Last weekend, the final results of the New Zealand general election were declared, following the counting of special votes.
The results saw a minor shift in the positions of the parties in the Parliament.
The governing National Party, who had initially won enough votes to win a slim majority, lost enough votes to cost them their 61st seat, and their first majority since the introduction of MMP.
The Green Party were the beneficiaries of this shift, with the Greens holding on to their 14th seat despite only polling enough for 13 seats on election night.
In terms of vote shifts, the National Party vote dropped by 1% from 48% to 47%. Labour’s vote increased by 0.4%, and the Green Party vote increased by 0.7%. New Zealand First’s vote dropped by 0.2%.
The change in votes has a minor impact on the post-election narrative for each party.
The result remains a very good one for the National Party, despite not winning a majority. The drop in vote, however, meant that the National vote actually dropped very slightly – the party won an increased number of seats in part due to a larger number of votes going to parties that didn’t qualify for seats.
Labour’s vote remains the worst since 1922, if slightly less bad than it appeared on election night.
For the Green Party, the result actually looks reasonably good. The party had never won more than nine seats before the last election, when the party won 14 seats. The Greens had very high expectations due to strong polling, so most commentators expected them to increase their number of seats. Yet the party has retained the same number of seats, and has suffered a swing of only 0.4% compared to their record achievement in 2011.
In terms of the formation of government, very little will change. The National government is now finishing up agreements with ACT, United Future and the Māori Party, who between them hold four seats. The National government will now rely on the vote of at least one of these four MPs to govern, which shouldn’t prove difficult.
Final results – New Zealand election 2014
| Party | Votes | % | Swing | Electorate seats | List seats | Total seats |
| National | 1,131,501 | 47.04 | -0.27 | 41 | 19 | 60 |
| Labour | 604,534 | 25.13 | -2.35 | 27 | 5 | 32 |
| Green | 257,356 | 10.70 | -0.36 | 0 | 14 | 14 |
| New Zealand First | 208,300 | 8.66 | 2.07 | 0 | 11 | 11 |
| Conservative | 95,598 | 3.97 | 1.32 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Māori Party | 34,095 | 1.42 | -0.01 | 1 | 1 | 2 |
| Internet Mana | 31,850 | 1.32 | 0.24 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| ACT | 16,689 | 0.69 | -0.38 | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| United Future | 5,286 | 0.22 | -0.38 | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| Others | 20,411 | 0.85 | 0.25 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
