The winners and losers across every party list

From dazzling rises to dangerous falls, here’s where current MPs and political hopefuls sit in the lead-up to November 7.

With NZ First finally releasing its party list this afternoon, a day before the Electoral Commission's deadline, voters now have a clear vision of who’s likely in and who’s barely hanging on by a thread come November 8. Here are all the relevant players across all the parties currently in parliament.

Winners

A bunch of new (or, more accurately, secondhand? Pre-loved?) names have crowded up New Zealand First’s top 10. Taking the spots from five to seven are former National MPs Alfred Ngaro, Michael Laws (who defected to NZ First in 1996, but resigned that same year amid controversy), and Harete Hipango-Brownlie, while former FMA chair Craig Stobo and former All Black Taine Randell come in at eight and nine respectively. In rising high, these candidates have pushed current NZ First MPs back. Ouch.

As for NZ First’s coalition partner National, the only real safe candidate is Mr Number One, Christopher Luxon (though those standing in true-blue electorates won't be sweating too much). Fresh faces like Dale Stephens, Katie Milne and Mahesh Muralidhar all appear within the party’s top 25 as well as standing in theoretically winnable electorates, but their futures are far from certain – Nicola Willis and Chris Bishop are potentially facing existential threats despite being second and third.

The Labour Party tends to bring in more MPs via the list and fewer via electorates than National, so there’s a bit more wriggle room. Among candidates who have a decent chance of gaining seats on the strength of their ranking include former police superintendent Rakesh Naidoo (13), union leader Chris Flatt (20), School Strike 4 Climate founder Sophie Handford (26), broadcaster and kapa haka leader Kingi Kiriona (22) and lawyer Max Harris (29). Should they get in, they'll inject some much-needed mojo into the caucus.

As for the incumbents, Ikaroa-Rāwhiti MP Cushla Tangaere-Manuel moved up 11 places on the Labour Party list from 20 to nine this year, proving some early success in the Push for Cush campaign. RMA boffin and Dunedin MP Rachel Brooking also made a leap from 17 to 11, and possible future foreign affairs minister Vanushi Walters, currently a list MP, and also standing in the new electorate of Waitākere this year, stepped up from 12 to nine.

Being number four on the Green Party list keeps Tamatha Paul safe. She ran as an electorate-only candidate in the 2023 election and was successful in winning Wellington Central, but this year it's morphing into Wellington North. With Labour putting up former minister Ayesha Verrall as its candidate, Paul may be fighting a tougher race. Lawrence Xu-Nan and Francisco Hernandez arrived as the Green replacements to James Shaw and Efeso Collins, and have risen from the outskirts of the party list to the stable top 10. Xu-Nan has leapt from 16 to eight, while Hernandez rose from 17 to 10.

Paul Henry has no political experience (except for losing a National safe seat in 1996), and yet, he’s the Act Party’s number four. This was expected; party leader David Seymour hinted Henry would be given an “electable” ranking and here he is delivering on his first election promise.

Lance Norman is holding it down as the only list candidate for Te Pāti Māori, and Kyla Campbell-Kamareira is the only list candidate for Te Tai Tokerau Party. You can’t be more of a winner than being number one.

Losers

Pretty much every single current NZ First MP who doesn’t have a ministerial portfolio, though they could all also see re-election on current polling. Thoughts and prayers to Jenny Marcroft, Andy Foster, David Wilson and Jamie Arbuckle, ranked 10 to 13, for their sacrifices in propelling other hopeful parliamentary returners.

There was one former-MP-turned-hopeful-returner who landed surprisingly low on the NZ First list, however. Former defence minister Ron Mark is at number 16 and needs his party to build up a bit more support than polls currently indicate, or win the hotly contested Wairarapa electorate, if he’s hoping for an actual comeback. Perhaps in times like these it would be helpful to remind candidates that things could have been worse for them, if six other NZ First candidates hadn’t dropped out before the list’s release.

On the Act Party list, current MP Cameron Luxton has been leap-frogged by Hornby High School principal Iain Murray and pushed back a place to 12. Current polling has Luxton’s chances of returning on a knife edge. But at least his fate isn’t as bad as that of former Act MP Toni Severin, who fell from 14 to 39 between the 2023 election’s list and this one.

If he hadn’t made any noise about it, nobody would have paid much attention to Ash Parmar's slight drop (13 to 16) on the Act Party list. As a party spokesperson rightly told the Herald, “elections can be a tough time for candidates”.

There are also plenty of huge stinking losers in the National list. List-only MP and umbrella enthusiast Nancy Lu is likely a goner at 16 – but then again, even being number two and three, like Willis and Bishop, isn’t enough to keep you safe. Other National MPs in the danger zone include Paul Goldsmith (6) and Gerry Brownlee (9), whose departures would leave National missing some senior talent.

At 33, Melissa Lee is out of the National Party caucus unless she manages to edge out Labour’s incumbent MP Helen White in the neck-and-neck race for Mt Albert. But a lot is also on the line for White, who, at 38 on her party’s list, needs to win the seat just as much as Lee. Craig Renney, a former adviser to Grant Robertson, has also landed surprisingly low on the Labour list at 51. He currently faces a tough race against incumbent Green MP Julie Anne Genter for the Wellington Bays (formerly Rongotai) seat.

Raise your voices to the sky and cry justice for Steve Abel. The Green MP is widely loved across parliament but perhaps not the party membership, who let him drop from nine to 14 – but if the party's upwards trajectory in recent polls translates to voting time, he’ll be back in.

Either Mike Davidson has hated his brief stint as a Green Party MP, or the party has. Whatever the reason for his 20th ranking, the Greens will likely need another exodus of MPs this term to bring him back in. For everyone’s sake, let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.