Why overseas New Zealanders are so crucial this election

Only one in 10 overseas New Zealanders is enrolled, while 98% of over-65s are. In a tight election, that gap could shape the next three years, and the decades beyond.

In two weeks from today – October 21, five days before advance voting begins domestically – voting opens for overseas New Zealanders. And, in a tight election, those overseas votes could be crucial to forming the next government.

In the last two years, 200,000 New Zealanders have left us, a level of imbalanced departure so drastic that the Guardian reported on the “hollowing out” of the country and Bloomberg called it the “great Kiwi exodus”. Most of those leaving are aged 18 to 39, in search of opportunity. Why does it matter for the election? Because democracy works best when we're all part of it.

Around one million New Zealanders live overseas, and many of them are entitled to vote: any citizen who has been home in the last three years, or resident who has been home in the last 12 months. The right has been protected since the Electoral Act 1956. Yet only one in 10 overseas New Zealanders is enrolled.

That’s why Every Kiwi Vote Counts is back this election. Since 2020, Every Kiwi Vote Counts has drawn attention to the scale and importance of the overseas vote. This year, as the nation continues to flinch at the outbound flow of young New Zealanders we’re releasing a new social video, Don’t Let Old Zealand Dictate the New Zealand Election. 

On the nose, yes, but grounded in fact. While too many New Zealanders are leaving their vote at the departure lounge, older New Zealanders in the country are turning out in droves. A whopping 98% of over-65-year-olds are enrolled. That’s almost 10 times the rate of participation. But it's not just enrolment – pensioners can be counted on to vote: 85% followed through in the last election. While they represent 18% of the country they represented 25.5%, or one in four, of the votes in the 2023 Election. 

The number of overseas New Zealanders is possibly 100,000 more than the number of over 65-year-olds-in the country. There are 900,000 pensioners currently – which will likely hit one million by 2029, according to Stats NZ and is potentially rising to 2.5 million by 2078, according to the 2025  Age Proofing Aotearoa report by the Helen Clark Foundation and WSP. With their predilection for voting, it’s not hard to see how power concentrates in older hands.  

Who do you feel more comfortable setting the agenda for New Zealand’s long-term future? Because, let’s face it – not a single decision being made in the next three years has impacts that are confined to the next three years. The long-term is what overseas New Zealanders are thinking about, and this is what makes them so valuable a constituency as we grapple with long term plans and challenges. 

This election is very close. The most recent 1News Verian poll shows support for National and Labour at 29% and 28% respectively. Last election, we saw three parliamentary seats change with the special vote count that includes overseas votes. Four electoral seats also shifted, with margins as small as 26 and 131 votes. We are not embellishing when we say, Every Kiwi Vote Counts.

But what if you’re not an overseas voter? Encourage overseas Kiwi you know to vote. They haven’t bailed on you or the country – they’re flying the flag offshore and all of us proud. They’re keeping in touch, with each other and New Zealand (with networks like KEA, and Flat White Meet-Ups, Creative New York Kiwi (CNYK) and Kiwis in Climate). They likely have family, homes, businesses, investments here. They’re creating professional, commercial and social relationships and acquiring skills, experience and perspectives that will directly or indirectly be beneficial to New Zealand. They want New Zealand to succeed and thrive, so it is somewhere they and/or their kids will want to return to. You are our tūrangawaewae.

The alternative is a gerontocracy, a society in which the old hold most of the power. We don't mean that in the conspiratorial way our campaign hyperbolically dramatises, with a grandparent slyly dispatching a grandchild overseas. But Yale Law professor Samuel Moyn, author of Gerontocracy in America, has gone so far as to suggest votes might one day be weighted, as older Americans "hoard" the future.

We're not suggesting that. We want all New Zealanders represented, which is why we've called for a minister for overseas New Zealanders, as Ireland has, and for dedicated overseas MP seats, as 18 other countries have. (Greece just created three this year.)

But first, and at the very least, let's decide our future together on November 7. Enrol by October 25. Overseas voting starts October 21.