Matter of Opinion
Framing the 2026 election: no longer in a Purple Patch
If history is any guide, the Government should be gliding comfortably towards re-election. Since the emergence of organised party politics in New Zealand with the Liberal Party’s formation in 1890, the New Zealand public has almost always given first-term governments the benefit of the doubt and granted them a second term. Only Walter Nash's Labour Government in 1960 and Bill Rowling's Labour Government in 1975 have failed to secure a second term. However, neither of these defeats came in ordinary circumstances:
Nash was burdened by the political fallout from "the Black Budget", which introduced unpopular tax increases on alcohol and tobacco; and
Rowling inherited a government grappling with the sudden death of its popular leader Norman Kirk, the economic fallout of the 1973 oil crisis, and Britain's accession to the European Economic Community.
History therefore suggests that a first-term government should enjoy a significant incumbency advantage. Yet Rt Hon Christopher Luxon enters this campaign facing an unusually competitive contest and risks joining the inglorious company of Nash and Rowling as Prime Ministers denied a second term.
Fall in the "purple vote" and rise of the minor parties
In our Watching Brief before the 2023 election, we noted that the “purple vote” – the combined vote of the two major parties – was falling. That downward trajectory has continued. Recent polls suggest both National and Labour could finish with under 30 per cent of the party vote, which would be unprecedented in New Zealand's political history. Outside the first MMP election in 1996, whenever one major party has fallen below 30 per cent, the other has secured at least 38 per cent of the party vote. In other words, the fortunes of the two major parties have always been closely linked: when one falls, the other rises. This time, however, is different.
All recent polls show the minor parties benefiting from the fall in the purple vote, in a local reflection of the growing trend of party system fragmentation in Western democracies. Many theories have been put forward to explain this trend, including the perceived convergence of the major parties on small-target strategies, which leaves space for minor parties with sharper ideological brands and policy commitments.
In New Zealand, any one of the Green Party, NZ First, ACT, Te Pāti Māori and Opportunity could play a crucial role in determining who holds the balance of power in post-election negotiations. There are several theoretical coalition permutations, but some pre-election commitments have already been made: Luxon has ruled out working with Opportunity, and Labour leader Chris Hipkins has ruled out working with NZ First. Whether the major party leaders hold that line remains to be seen, particularly if it is the difference between holding the keys to the ninth floor or not.
Opportunity’s rise deserves particular attention. After years of battling the “wasted vote” narrative, it appears to have allayed those concerns by polling consistently above the crucial 5 per cent threshold and has positioned itself as a potential alternative “kingmaker”. However, with Prime Minister Luxon having ruled out working with it, Opportunity’s leverage may ultimately depend on whether the left bloc needs its support to govern.
Overhang tactics enter the fray
With the contest finely balanced, the possibility of an election overhang influencing the final result has come under renewed scrutiny. The issue is particularly relevant within New Zealand's MMP system, which marks its 30th anniversary this year (as discussed in our previous Watching Brief).
A key feature of MMP is that it balances direct electorate representation with proportional party representation at the national level (using list MPs, which effectively "top up" Parliament to ensure that the number of MPs is proportionate to the party vote).
An overhang occurs when a party wins more electorate seats than it is entitled to under its share of the party vote. Because electorate victories guarantee a seat in Parliament, those MPs remain in place, and Parliament expands beyond its usual 120 seats so that other parties do not lose the list seats to which their party vote entitles them.
This was considered an "unlikely event" by the 1986 Royal Commission on the Electoral System but has occurred several times since the introduction of MMP. To date, the presence of an overhang has not affected which party is in government; this election may be different.
With most minor parties now overtly aligned with one of the major parties, there have been calls for voters to cast strategic votes to engineer an overhang that could shift the balance of power. In a tightly fought race, small swings in the number of seats could be significant.
On the left, for example, Te Pāti Māori has focused largely on winning the Māori electorates, expressly encouraging its supporters to party vote for the Labour and Green parties (see here). Hypothetically, if Te Pāti Māori were to sweep the Māori electorates, but none of those voters gave their party vote to the party itself, each electorate seat the party held would act as a bonus to the left bloc.
On the right, some commentators have suggested that National voters give their party vote to ACT or NZ First while still backing National’s electorate candidates, in order to increase the size of the right bloc. If that were to happen on any scale, it could be disastrous for some senior National Ministers who hold their places in Parliament by virtue of high list rankings, while empowering National’s minor party allies. The potential for tactical voting within the right bloc is also far higher, given that National is likely to hold more electorate seats.
While the two major parties have denounced the "cleverness" of these tactics, such strategies are permissible under the letter of the law. They do, however, raise a broader question: does deliberately engineering an overhang represent a legitimate use of the electoral system, or does it undermine the proportionality of party representation that MMP was designed to achieve? Notably, both the Electoral Commission’s 2012 review of MMP and the 2023 Independent Electoral Review’s final report recommended abolishing overhang seats (provided that the one-electorate-seat threshold was also removed). However, with only 30 days remaining until the election, the rules will not change. The same cannot necessarily be said of voters' willingness to test their limits.
Watching Brief will be back with legal and constitutional analysis of the implications of the election after polling day on 7 November.