New Zealand’s election 2026: To be continued

For the second national election I’ve voted in within the past week, we got a heaping helping of uncertainty.

New Zealand’s 2026 general election has ended with a staggeringly unclear result, with the two “major” parties Labour and National both stuck under 30 percent of the party vote, their lowest percentages ever, while five other smaller parties are also set to make it into Parliament.

With things this close, we won’t actually know the answer until all the “special” votes – a combination of absentee, overseas, late registration and other votes – are counted by November 27.

There are expected to be around 700,000 of them so we might see several party votes and electorates switch hands when all is said and done. Will the right-leaning National-led coalition return or will left-leaning Labour inch its way back in? Who will win? Hell if I know.

What I do know is that while I’ve got personal opinions about who I might like to see in, as a political nerd I find all these number-crunching and coalition shuffling talks pretty addictive.

At one point last night with something like 98% of the country’s party vote in, TWENTY-FIVE votes separated National and Labour in a country where over 3 million people are expected to vote. Now that’s crazy.

If you’d told me at the start of this week that the American midterm election would be far more clear-cut and done and dusted (other than a few outlier races, including an amazing surprise possibly looming in Mississippi), I would’ve chuckled. But for once, the US race has actually seemed less polarised than New Zealand’s.

I remain a big fan of the Parliamentary system and our MMP politics in general here, as it gives smaller parties like the Greens and the newcomers Opportunity way more chance to have your vote for them actually matter. In America, generally you’re tossing your vote away in big elections if you don’t vote Republican or Democrat. In New Zealand, you’ve got lots of options.

But it can also result in a very confusing ten-dimensional game of chess type of election, which seems to be the limbo we’re all in now for the next few weeks.

In my day job, I’ve been writing my fingers off the last few months delving deep into the intricacies of how NZ’s election works for Radio New Zealand. Here’s a quick primer on some of what I’ve covered just to give you an idea of how convoluted it all can be:

Explainer: The 10 biggest questions New Zealand has about the election
Explainer: What are coalition negotiations and how long could they take?
Explainer: What is an overhang and how could it change the election
Explainer: What are special votes and why they could change the election results?
Explainer: How your votes are counted on election day

Here’s hoping we get a government settled by Christmas, but at this point, it’s anyone’s guess!