Election 2026

ACT Leader David Seymour says he's stoked to be leading Epsom, despite a late push by National's Paul Goldsmith. 

He's sitting at 35.9% with 40.7% of the vote counted, ahead of Goldsmith on 29.5%. 

He told Mike Hosking it's looking like we won't get a result tonight in terms of who forms a government, but conversations with Opportunity may need to happen, despite National's reticence. 

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Labour's nudged ahead of National, with just over 30 percent of the vote counted so far.

Labour is on 29.9 percent, while National is on 29.4 percent.

The party's campaign chair, Kieran McAnulty, says it's 'too early' to get excited, but votes are inching away in Labour's favour.

"When I saw the first numbers come in, I thought - that's too high for National. But who knows in these things? So you're not going to make that prediction." 

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With over a quarter of the vote counted, Labour has pushed ahead of National, and Opportunity remains just above the crucial five percent threshold.

The Opportunity Party's currently got six seats - but the party doesn't want to get too far ahead of itself just yet.

The party's deputy leader, Daniel Eb, says it's looking positive and they're in a good mood about it all.

"We are a new party coming into Parliament, we believe we'll make New Zealand political history, so having opportunity to get our feet in the door and learn, but also sort of build on fresh ideas that we've got and the new energy we'll bring - that could work." 

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Tim Roxborogh's final night of hosting Marcus Lush Nights saw the final election chat before the big night, and some much more pleasant chat about karaoke. 

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I guess what we're all wanting to know is what is going to happen? Who's going to win the election?

I've heard so many other commentators say the same thing: one month out, one week out and now one day out, I can't tell you what's going to happen. I can only give you my best guess and this is it.

The centre-right bloc should win. Should, right? Not will. Should, as in their chances are better than the left's.

The centre-right bloc should win because they have the numbers, especially if they have Opportunity. But the left, even with Opportunity, on most polls does not have the numbers. The best they can do is get themselves into a dead heat with the right.

Now, of course, my prediction that the centre-right wins relies on Opportunity choosing the right, which I think they will do if they want to prove they're actually a centrist party and not just another left-wing party.

But that is the first variable that makes this election hard to call: Opportunity.

The other variable is the overhang.

I reckon there's a chance the overhangs actually end up cancelling each other out. Maybe National gets four and Te Pāti Māori gets four, and because they're the same, they balance each other out. No one actually gets an advantage because of the overhang.

That's your second variable and it's what makes this election too hard to call.

But whatever happens, I think there's a really strong chance we won't know the result this weekend. We could be in exactly the same position on Monday, asking: Well, what's going to happen?

If Opportunity is really close to 5%, we're probably going to have to wait for the special votes to be sure whether they're in or not.

And if the overhang seats are really close, and I'm thinking of Tāmaki Makaurau last election, where there was a margin of only four votes, then if that happens in any of those potentially numerous overhang seats, we're going to have to wait for a recount. And that can take weeks in some cases.

National will reflect in the next few weeks on a widely criticised campaign.

ACT should be proud of peaking at the right time and running a quietly confident campaign.

New Zealand First's campaign has flagged. They got dragged down at the last minute by a candidate they should have known would cause trouble.

The Greens ran a great campaign and even escaped any damage from the gangs fiasco.

Labour did all right in the end because Chippy did all right in the end. He seems to have found his sparkle again.

Opportunity has survived above 5% and proved that a leader who is actually good in the media is an asset whose value shouldn't be underestimated.

They've done almost all they can.

The campaign is almost over.

Just a few more hours to go.

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Tonight on the Huddle, Josie Pagani and Trish Sherson join Heather du Plessis-Allan for a pre-election special. 

On the table today: Should Chris Luxon be worried about his position as Prime Minister? 

Will the spit-vote tactic cost National significant negotiating power?

And Heather asks our guests about their picks for campaign highlights, and lowlights. 

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With election day tomorrow, how would you rate the campaign?

It feels to me like we’ve been in campaign mode for the whole year. I couldn’t even bring myself to watch TV1's People’s Debate last night all the way through to the end.

Elections are never an overly positive affair, but this campaign has been pretty awful.

So much so, that I reckon a lot of people will have forgotten a lot of the policies that have been trotted out.

And I’m not the only one thinking it’s been a bit of a cluster.

Some of the political leaders don’t think it’s been all that great, either.

Labour leader Chris Hipkins says National has run the most negative campaign of any first-term Government. And the results of a new study would suggest he’s right on that.

The Internet, Social Media and Politics Research Lab at Victoria University has done some analysis and has found that 65 percent of National’s Facebook posts have been negative.

A lot of that will have come from the relentless online attacks the party has made on Greens co-leader Chlöe Swarbrick.

It’s been so relentless, that Swarbrick herself has said that she’s effectively being cyber-bullied by National.

I agree with her. Bearing in mind too that it was only a few weeks ago when National’s Selwyn MP Nicola Grigg went public with some of the online bullying she’s been dealing with.

Since then, National has continued having a go at Chlöe online. Using unflattering photos, all of that. Just really nasty stuff.

Not that Labour has been squeaky clean, either.

Because the study which has found that 65 percent of National’s Facebook posts have been negative also found that just over 50 percent of Labour’s posts have been negative too.

So Chris Hipkins may be right when he says it’s been the most negative campaign ever by a first-term Government. But there’s a bit of the old pot calling the kettle going on.

Then we get to how Winston Peters feels the campaign has gone.

The NZ First leader thinks it’s the worst one he’s ever seen. He’s seen a few and is describing this one as a circus. Criticising the party leaders who have been clamouring to the gelato shop in Christchurch to try the gelato flavour named after them.

He’s been saying: “It's just astonishing what's happened here. It's turned into, sadly, a circus. This idea of having an ice cream poll and every leader dutifully turning up, subservient as it is, to such an unscientific, unprofessional thing is beyond me.”

He goes on: “And then you've got people petting dogs. I love dogs, but you know, going around petting dogs can be very dangerous sometimes, you pat the wrong dog.

“They’re talking about a cost of living crisis, and they’re flipping hamburgers.”

He’s talking there about Christopher Luxon and David Seymour who have both been filmed in the past week making burgers.

I don’t get too upset about that kind of thing. It’s just politicians being politicians.

But I do think that it’s a campaign we’ll all be pleased to see the end of. For me, it’s been too long and too negative, with too many debates.

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Well, the polls close at 7pm tomorrow, fat orange pens notwithstanding, and the votes will be counted. By the time I'm back here on Monday, we should have a fair idea of what the government for the next three years could look like. Notice I have used a conditional sentence: should, could, because really, who would know if you look at the polls? 

It's been a funny old election. At least it'll be interesting – the electorate battles, there are many of those that are going to be fascinating. I will be glued to ZB throughout the evening. This is one of the times when you think, oh, wish I could be working on Election Night. It's great being part of the team that brings you results. But the next best thing is being able to hear the fruits of everybody's hard work, so I'll be listening to ZB – I'll find that more interesting than the television coverage. 

And there were so many undecided voters, myself included. I think the most helpful comment came from a texter a couple of weeks ago who said, "rule out who you simply cannot vote for and tick the box for who's left", which is advice I've heard before, but that text came at a time when I needed to hear it. Are you still undecided? I think I'm clear now, pretty clear now. 

Are you still undecided? Have you changed your mind over the course of the election campaign? And when it comes to the election campaigns, who in your mind ran the best one? As far as I'm concerned, National and Labour ran terrible campaigns, absolutely awful. Boring, repetitive, uninspiring, negative, nasty. 

Losing Chris Bishop as campaign manager as punishment – never have the lines "this is going to hurt you more than it's going to hurt me" or "this is going to hurt me more than it's going to hurt you", never have they rung more true, as you dump Chris Bishop as campaign manager for being involved in the attempted coup. And that's cost National. I don't think Simeon Brown will be getting another call up. The National campaign was so bad that Harry Mowbray and Don Brash decided to put down the lattes and take over the campaign. And then core voting messages were a distraction. Split voting: no, yes, no, yes. To convince voters you're a strong and stable party, surely you need your supporters to be harmonising and singing from the same song sheet. So no, absolutely dreadful. 

Their coalition partner hasn't helped them either. ACT's been very sensible, they've learnt their lesson from the last campaign, but ew, Michael Laws, ew. But then Labour's coalition partners haven't helped them either. The Greens and Te Pāti Māori might have policies that their voters support and that they believe in and that they think will reduce the impact of gangs and the misery they wreak by engaging with the gangs. But good solid swing voters get mightily spooked by soft on gangs policies and Chris Hipkins had to come out all puffed of chest and steely of jaw to try and right the ship. 

No, the minor parties have run relatively good campaigns: ACT, the Greens, Opportunity, they've stuck solidly to their guns. They probably will get over, just. But for if you're a centre swing voter, it's been pretty uninspiring. 

When it comes to voting, are you pretty clear? Have you been clear all the way through? What was the pivotal moment of the campaign for you, or was it simply taking the advice of my texter: ruling out the parties you simply cannot, cannot bring yourself to vote for and ticking the box for what's left? 

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This week's Politics Friday Election Special focused on the Christchurch East electorate.

The candidates, National's Alexandra Davids and Labour's Reuben Davidson, made their pitch to become the next local MP.

They discussed their backgrounds before entering politics and outlined how they would tackle the key issues facing the electorate, including homelessness, economic development, and the amount of vape shops around schools.

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A political commentator is struggling to predict the outcome of the election. 

Election Day is tomorrow, and thousands of votes have already been cast. 

Polls released throughout the campaign have fluctuated, no party showing a clear lead across all of the polls. 

Brigitte Morten told Ryan Bridge the election is all over the place. 

She says something that's also different now is it's not just a red-blue race, we're talking about individual electorate seats having a massive impact. 

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