KEY INSIGHTS

• Health is the #2 voter issue this election after only Cost of Living/Inflation (both Ipsos and Curia polling).
• There are 5 Health Targets with data going back to 2015/16. These are agreed health KPIs between different parties.
• 4 concern health wait times as shown in the graph (The 5th concerns childhood immunisation (24 months only). A superior metric showing all immunisation levels for all ages over all available data can be seen on https://kpi.nz/kpi/child-immunisation-rates)
• All 4 health wait times were fairly consistent between 2015/16 through to 2017 under that National-led Government.
• 3 of those wait times fell, 2 rapidly so, under the 2017-2023 Labour-led Governments, and before Covid arrived, too.
• Cancer treatments remained the same, further supporting the argument that our Covid response didn’t have to come at the expense of other health services.
• The rapid decline of those 3 Health Targets under Labour has been halted, and is now improving again under the Coalition.

1 KEY QUESTION

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HAVE YOUR SAY

1. Vote
2. 
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FULL DATA ANALYSIS
Please contact us if you would like the full data set and research.

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ADDITIONAL NOTES:

• The data has come from Health New Zealand – Te Whatu Ora.
• The latest data was for what they call Q4, April-June 2026. It was released on 23 September 2026.
• The full description of each measure is:
  • Shorter stays in emergency departments
    95% of patients to be admitted, discharged or transferred from an emergency department within 6 hours.
  • Faster cancer treatment
    90% of patients to receive cancer management within 31 days of the decision to treat.
  • Shorter wait times for first specialist assessment
    95% of patients wait less than 4 months for a first specialist assessment.
  • Shorter wait times for elective treatment
    95% of patients wait less than 4 months for elective treatment.
• We have used shorter, but still accurate, descriptions to improve accessibility and engagement.
• We have chosen blue and red line colours to represent each government based on the colour of the lead party.
• Vertical axis starts at 55% to highlight detail and improve understanding. This is common in health reporting where small % shifts can have a big impact
• All numbers are provisional and subject to revision.

Thank you to the Factors who helped pull this together.

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SOURCE:

Health Targets = https://www.healthnz.govt.nz/about-us/what-we-do/planning-and-performance/health-targets

Data published by The Ministry of Health
(c) Crown Copyright
Licensed for use under the creative commons attribution licence (BY) 4.0

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Did we make a mistake, or have you got smarter data?  Let us know.