISTEN ABOVE

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Chris Luxon says he's glad National has a pathway to power - but he still doesn't believe vote-splitting was the right way to achieve that.

Preliminary results show National, Act and New Zealand First have 67 seats - Labour, the Greens and Te Pāti Māori have 57 seats - and Opportunity has seven seats.

However, that could change once any recounts and special votes come in later this month.

The National Party Leader told Mike Hosking National doesn't want to see its power diminished.

He says National wants to have dominant policies and dominant ministers, and lead any coalition government it's part of.

LISTEN ABOVE

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.