Michael Swanson/The Periodical/Substack
Sit down with a drink, watch the numbers roll in, and breath out before the real stress starts
By the end of the day (6 November) the campaign for the 2026 New Zealand General Election will be done. Thank [insert chosen expletive here] for that. As I said in my Substack on Wednesday, this campaign has been exhausting, and not in a fun kind of action-packed and upbeat kind of way.
We’ve already seen very high numbers of advanced voting, which says (partly) to me that there is a large proportion of the country that was just ready to be done with it all, so got in, got out, and have since switched off. Those advanced voters had already hit 1,000,000 votes cast by the end of Monday 2 November – that’s pretty huge, and will be fascinating to see if the numbers can top 2,000,000 by the end of Friday 6 November (which didn’t even happen in 2020).
In the coming weeks I’ll look at some of the more obvious issues that arose from the campaign, but this time around I wanted to do three things – throw my predictions out there one last time, give a shout-out to the VoteOtago students, and give everyone a game to play!
My Predictions: A Reminder
As I said last week, I think the current government (albeit balanced very differently, with some very different faces in the mix) will be returned on 7 November. But, how they do it will be a massive cause for concern and consternation. I’m picking a fairly substantial overhang which could mean that even if Opportunity get in they don’t sit in a kingmaker spot. And remember, this is a prediction, not a wish list. Here’s the run down, and I expect most people to hate it:
- National – 39 (with a big ol’ overhang)
- Labour – 35
- Greens – 18
- NZ First 13
- ACT – 13
- Opportunity – 8
- Te Pāti Māori – 4
- Total seats: 130
I do think the split vote campaign has had an impact. How big that impact is will only be clear later on the evening of 7 November. I’ve said it every time I’ve talked to media about this – vote splitting isn’t new, it isn’t wrong, and it definitely isn’t illegal. However, the coordinated and strategic approach taken during this campaign has been a clear manipulation of the system. This has been warned about repeatedly, and the Germans had the same issue and fixed it very quickly. I’ll revisit this in the coming weeks, but I do believe the impact will be sizeable in this election.
What I didn’t Really Factor In
There are two things that I probably didn’t factor in as well as I should have. Turnout, and the unknown voters.
I wrote this on late on Thursday 5 November, so it’s worth checking back to see the advanced voting numbers, but at the close of voting on Wednesday 4 November the numbers were already well over 250,000 up on 2023, and only slightly below the highs of 2020. Can we hit 2,000,000 advance votes in 2026? Maybe. While we know that older voters both vote, and, tend to the right, turnout will be a real boon to the left bloc. If they can mobilise voters effectively and get a big turnout, then my picks above could be very much under threat.
One aspect of all the polling that often gets ignored, is the number of respondents who either “don’t know” or “won’t say”. Polls have had this number ranging from 10-25% in some cases. These “unknown” voters could play a massive role in the election – if it is as close as it looks, any significant shift by this group in either direction will have an impact, we just won’t know what that looks like until the night!
A Special Mention for the VoteOtago Team
If you still haven’t got across and checked them out, I had the pleasure of helping out a bunch of students down here at the University of Otago who produced the VoteOtago series of interviews with academics and politicians. They are a brilliant bunch of “kids” who have made it into the headlines for actually holding politicians to account in ways the media have struggled to do.
If you haven’t checked out their content yet, get across to YouTube for their full interviews, and check out their short form content on Instagram, some of which has gone pretty viral and is so so good to watch.
Election Night! A party game with friends
I personally prefer to sit at home, with a glass of something something, and watch varying coverage as numbers roll on in. However, if you’re more of a social butterfly, why not play bingo with your friends while watching that coverage!
I asked Claude to whip up a bingo card as an example of what an election night bingo game might look like. You can grab the one below, or ask Claude to do the exact same thing for you. We may as well have fun while listening to the range of panels talk about the nights events.
This election will be tight, and we are unlikely to have a clear picture of the outcome on the night. Votes aren’t due to be confirmed until 27 November, and the likely necessity of extensive negotiations mean a government by Christmas heavily depends on that overhang, how things are balanced, and what kind of negotiations are required to form a government.
So on election night, relax, watch the numbers, and leave the stress for much later when we actually know what is really going to happen.
