2005 New Zealand general election


The 2005 New Zealand general election on Saturday 17 September 2005 determined the membership of the 48th New Zealand Parliament. One hundred and twenty-one MPs were elected to the New Zealand House of Representatives: 69 from single-member electorates, including one overhang seat, and 52 from party lists.
No party won a majority, but the Labour Party of Prime Minister Helen Clark secured two more seats than nearest rival, the National Party of Dr Don Brash. With the exception of the newly formed Māori Party, which took four Māori seats from Labour, most of the other parties polled lower than in the previous election, losing votes and seats.
Brash deferred conceding defeat until 1 October, when National's election-night 49 seats fell to 48 after special votes were counted. The official count increased the Māori Party share of the party vote above 2%, entitling them to three rather than two list seats from the party vote. With four electorate seats, the election night overhang of two seats was reduced to one, and as National had the 120th seat allocated under the party vote, National lost one list seat that they appeared to have won on election night.
The election was a strong recovery for National which won 21 more seats than at the 2002 election, where it suffered its worst result in its history, and the highest party vote percentage for the party since 1990. Despite its resurgence, National failed to displace Labour as the largest party in Parliament. National's gains apparently came mainly at the expense of smaller parties, while Labour won only two seats less than in 2002.
On 17 October, Clark announced a new coalition agreement that saw the return of her minority government coalition with the Progressive Party, with confidence and supply support from New Zealand First and from United Future. New Zealand First parliamentary leader Winston Peters and United Future parliamentary leader Peter Dunne became ministers of the Crown outside Cabinet, Peters as Minister of Foreign Affairs and Dunne as Minister of Revenue. The Green Party which had supported Labour before the election received no cabinet post, but gained several concessions from the coalition on matters such as energy and transport, and agreed to support the government on matters of confidence and supply.

The election

The total votes cast in 2005 was 2,304,005. Turnout was 80.92% of those on the rolls, or 77.05% of voting age population. Turnout was higher than in the previous 2002 election, and the Māori roll turnout at 67.07% was significantly higher than 2002.
In the election 739 candidates stood, and there were 19 registered parties with party lists. Of the candidates, 525 were electorate and list, 72 were electorate only and 142 were list only. All but 37 represented registered parties. Only 35 candidates from registered parties chose to stand as an electorate candidate only. 71% of candidates were male and 29% female; the same percentages as in 2002.
Labour had achieved a third term in office for the first time since 1943.

Detailed results

Parliamentary parties

Non-parliamentary parties

The election saw an 81% voter turnout.
The results of the election give a Gallagher index of disproportionality of 1.11.

Votes summary

Electorate results

List results

MPs returned via party lists, and unsuccessful candidates, were as follows:
;Notes:
  1. These party list members later entered parliament in the term as other list MPs elected resigned from parliament.
  2. These party list members later resigned during the parliamentary term.

    Changes during parliamentary term

Party vote by electorate

Analysis of results

Going into the election, Labour had assurances of support from the Greens and from the Progressives. This three-party bloc won 57 seats, leaving Clark four seats short of the 61 seats needed for a majority in the 121-seat Parliament. On 5 October the Māori Party began a series of hui to decide whom to support. That same day emerged that a meeting between Helen Clark and Māori co-leader Tariana Turia on 3 October had already ruled out a formal coalition between Labour and the Māori Party. Māori Party representatives also held discussions with National representatives, but most New Zealanders thought the Māori Party more likely to give confidence-supply support to a Labour-dominated government because its supporters apparently heavily backed Labour in the party vote.
Had Turia and her co-leader Pita Sharples opted to join a Labour-Progressive-Green coalition, Clark would have had sufficient support to govern with support from a grouping of four parties. Without the Māori Party, Labour needed the support of New Zealand First and United Future to form a government. New Zealand First said it would support the party with the most seats. Clark sought from New Zealand First a positive commitment rather than abstention. United Future, which had supported the previous Labour-Progressive minority government in confidence and supply, said it would talk first to the party with the most seats about support or coalition. Both New Zealand First and United Future said they would not support a Labour-led coalition which included Greens in Cabinet posts. However, United Future indicated it could support a government where the Greens gave supply-and-confidence votes.
Brash had only one possible scenario to become Prime Minister: a centre-right coalition with United Future and ACT. Given the election results, however, such a coalition would have required the confidence-and-supply votes of both New Zealand First and the Māori Party. This appeared highly unlikely on several counts. New Zealand First's involvement in such a coalition would have run counter to Peters' promise to deal with the biggest party, and Turia and Sharples would have had difficulty in justifying supporting National after their supporters' overwhelming support for Labour in the party vote. Turia and Sharples probably remembered the severe mauling New Zealand First suffered in the 1999 election. Even without this to consider, National had indicated it would abolish the Maori seats if it won power.
The new government as eventually formed consisted of Labour and Progressive in coalition, while New Zealand First and United Future entered agreements of support on confidence and supply motions. In an unprecedented move, Peters and Dunne became Foreign Affairs Minister and Revenue Minister, respectively, but remained outside cabinet and had no obligatory cabinet collective responsibility on votes outside their respective portfolios.

Background

The governing Labour Party retained office at 2002 election. However, its junior coalition partner, the Alliance, lost most of its support after internal conflict and disagreement and failed to win parliamentary representation. Labour formed a coalition with the new Progressive Coalition, formed by former Alliance leader Jim Anderton. The Labour-Progressive coalition then obtained an agreement of support from United Future, enabling it to form a stable minority government. The National Party, Labour's main opponents, suffered a major defeat, winning only 21% of the vote.
The collapse of National's vote led ultimately to the replacement of its Parliamentary party leader Bill English with parliamentary newcomer Don Brash on 28 October 2003. Brash began an aggressive campaign against the Labour-dominated government. A major boost to this campaign came with his "Orewa speech", in which he attacked the Labour-dominated government for giving "special treatment" to the Māori population, particularly over the foreshore and seabed controversy. This resulted in a surge of support for the National Party, although most polls indicated that this subsequently subsided. National also announced it would not stand candidates in the Māori seats, with some smaller parties following suit.
The foreshore-and-seabed controversy also resulted in the establishment of the Māori Party in July 2004. The Māori Party hoped to break Labour's traditional dominance in the Māori seats, just as New Zealand First had done in the 1996 election.
A large number of so-called "minor" parties also contested the election. These included Destiny New Zealand and the Direct Democracy Party.

Polls

A series of opinion polls published in June 2005 indicated that the National Party had moved ahead of Labour for the first time since June 2004. Commentators speculated that a prominent billboard campaign may have contributed to this. Some said the National Party had peaked too early. The polls released throughout July showed once more an upward trend for Labour, with Labour polling about 6% above National. The release by the National Party of a series of tax-reform proposals in August 2005 appeared to correlate with an increase in its ratings in the polls.
Direct comparisons between the following polls have no statistical validity:
polldateLabourNationalNZ FirstGreens
29 August43%40%5%7%
1 September39%41%6%6%
2 September43.4%39.1%6.6%5%
3 September41%44%<5%5%
4 September38%46%4.6%6%
7 September45%36%5%7%
8 September40.6%40.1%7.1%5.6%
11 September42.1%38.5%5%6%
11 September37%44%5%6%
11 September39%41%6%6%
14 September37%43%7%6%
15 September40.5%38.7%6.8%6.9%
15 September38%41%5.5%5.1%
16 September44.6%37.4%4.5%4.6%

No single political event can explain the significant differences between most of these polls over the period between them. They show either volatility in the electorate and/or flaws in the methods of polling. In the later polls, the issue of National's knowledge of a series of pamphlets appeared not to have reduced National Party support.

Candidates

For lists of candidates in the 2005 election see:

Labour Party

The Labour Party platform included:
The National Party campaigned on the platform of :
Postal voting for New Zealanders abroad began on 31 August. Ballot voting took place on Saturday 17 September, from 9am to 7pm. The Chief Electoral Office released a provisional result at 12:05am on 18 September.

Party funding

New Zealand operates on a system whereby the allocates funding for advertising on television and on radio. Parties must use their own money for all other forms of advertising, but may not use any of their own money for television or radio advertising.

Controversies

Police investigated six political parties for alleged breaches of election-spending rules relating to the 2005 election, but brought no prosecutions,
determining that "there was insufficient evidence to indicate that an offence under s214b of the Electoral Act had been committed."
The Auditor-General has also investigated publicly funded party-advertising for the 2005 election, with a leaked preliminary finding of much of the spending as unlawful. Observers expected the release of a final report in October 2006.
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