A better visual breakdown of the 2026 election results

Take a deeper dive into the candidate and party votes from last night’s election. You can explore the results further in our interactive map. 

Note: The analysis below is based on the preliminary results. Special votes may change some close results, once the official tally is announced in about three weeks. 

To help us better understand the results on election night, our interactive page let you switch between the real geographic map and the hexmap. The hexmap shows each of the electorates as the same size to make it easier to see the political balance of the country (otherwise large rural electorates can obscure small urban ones).

To analyse these results further, below are two additional maps for: candidate votes by electorate type, and party vote lean relative to the country.

Candidate votes by electorate type

In total, 52% of candidates (37 out of 71) won with a plurality (<50% of the vote), including the closest races.

In the major urban areas (32 electorates), Labour picked up four seats (Waitākere, Mt Roskill, and Banks Peninsula from National; Wellington Bays from the Greens), while National picked up one (Tāmaki from Act). National continued to win most of the medium-sized cities (12 of 15) and all 18 of the rural seats (although Wairarapa was close). And in the Māori electorates, Labour won two versus five for Te Pāti Māori (compared to one versus six in 2023).

This election appears to have seen the most overhang seats ever (where a party wins more electorate seats than what they would be entitled to based on their party vote). National is winning seven overhang seats (making it the first time a major party has failed to earn any list MPs), and Te Pāti Māori is winning four overhang seats.

Party vote

On our interactive results page, we also showed the total party vote by electorate, including the votes received by the parties as a bloc. 

The country gave 50.36% of the vote to the parties of the government (National, Act and NZ First) versus 43.63% of the vote to the opposition (Labour, Greens and Te Pāti Māori), and 6.02% to The Opportunity Party (TOP). This was a 6% point drop for the right from 2023, when they won 56% of the vote. However, this balance could change once the special votes are counted in the finalised tallied in a few weeks. 

With TOP crossing the 5% threshold, this was the first MMP election in which a new party entered parliament without having been founded by current or former MPs. And with the two major parties, Labour and National, both earning less than 30% of the vote; this was also the largest cumulative share of the vote won by third parties ever (41.4% compared to 37.9% in 1996, 37.8% in 2002, and 38% in 2023). 

Next, we can show the votes received by the parties last night compared to the country as a whole. 

Party vote (relative lean)

Comparing only the right bloc (50.4% collectively for National, Act and NZ First) versus the left bloc (43.6% for Labour, Green and Te Pāti Māori); the country split 53.4% for the right. But this balance will change once TOP decides who they will coalition with (and therefore which bloc their votes will align with). 

For now, in the hexmap above, electorates lean right if they gave a larger share of their votes to the right bloc than did the nation as a whole; and leaned left if they gave those parties less than that. The overall map is very similar to 2023, though some electorates have shifted as a result of boundary changes. 

Botany was the most right-leaning electorate (giving 20% more of its votes to parties on the right compared to the country as a whole), closely followed by Waikato. Whereas Māngere was the most left-leaning general electorate (voting 28% to the left), closely followed by Ōtāhuhu. Ikaroa-Rāwhiti and Waiariki were nearly tied as the most left-leaning Māori electorates (47% to the Left). 

Hamilton East was the electorate that most closely voted like New Zealand as a whole: it gave about the same level of support to left and right parties as the country did overall. However, four others were fairly close behind (but differing based on their level of support for TOP): Hamilton West, Nelson, Northcote, and Takanini.

(If you experienced viewing difficulties with the interactive maps, we suggest changing devices or browsers. For the best experience, we recommend Firefox, Edge, or Chrome on computer).