The centre-right coalition has lost two seats in the final vote count and National will need to reach beyond its preferred partner, the Act Party, and strike a deal with New Zealand First.
National won 48 seats in the final count, which was announced by the Electoral Commission on Friday, while Act held the same 11 seats as on election night — a total of 59 between them.
This is likely to increase to 60 after the Port Waikato by-election but the pair will still need support from NZ First, which won eight seats, to form a government.
The Green Party and Te Pāti Māori picked up the seats National lost, bringing them a total of 15 and six successful candidates each.
On election night, Labour held narrow leads in the Te Tai Tokerau and Tāmaki Makaurau electorates which had been held by Kelvin Davis and Peeni Henare, respectively.
By the final count, Takutai Tarsh Kemp had won a 4 vote majority over Henare and Mariameno Kapa-Kingi had beaten Davis by 517 votes. The losing candidates will be able to request a recount.
The Electoral Commission said Te Pāti Māori winning six electorates, and only 3.1% of the party vote, would result in a 122 seat Parliament.
The seat count will grow to 123 after the Port Waikato by-election on November 25 and means National will need 62 seats to command a majority in the house.
Labour did not pick up any extra seats in the final count but did manage to overturn a couple of electorates. Rachel Boyack won Nelson with a 29 vote majority and Phil Twyford recaptured Te Atatū by 131 votes.
Losing a couple of electorates isn’t all bad news for National as it allows them to bring five MPs from its list, where it had some key candidates at risk of not making it to Parliament.
Paulo Garcia held onto his lead over Deborah Russell in New Lynn, making him the first National Party candidate to win the electorate in the past sixty years.
Helen White has hung onto the Mount Albert electorate, a famous Labour stronghold that almost turned blue for the first time in history.
Labour has wound up with a total of 17 electorate seats and 17 list seats, a total of 34.
Luxon's 'last resort' scenario
During the campaign, National leader Christopher Luxon described this scenario as a “last resort” and called on voters to support just National and Act.
It looked, early on election night, like that prayer may have been answered but by midnight the majority had been chipped away to just one seat.
“There are many votes still to be counted, but on current numbers it looks like National and Act will be in a position to form the next government,” Luxon said, in his 11pm election night speech.
He also congratulated Winston Peters on NZ First’s return to Parliament and expressed appreciation for the offer to “help where needed”.
National has lost at least one seat to special votes in every election since 1999, and so Luxon reached out to Peters almost immediately.
Coalition negotiations have been quietly bubbling away ever since, with Luxon reportedly focused on building “relationships and chemistry” with NZ First and Act.
All three party leaders have made promising comments about the possibility of forming a government within a week of the final vote count being released.
While there are notable personality differences between the trio, they share a similar set of policy goals which should make it easier to strike a solid governing arrangement.
The sticking points will be on climate policy, the pension age, Maori–Crown relations, and distribution of ministerial portfolios.
A total of 603,257 special votes were cast in 2023 election, equivalent to 21% of the total, which was up from about 17% in both 2020 and 2017.
Voter turnout was 78.2% of those enrolled, down from 82.2% and 79.8% in the prior two elections, and proportion of possible voters that was enrolled was 94.7%
181 Comments
It depends! There is nothing like a good old cliche to describe the unknown. If you disregard previous various ones & twos, NZ under MMP has never had a coalition that consisted of two junior partners of near to the same sizeable representation. History of the participants here does not lend much optimism for the stable government NZ needs given its challenging times, present and future.
Nats, NZF and ACT have fairly similar policies. All the leaders of those parties know that they need to join together to keep out the left, and all the silly rhetoric between Winston and David during the campaign will be forgotten. Winston knows what a fool he was joining forces with Labour in 2017.
In other words, are you saying that constitutionally, he could be PM? Would Luxon have to go to the GG and say, I have formed a government and WP is to serve as PM? Or would WP going to the GG and say, I have formed a government. Just wondering about the constitutionality of it.
The usual histrionia. The last 6 years wasn't great but it certainly wasn't a disaster, anyone who says that is a namby-pamby.
I think National with all the bad policy will provide some good. I like Luxon's proposal to shorten the parliamentary holiday and Willis seems keen to push for a 3rd major player in the Supermarket industry. They just need to be more pro-business, rather than pro-landlord.
Didn't Tariana Turia work with John Key in a coalition government ? Why not National, ACT and Te Pāti Māori join together to form a government, obviating the necessity to approach the supposedly Kingmaker, Winston.
It will require David Seymour to tone down the rhetoric against Maoris and other ethnicities. Any takers ?
1. Nat, 2. Act, 3. TPM and 4. United Future. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fifth_National_Government_of_New_Zealand
(Corrected NZF and Winston to United Future and Peter Dunne / Basics-brand-Winston; changed "the" to "a" in preceding post as "the" was interpreted to mean Labour might have been in a coalition with National.)
Let's hope Winston can be a restraining influence on NACT's tendency to want to sell the silverware out from under following generations (assets or land). It would be good for them to focus more on actual productive business and less on speculation and selling off. Back up those claims of being all about business.
As far as I could tell, NZ First's policy manifesto on their site (pre election at least) made no reference to immigration and population? Replaced instead with a new focus on the big issues of re-litigating Covid, squabbling over which toilets people use and I seem to recall something about moving an airport to Dargaville?
Surely now is as good a time as ever for Winston First to actually make good on their historical 'tough talk' on immigration considering the deleterious effect it is having on rental prices, demand for public services etc.
- Have a nationwide review to set a 30 year ‘Population Plan’ to gain a majority view on the level of future population numbers. This will enable government to plan infrastructure with consideration for natural population growth, immigration, and attrition via death or emigration.
Was that always there? I could swear I never saw that when I looked pre-election, but then again maybe I was sidetracked by some of the other nutty stuff.
I'll be pleased if NZ First can make inroads on this one particular issue (seeing as none of the other parties on the left or right, for various disingenuous reasons, want to go near it with a bargepole).
Congratulations to TPM and suggest the outcome here of the Maori seats, all but one now, being held by their party independently and not being absorbed in the machinations of Labour or any other party, is long overdue and arguably how it always should have been. This big ousting of Labour here can only illustrate dissatisfaction of Labour failing to deliver what had been interpreted by the electorates as promises. Wil be interesting to observe how those expectations are proposed from hereon.
You miss the point. The majority of TPM voters split their vote - TPM for electorate; Labour for Party (Labour won more Party votes in every Māori electorate).
Had there been no Māori electorates; all TPM voters would likely have given TPM their Party votes - giving TPM more seats; likely more than NZFs 8.
In other words, TPM would likely have more seats in the house were their no Māori seats. To my mind, TPM are a movement which will only grow stronger and stronger regardless. And they deserve to be very proud of their political success.
Here's the maths.
A total of 194,703 Party votes were cast across the Māori electorates and that represents a turnout of 68% of those enrolled on the Māori roll. 567,000 Māori were enrolled on the Māori or general roll – an increase of more than 31,500 on 2020.
All the stats are there on https://www.electionresults.govt.nz/
I too would like to see the maths. Happy with your 194,703 party votes cast across the Māori electorates but for those electorates combined:
1. How many for each political party?
2. How many for Labour + TPM (assuming all Labour votes would go to TPM)?
3. Does that meet the 5% threshold and is it more than NZF gained?
Labour gained the most Party votes in each of the Māori electorates - despite only winning one of the candidate (member pf parliament) votes.
My proposition, is that the majority of Māori electorate voters split their votes because they support the TPM candidates as their representative in Parliament but also want to support a left-leaning coalition/government.
If there were no designated Māori seats (i.e., no Māori roll) there is a good likelihood that most of the TPM supporters would vote TPM with two ticks. And that in doing so they would most certainly meet the 5% threshold - and could indeed, like NZF, end up with more TPM MPs in Parliament.
I doubt it. As much as Winston might be a bit of a muckraker, and I say that positively, history would show he's in it for himself. What did he achieve last time he held the balance of power? Where did he apply the brakes to Labour? Their only accomplishment I remember was the Provincial Growth Fund which many might say was a mismanaged slush fund for NZ First and their cronies.
Whilst I am normally against the selling of state assets, ie Kiwibank, NZ Post etc one asset that needs to be at least partially privatism or broken up or opened to the private sector is ACC.
It's fundamentally broken and has been for decades now. I'm currently on ACC, and even though my claim was accepted it took them almost 2 years to pay me weekly compensation (which created a massive tax headache for me with the back pay). Fortunately during this time I had private income protection insurance which covered me for my injury. And the issues have continued with trying to get treatment, assesments etc The whole process ensure you stay on ACC because they are so slow at everything. The difference on competence, service and proactivity is not even remotely close. It's not even on the same planet yet alone the same galaxy.
It's also the reason I was so against the government's idea of a national income protections scheme.
So like all things there is nuance to the issue of Asset sales.
A shame. As a Green voter, I could imagine some compromise taking the edges off National policy (keep the interest deductibility and brightlines changes perhaps), some promises on maintaining and strengthening the cap and trade scheme, increased funding for predator free 2050/DOC etc. And then the Nats can go ahead with much of the rest of their platform.
Better for Green voters than whatever NACT First will split out, surely?
I am a little gun shy after seeing the Lib Dems virtually destroyed after teaming up with the Tories back in the UK a few years ago though...
I wouldn't be at all surprised if National heavily bled votes to the Act party at the next election if they formed a coalition with the Greens. I'm not sure some of their more right-leaning voters would stand for it. (I'm thinking of the National voters that voted Labour during the previous election to minimize the requirements for Labour to form a coalition with the Greens - if they're willing to go to that extent to keep the Greens out, I can't imagine that they'd be particularly happy if National formed a coalition with them.)
Rest easy National are not going to form a coalition with them. Mostly because the Greens themselves have never failed to express nothing but loathing for anything to do with National and one would assume that if that should reverse it would only be due to a sudden dawning that those highly coveted cabinet seats are even more out of reach than they were six and then three, years ago
Good news - now two parties out of three, in the future government coalition, are decidedly anti-woke and against all the recent PC BS pushed down the throats of the large majority of the population. It is time to progressively undo 6 years of Labour's damage, courageously and uncompromisingly promote the principles of liberal democracy, stop divisive policies and finally remove racism from the government and all public institutions.
Yes and no.
Some of the woke, was guilt about living well at the expense of others. Trouble is, that concentrated on one dominance event - in a series of many, and with many more to come (we are trashing our offspring's chances with every barrel of oil we burn NOW, that they will never have access to).
But on a finite planet, your approach - as I remember your posts - is what has brought us to the cliff-edge.
The joke is that this was all so temporary - only since WW2 have we flown around the world, and that is coming to an end. It was a very short window of resource draw-down. The next leadership feat, is to work out what to do about that.
And this lot haven't a collective clue.
"We don't inherit the Earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children"
"Environmental stewardship has been lost by most modern people. It can, however, be recovered. We can learn about it from exceptional people of our own culture, and from other cultures less destructive than ours. I am speaking of the life of a man who knows that the world is not given by his fathers, but borrowed from his children; who has undertaken to cherish it and do it no damage, not because he is duty-bound, but because he loves the world and loves his children…" Wendell Berry
The alternative vision, which many are effectively living, is ultimately nihilistic and extremely selfish, almost a reflection of self hate.
Listening to an RNZ interview today where the interviewer was asking Chris Bishop if there was enough “diversity” in nationals top 20 to serve the different “communities” around NZ.
the underlying assumption is that only the same race can help people of the same race. That’s woke and that’s extremely common place.
Same. I dont want a govt that makes too many changes..thats what causes most our problems.
Sort the tax cuts, fire excess govt beauracrats, get rid of taurangas unelected commissioners .. spend the savings on police and health. And let the people and businesses get on with their own strategies.
by Nzdan | 15th Oct 23, 12:10am
Agree. I could be wrong, but I think celebrating too soon comes to mind.
Repeat of the 4 way "coalition of losers"?
https://www.interest.co.nz/public-policy/124764/election-2023-live-resu…
Not saying that Winston would necessarily back out of an agreement with National and go with Labour, buuut if Winston is half as "power hungry" as people claim he is (Kingmaker etc) then what better way to exert that power and to get exactly what you want by giving the underdog (and previous coalition partner) a second bite at the cherry.
Also, imagine the attention he would get for such a massive trolling move.
Might have to dust off his trusty old "NO" sign.
Oh wait he sold that for $10k.....
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/peters-no-sign-fetches-10600/TLHTAQFCTPVE…
What an absurd thing to say. He won’t work with Labour and he certainly wouldn’t work with TPM And the Greens.
NZF effectively took a lot of ACT and National votes pretty much out of nowhere. For all this talk of how well the Greens and TPM did, their votes only came from Labour.
The right bloc is well ahead of the left that is a fact.
All the electorates have populations between 59k (Tāmaki Makaurau) to 76k (Selwyn) as of the 2018 census. There's not that much spread, there are Maori electorates on both the larger and smaller end.
The number of votes in the Maori electorates is comparatively low, I guess it's a combination of the option to vote on the general roll, low turnout, and skewing younger (more children that can't vote).
Some of the Christchurch electorates are on the smaller side, but they should just move the borders south a bit to take in some people from Selwyn.
You are using 2018 numbers, the projections for 2023 are a little bit different - and we are talking about the number of seats here. The projected electoral population of the Maori electorates for this election is slightly over 514k, and there are 7 electorates - so ~73,500 per electorate on average. Even reducing the number of seats to 6 would mean over 85k per electorate. Meanwhile the South Island has 1.1m over 16 electorates, so 69k per electorate on average. Dropping an electorate and redistricting would bring that up to 73,500 per electorate, which is what the Maori electorates are already at now.
As for the lower voter turnout, how could further disenfranchising people possibly do anything to address that problem?
Removing racist electorate seats is nothing to do with disenfranchising people, quite the contrary.
There's been no electoral franchise justification for keeping them for decades; as was recommended by the Royal Commission when they moved to MMP. The only reason they still exist is political gerrymander.
You missed the point entirely ShoreThing. It's not an issue of 'population'. It's an issue of low enrollments. So many people in the maori 'electorate population's choose not to enroll there. They get to vote so no problem.
But the reduced number left get inequitable extra representation. Wrongly.
It's 'enrollment', not 'population'. People have moved out, their right.
Who is ‘we’ TK? Maori clearly aren’t a universally united group. Approx 3% of NZs population are on the Maori electoral role. A majority of Maori aren’t.
The irony is the worst violence in NZ isn’t racially based eg black vs white, but brown vs brown.
You suggest revoking someone’s right to be in NZ and aren’t labelled racist. Simply ‘being here first’ gives you inalienable rights? Grow up.
Which full blooded Maori will cancel it? Assume there's just one, does that mean every other "Maori" in this country with European blood must leave the country?
Would be a massive own goal if Maori managed to clear the country of everybody else. Watch productivity plummet, crime rise, it would be like South Africa. Except SA doesn't have a treaty document to complicate things, people just take what they know is not theirs. Here, people will fight over what they believe is theirs.
Justinians legal codex, Magna Carta, Statute of Westminster, Act of Union? Nothing stops them being amended. They are laws not treaties. No one thinks the Peace of Westphalia has relevance today but was critical for Euro peace in the 17th C. Time to move on and be comfortable being labelled a racist (it’s their only catch cry).
I have just completed a Vote compass survey, and turned here to read the comments.
I gave Act my party vote. I'd made up my mind before the electioneering.
My three reasons. New Zealand Steel and Tube Labour interference in the manufacturing on their green intiative and who they partnered with to get this basic downgrade. Other than Sweden this plant was capable to producing steel the market has need of. Why does any one think Bluescope got the majority shareholding.
And Megan Woods. New Zealand retain the 50% shareholding in our power companies ..remember when national security was an issue, and what did Dr Megan woods get up to..Actively tout Google and data over our energy outputs. Now that got my blood boiling.
And unlike Sweden who acted as the population are adults and came through Covid well look what we got.
Now I am cynically waiting to see where the lines are drawn. And whether this is going to three years of unpicking messes, contracts trade deals and more.
And I don't think National has the talent.
It was extremely broad statement to start with. The biggest metric we measure the quality of a pandemic response by is "what percentage of the population died in the jurisdiction". Which is what I have presented as a comparison. Otherwise impossible to know what the OP was referring to regarding Sweden handling the pandemic like adults, inferring we did a poor job.
We could have done some things better, sure, there is always room for improvement. The monetary response for instance in NZ was pretty much a disaster, yet because we let the RBNZ check their own homework, they can claim success (letting the FLP to run fueling inflation, for instance, was pure idiocy).
My only point is there are many, many factors that could explain the difference in outcome beyond the effectiveness of the response itself. That's why controlled studies exist for example. I'm not saying your conclusion is right or wrong nor am I passing judgement on either countries response.
Provide the numbers for the cardiac and blood clot data change in deaths, cos I can't find any. Pretty sure if there was a massive uptick post mass vaccination, we would be seeing the data show up in huge numbers, but I can't see any change in it from pre-COVID. As for turbocancer, ha haaa, that's a conspiracy theory bro, keep your head out of the rabbit hole. Its even got a conspiracy theory sounding name "TURBO cancer", you should know better.
Also given Sweden also have an 87% vaccination rate (ours is similar, slightly higher), you would find the same issues in both places. But you don't find them in either, so not sure what you are on about.
Hats off to WP,hopefully my strategic vote isn't wasted and he pulls the reins back on some of ACT & Nats more extreme policies.For one I would like to see the foreign buyer exemption / tax policy go...or at least go to 5 mill minimum,2 mill is not a luxury home in NZ these days.
Loser out of all this would have to be David Seymour after being touted as the most effective politician by many over the last few years,he has ended up with 3 more seats than NZ First...and one of those is his own "gimme" seat gifted to him each election by the Nats...his smirk is going to be even more forced than usual when he is interviewed.
Labour won the Party vote in all the Māori seats - which suggests TPM would have been well over the 5% threshold if there were no Māori seats. Add a win in one or more of the general electorates, and they'd likely be in the NZF kingmaker seat.
IMHO TPM will be a political force on the NZ landscape for years to come regardless.
Kate, you forget that if their party vote went to TPM then Labour would have a correspondingly lower number of list seats so the left block would simply lose those numbers. The threshold should be the threshold and proportionality should be as intended by the system.
Another baby was murdered last week. Rather than call it out for what it is, fingers were pointed at the State/Crown for not intervening. Funny, considering when the state does uplift they're lambasted for it.
Imagine if Te Kooti got their dream and every person here with zero Maori blood was forced to leave....They'll probably still be pointing the finger years on, except pointing at England on a world map as New Zealand enters 3rd world status.
When have I ever said I wanted pakeha to leave? Is your ego really that fragile? The real issue here is pakeha coming to terms with Te Tiriti.
As for the murder of that baby, I'm not going to debate that with a stranger on a forum. It sickens me for the record, but I notice two fragile pakeha men battered their partners to death in Australia this week when they told them the relationship was over.
Maori are going to play an ever increasing role in the economic and social development of Aotearoa and if you need to come to terms with it.
You quite frequently make hypothetical threats on here, including this one. No fragility here, just continuing your talking point by highlighting the potential consequences should your people follow through. Maori statistically are very far from being able to send "manuhiri" packing and maintain a society on their own.
by Te Kooti | 3rd Nov 23, 6:16pm
We can cancel it and revoke your right to be in the country and own property Wingman?
Will we see Winnie stay to get the coalition agreement and then move over as Leader, and retire? It will give the remaining members of NZ First a chance to show what they are made of and become a long term party. Winnie will not live forever, and NZF will/should be thinking about succession.
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