KEY INSIGHTS

• The National and Labour Parties have secured a combined 62-81% of party votes across the 9 MMP elections so far. On average they have secured 73% of all party votes between them, and more than 3/4 in 5 of the last 6 MMP elections:

  	1996	1999	2002	2005	2008	2011	2014	2017	2020
  National + Labour	62%	69%	62%	80%	79%	75%	72%	81%	76%

• Only 10 parties have won an MMP seat in 9 MMP elections, and only 3 parties (National, Labour, ACT) have won seats in all 9 MMP elections to date:
  • The Green Party has won seats in 8/8 MMP elections (they weren’t in the 1996 election).
  • NZ First = 7/9 (missed out in 2008 with 4% of party votes and in 2020 with 3%)
  • United Future = 7/8 (they only polled 0.1% in 2017 after Peter Dunne’s retirement and didn’t stand in 2020)
  • The Māori Party = 5/6 (they weren’t in the 1996, 1999, or 2002 elections, and didn’t win a Māori electorate seat in 2017)
  • Progressive = 3/3 (2002, 2005, 2008)
  • Alliance = 2/6 (after very strong showings in the first two MMP elections with 10% in 1996 and 8% in 1999, their support dropped away quickly after Jim Anderton and his supporters broke away and started his Progressive Party).
  • Mana = 1/3 (success in 2011, but failed in 2014 as the combined Internet Mana, and failed again in 2017 on their own).
• 53 other parties have tried and failed to win an MMP seat
• Parties that came closest to the 5% threshold:
  • 1999 = Christian Coalition, 4.33%
  • 2014 = Conservative Party, 3.97%
• Party averages in MMP elections:
  • National Party = 37%
  • Labour Party = 36%
  • Green Party = 7.5%
  • NZ First = 7.0%
  • ACT = 3.9%
  • The Māori Party = 1.6%

KEY QUESTIONS

• Is MMP the best political system available for New Zealand?
• Is the current political duopoly good, bad, or neutral for New Zealand?
• Is the 5% party vote threshold too high, too low, or just right?

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Full data analysis
Please contact us if you would like the full analysis.

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Notes:

• The figures in the graph, like in polls, don’t include the average 0.6% informal votes each election. When a ballot paper has not been fully completed, is completed incorrectly or you can identify the person who voted, it is known as an ‘informal vote’, and will not be counted toward the election result.
• Party order:
  • We have ordered the political parties based on their most recent polling average.
  • We have not used the language ‘left wing’ and ‘right wing’ or ‘left block’ and ‘right block’ as there is no quantifiable way to define or measure which party is left or right, and by how much.
• Polling averages:
  • These have been calculated from the average score across the latest polls from:
    • Taxpayers’ Union-Curia (the National Party’s polling agency)
    • Talbot Mills (the Labour Party’s polling agency)
    • Roy Morgan
    • 1 News-Kantar Public
    • Newshub-Reid Research
  • You can find a great polling summary via https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_next_New_Zealand_general_election.
  • We did not include Horizon Research because their polling figures:
    • Are from October, not November or December.
    • Are consistently out of sync with other polling trends.
• We have labeled parties in the graphs that have won 2% or more of the party vote in an election.
• We chose the graph colours based on the dominant unique colour from each political party’s website or logo at the time of winning election seats.
• All numbers are provisional and subject to revision.

Thank you to the Factors who helped pull this together.

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SOURCE:

• NZ election results = https://archive.electionresults.govt.nz/index.html

Data published by Electoral Commission
(c) Crown Copyright
Licensed for use under the creative commons attribution licence (BY) 4.0

• NZ polling results = https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_next_New_Zealand_general_election

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