Published in Insights, The New Zealand Initiative’s newsletter, 13 November 2026
On Saturday, 706,680 New Zealanders gave National their party vote. Collectively, all of those votes amounted to nothing. Not a single National MP will enter Parliament from the list.
National won 42 electorates, but its party vote entitled it to only 35 seats. Since it keeps all 42, no National list candidate gets in. That is why the Finance Minister, the Attorney-General, the Defence Minister and the Speaker are out of Parliament.
Helen Clark told news agency AAP that observers could well judge this a flawed election. The outcome, she said, ‘is not what MMP was designed to deliver’. She wants a full review.
Without the eleven overhang seats, the House would be split 60 to 60, leaving Opportunity a choice between a centre-right government and a hung parliament. With them, the coalition holds 67 seats to 64.
Clark said the system had been ‘gamed’ but left out who started it: Te Pāti Māori, which urged supporters to back its electorate candidates and give their party votes to Labour or the Greens. It won five seats on 0.57 percent. Four are overhang seats.
Some on the right responded in kind. Don Brash and Harry Mowbray urged National voters to party vote ACT or New Zealand First. National opposed the move.
National’s slump probably mattered more. Either way, the right got seven overhang seats and the left gained four.
Vote splitting is within the rules. The law invites political operators to exploit this democratic loophole.
My native Germany has been here before. In 2012, the Constitutional Court ruled that more than about 15 overhang seats breached the equality of the vote.
Here, only Parliament can repair the rules. It could give other parties levelling seats, as Germany did until its Bundestag passed 730 members, or deny seats to electorate winners whose party vote does not cover them, as Germany now does. It could add list seats to make overhangs rarer. Or it could give voters one vote for candidate and party alike.
Electoral reform is difficult and, with the coalition owing its provisional majority to the overhang, could easily turn party political. It would also clog a busy Parliament.
Clark’s review should go to a one-year Royal Commission, with a referendum on its recommendations before the next election.
That is fast by New Zealand standards. But unless the rules change before 2029, this election’s overhang will become a lasting democratic hangover.