The winners, losers, big losers and gigantic losers from the 2026 NZ election

Hayden Donnell singles out the people who did well and the ones who got massively owned in this weekend’s general election.

It’s Monday. The birds are singing. The streets are alive with hope as a Chris-lite or even Chrisless future swims into view. And all across the country, people are screaming: “Who are the winners, losers, big losers and gigantic losers from the 2026 New Zealand general election?”

As always, The Spinoff is here to help.

Winners

Chris

It looks like Chris might have won.

The essential unknowability of all things

Humans are born out of the void into bodies made of reconstituted star dust and general subatomic detritus, then cursed with a mysterious consciousness that mainly serves to give us anxiety, and all that is still far easier to explain than the result of the 2026 NZ general election.

Wtf just happened? Labour got more of the party vote and fewer seats than National. It’s plausible that Green MP Hūhana Lyndon winning an electorate seat could actually hurt the left. National could lose party vote share while keeping all its seats in parliament or even gaining some more. 

It all leads to the suspicion that our MMP system isn’t exactly humming on all cylinders and may need reform. Unfortunately the people charged with ironing out its flaws will probably be some of the ones who owe their job to them. I wouldn’t hold my breath. But there are some beneficiaries…

Nerds

Get out your abacuses losers, it’s time to spend 18 days crunching every number in sight into dust. I want all the possible permutations and combinations. What happens if Labour takes Wairarapa but Carlos Cheung storms back in Mt Roskill and Hūhana Lyndon gets over the line in Te Tai Tokerau? What if Te Pāti Māori goes up 0.2% in the party vote but National loses a single electorate? What if we enter the results of the NZ general election into the Large Hadron Collider and accidentally pull Earth into an alternate dimension where all of this makes sense?

Rollickin' Gelato

This store became the official ice-cream stop of the campaign, hosting pretty much all our party leaders bar the steadfastly anti-ice-cream NZ First leader Winston Peters. The only black mark on its name came when its staff stood by as Opportunity leader Qiulae Wong placed a truly illegal number of scoops on a single cone, creating the ultimate coalition of ice-cream chaos.

The Harmful Digital Communications Act 2015

This little piece of legislation could be playing a big role in our political life now that Chlöe Swarbrick has time to compile the National Instagram account’s 20,000+ posts about her. She’s already laid the groundwork for a complaint, telling reporters she’s effectively been cyberbullied. Simeon Brown and the terrifying AI-generated guy in a National gimp suit had better lawyer up.

Helen White

This time three years ago, Helen White was in hell. Everywhere she turned she saw Newshub reporter Amelia Wade, grilling her about how she almost lost the ultimate Labour stronghold, questioning whether she had what it takes to follow in the footsteps of the first Mt Albert MP Michael Joseph Savage. “Sorry, I’ve forgotten your name,” she hazarded, as Wade began her interrogation. Eventually she was reduced to insisting a 106-vote majority in a seat Labour won by more than 20,000 votes in 2020 was actually good. “I didn’t do badly. I did really, really well.” 

This 2026 campaign was a redemption tour for one of Labour’s most-mocked candidates. White was probably the most impressive performer at The Spinoff’s Mt Albert debate. She was indefatiguable in campaigning, handing out flyers at train stations just about every morning and generally carrying herself with a chaotic but charming wine mum energy. Despite all the talk of National’s Melissa Lee potentially snaking through the middle of a three-way race on the left, she didn’t come close. White was ahead of Lee by nearly 5,000 votes on election night. While other MPs will be sweating bullets ahead of the special votes coming in on November 27, she can put her feet up and order a beautiful pina colada with an umbrella in it. She’s earned a break.

Qiulae Wong

Opportunity is set to become the first party ever to clear the 5% threshold from a standing start and it owes 97.4% of that success to the leader it hired roughly a year ago after sending out an email to the party mailing list asking if anyone was maybe interested in the job. Wong’s unflappability and command of detail was an asset on the campaign, where she braved heated exchanges with political veterans like Peters and Swarbrick, blistering criticism from the left and even the white hot heat of a racing bib scandal. Her calm carried her through those tough moments and all the way to the stage at Eden Park’s World Cup Lounge for Opportunity’s election party, where it finally left her for the first time. “Shit, we did it,” she yelled to the crowd. 

The Green Party

Led by an effective, energetic campaign from its leaders, the Greens got their best ever result. 

Shannon and Potsy

These guys held their wedding at the Duke of Marlborough Hotel on election night and quite frankly their party had a better vibe than NZ First’s election event in the next room over. Due to their perfectly timed nuptials, the pair got to front a live cross to 1News where they clarified that they had booked the venue ages ago so it was actually Winston Peters muscling in on their big day, not the other way around. I speak for all of us when I wish Shannon and Potsy a happy life.

Me

Look at this plate of crayfish I stole from the NZ First election party.

My digestive system after eating too much crayfish

I will not be elaborating further.

Losers

Chris

It looks like Chris might have lost.

National’s talent levels

Between them, Nicola Willis, Chris Bishop, Paul Goldsmith and Gerry Brownlee hold roughly 25% of the ministerial titles in the government, including pretty much all the most important ones on offer. Now they’re all out of parliament and likely to be replaced with electorate MPs who were picked by committee members at local party branches AKA some of the most unusual people on Earth. It could be a bumpy ride should the party actually get to form a government.

The journalists outside the Luxon household

These guys got a beautiful helping of pizzas and pastries in 2023. Just like our economic indicators, things went badly downhill in the intervening years. Apparently horrified at the poor health message she sent last time, Amanda Luxon turned up on Saturday with a platter of fruits.

Journalists spent the campaign being shown up by teenagers and weeping into their spreadsheets as they tried to decipher the electoral effects of variously sized overhangs. As if things weren’t dire enough, now they’ve got rockmelon where their cheesy toppings used to be. 

Patrick Gower’s calf muscles

It was 11.45pm and Stuff’s national affairs editor Andrea Vance was trying to deliver election analysis when a dark suit could be seen bobbing up and down in the corner of her shot. She gamely tried to soldier on but eventually the situation could no longer be ignored. “What is going on?” she asked. “I’ve just got a touch of cramp,” explained the bobbing man, Patrick Gower. 

Four hours of live TV is hell on anyone’s anatomy and Gower will be feeling the pain today. He needs to remember to hydrate if he’s ever allowed out of the bowels of RNZ to do this again.

Chris Chang’s calf muscles

Meanwhile, 1News reporter Chris Chang was having his own muscle issues as he stood on tippy toes to peek over Chris Luxon’s front gate in what proved to be an unsuccessful effort to catch a glimpse of him leaving the house. "My calves are really getting a workout," he lamented. 

The half-shorn sheep (real)

One of the cardinal rules of politics is that, if you’ve launched a nationwide ad campaign urging people not to leave a sheep half-shorn, you shouldn’t expose your leader to a situation where he quite literally leaves a sheep half-shorn. Unfortunately for National it didn’t adhere to this sage advice, allowing Chris Luxon to incompetently bungle his way through a shearing attempt in a Masterton shed two days out from the election. But it was even more unfortunate for the sheep, which wore an expression that screamed fml as the prime minister butchered his haircut.

The half-shorn sheep (fake)

With National’s vote shaping up to be less than 30%, it’s almost certain this guy is going to look like an absolute joke for the foreseeable future. The bullying from the rest of his AI flock will make the National Instagram account’s treatment of Chlöe Swarbrick look like friendly banter.

The half-shorn man

It wasn’t just sheep Luxon failed to shear. In a sure sign his PR advisors hate him, he was also tasked with shaving a man’s head. Once again, the job ended up half-done. The man refused to confirm for reporters that he’d be going to a barber for a touch up, though his face told the story.

Winston Peters’ mental health

New Zealand First’s leader had an absolutely terrible time on the campaign trail. He walked down a deserted street in Takapuna accosting new mums about the eventual demise of their babies. He went on Dom Harvey’s podcast hoping to talk policy, only to be asked about the last time he cried. He had to deal with Michael Laws. He kept being asked to lick an ice-cream. 

Peters’ dissatisfaction became more apparent with each indignity. He called the campaign a “circus”, the worst he’d ever seen, and developed a habit of staring into the abyss during walkabouts. By the night of the election, he’d had enough. He appeared on stage at the Duke of Marlborough for all of three minutes, rebuffed all the idiots who wanted to know what sort of government we’ll be having, then vanished out a back door. Shutting it behind. Twisting the lock.

Big losers

Fans of Carlos Cheung’s unique Facebook presence

Forget Nicola Willis, Gerry Brownlee, Chris Bishop and Paul Goldsmith. The most devastating loss for National this election may be Carlos Cheung’s Facebook account. Despite a valiant effort, the MP for Mt Roskill looks like he will be defeated by Labour returnee Michael Wood. Some constituents will miss him as a person. All of us should miss him as a social media savant.

In an election campaign filled with low-effort AI-generated attacks, Cheung’s posts stood out for their uniquely human crappiness. His most notable effort was a haphazardly edited ad featuring him dressed as Woody from Toy Story, shooting at the nine new taxes with a Nerf gun. Wood may be a solid MP, but he couldn’t pull off this shirt. No wonder the National election party came alive with chants of “Carlos, Carlos, Carlos” as he entered. They’re all his Facebook followers.

Fun run race integrity

For any other politician, breaching the sacrosanct entry stipulations of the Auckland Marathon 11km division would have been a career-ender. Apparently not for Qiulae Wong, who was able to swan through the scandal of the campaign and still shepherd her party to 6% of the vote.

Good for her. But now the rest of us have to live in a country where bib transfer rules can be tossed aside at a whim. Maybe there’s no coalition yet. But there certainly is a touch of chaos. 

Left-wing strategic thinking

Every poll in the lead up to the election showed the left’s only path to government was Opportunity making it over the threshold and going into coalition with Labour and the Greens. So what did half our left-wing commentariat focus their energy on for the bulk of the campaign? You guessed it: shitting from orbit on Opportunity. 

It didn’t necessarily work, but that fire could arguably have been more productively focused on the parties of the governing coalition. 

Our sleep cycles

It was nearly midnight when Chris Luxon finally emerged from his house to go to National’s election party. His emergence was met with palpable relief throughout the nation, but particularly in Three’s broadcasting studio, which had been trying to fill in time for the better part of an hour. 

The joy was short-lived. Luxon spent at least 20 minutes in some kind of tunnel outside the venue, then tortured all of us with the most handshake and hug-filled entrance ever performed by a New Zealand party leader. Three’s political panel radiated a mix of pain and resentment as they narrated the walk-in. “He’s taking selfies now, great,” said Samantha Hayes. “It’s like watching paint dry. In fact I think I’d rather watch paint dry,” said Lloyd Burr. “This is what New Zealanders don’t like about him,” said Matthew Hooton. “There’s no-one left to hug!” insisted Patrick Gower, only to immediately find out how wrong he was. “He’s gone back,” said Hayes. 

By the end, the panel simply gave up, going through grief, bargaining and anger and emerging into a placid pool of acceptance. “This is quite unusual,” observed Hayes, almost scientifically.

Paul Goldsmith

Paul Goldsmith forged his political career purposely losing electorate races in Epsom, then lost it desperately trying to win one. 

Gigantic losers

Both of the Chrises

Even though one of them may have won, both Chrises lost. They held hands and dragged their parties to a historic combined low, each failing to capitalise on their rival Chris’s unpopularity as their vote seeped to parties that once trailed in their dust. Maybe New Zealand is ready for a Chris-free Christmas.

Simeon Brown

Simeon Brown is lucky the failure of his election campaign distracted people from the collapse of the health system he was running, which itself was distracting them from the broken promises and fiscal fantasies of his transport tenure. The man the Herald hails as Mr Fix-It has surely broken a lot of stuff and National’s chances of staying in government may be next on the list. 

Brown spent election night being laughed at by Three’s rowdy in-house crowd over his resolutely reality-denying live cross from National’s election party and followed that up by being bullied in unison by pretty much all the channel’s panelists. The Post’s editor Matthew Hooton, began his commentary on the interview by comparing Brown to Comical Ali, the minister of information for Saddam Hussein who insisted the warlord was winning the Iraq war even as stuff exploded in the background of his own live crosses. “That was the most pathetic interview you could have expected from any campaign chairman, and he has run the worst election campaign in my lifetime. It was childish, it had no clear audience, it seemed to be targeted at the Pakuranga Bowling Club if anything, it was profoundly dishonest,” Hooton analysed, soberly.

Democracy

Speaking of Hooton, he went on to say that National’s decision to ban voter enrolment in the 13 days leading up to the election may have “made the difference” in its result. He had a point. Special votes as a share of total votes are at 14%, down substantially from 21% in 2023. Total enrolment is also down slightly from 2023. Reporters spent much of yesterday hearing anecdotal reports about people being turned away from voting booths because their names weren’t on the roll. When The Post went out door knocking with Michael Wood, it found one such voter very easily.

Defenders of the electoral law change generally spend their time patronising everyone who was trying to save up for a block of butter rather than doing election admin, telling them “it’s not that hard to get enrolled” and saying that if you can’t do it you don’t really deserve to vote. But they never make an affirmative case for the law. That’s likely because there isn’t a good one on offer.

The Electoral Commission has confirmed the enrolment changes won’t speed up its vote counting. It certainly won’t speed up the creation of a government, with Luxon refusing to even commit to forming one by Christmas. Its only real, tangible effect in this election is to exclude people from voting. Plenty of political minds have noted those who enrol later are statistically more likely to cast their ballots for left-leaning parties.

Some MPs even basically admitted that was the purpose of the change, with Act’s Todd Stephenson insisting democracy works best when the right people vote, with an emphasis on right. “It’s outrageous that someone completely disengaged and lazy can rock up to the voting booth, get registered there and then, and then vote to tax other people’s money away,” he said.

Who wins when people are stopped from voting? Democracy certainly didn’t.