Electoral system of New Zealand


The New Zealand electoral system has been mixed-member proportional since 1996. MMP was introduced after a referendum in 1993. MMP replaced the first-past-the-post system New Zealand had previously used for most of its history.
New Zealand has a single-house legislature, the House of Representatives, usually with 120 members, although the number can increase because of one or two overhang seats, depending on the outcome of the electoral process. The 52nd Parliament, elected in 2017, has 120 seats: 71 were filled by electorate MPs, with the remaining 49 from ranked party lists.The term of the New Zealand Parliament is set at three years.
In 1893, New Zealand was the first country in the world to give women the right to vote. This meant that theoretically, New Zealand had universal suffrage from 1893, meaning all adults 21 years of age and older were allowed to vote. However, the voting rules that applied to the European settlers did not apply to Māori, and their situation is still unique in that a number of seats in the New Zealand Parliament are elected by Māori voters alone.
In contemporary New Zealand, generally all permanent residents and citizens over 18 are eligible to vote. The main exceptions are when a person has been living overseas continuously for too long, has been detained in a psychiatric hospital for more than three years after being charged with a criminal offence, or since 2010, is currently a sentenced prisoner.

Term of parliament

Although Parliamentary elections are held every three years, this has not always been the case. In New Zealand's early colonial history, elections were held every five years – as established by The New Zealand Constitution Act of 1852. The term was reduced to three years in 1879 because of concerns about the growing power of central Government.
Since then, the term has been altered three times – mainly in times of international crisis. During the First World War it was extended to five years. In the early 1930s, it was pushed out to four years. This proved to be unpopular with the electorate and after the election of 1935, the term was reduced to three years again. It was extended to four years once again during the Second World War, but returned to three years afterwards. In 1956, the term of three years was 'entrenched' in the Electoral Act which means that it can only be changed by achieving a majority in a national referendum or by a vote of 75% of all members of Parliament.
In 2013 the Government established an advisory panel to conduct a review of constitutional issues – including an examination of the term of parliament. Other issues discussed at public meetings held by the panel were the number of MPs New Zealand should have, whether a written constitution is needed, and whether all legislation should be consistent with the Bill of Rights Act. Both Prime Minister John Key and Opposition leader David Shearer expressed support for an extension of the parliamentary term to four years. The main argument put forward in support of a longer term is that "Governments need time to establish and then implement new policies".
The last referendum on the term of parliament was in 1990 and found nearly 70% of the voters were opposed to extending the term. An opinion poll on the news website Stuff.co.nz in early 2013 found that of 3,882 respondents, 61% were in favour of changing to a four-year term.

Māori seats

A unique feature of New Zealand's electoral system is that a number of seats in Parliament are reserved exclusively for Māori. However, this was not always the case. In the early colonial era, Māori could not vote in elections unless they owned land as individuals. European colonists were quite happy with this state of affairs because, according to NZ History online, "they did not think Māori were yet 'civilised' enough to exercise such an important responsibility". At the time, Māori were dealing directly with the Crown in regard to the Treaty of Waitangi and had little interest in the 'pākehā parliament'.
During the wars of the 1860s, some settlers began to realise it was necessary to bring Māori into the British system if the two sides were to get along. After much debate, in 1867 Parliament passed the Maori Representation Act, which established four electorates solely for Māori. The four Māori seats were a very minor concession; the settlers had 72 seats at the time and, on a per capita basis, Māori should have got up to 16 seats. All Māori men over the age of 21 were given the right to vote and to stand for Parliament.
Full-blooded Māori had to vote in the Māori seats and only Māori with mixed parentage were allowed to choose whether they voted in European electorates or Māori electorates. This dual voting system continued until 1975. From time to time there was public discussion about whether New Zealand still needed separate seats for Māori – which some considered to be a form of apartheid. Māori were only allowed to stand for election in European seats from 1967.
In 1985, a Royal Commission on the Electoral System was established. It concluded that "separate seats had not helped Maori and that they would achieve better representation through a proportional party-list system". The Commission recommended that if mixed-member proportional system was adopted, the Māori seats should be abolished. However, most Māori wanted to keep them and the seats were not only retained under MMP, their "number would now increase or decrease according to the results of the regular Māori electoral option". As a result, in 1996 before the first MMP election, the number of Māori seats increased to five – the first increase in 129 years. In 2002, it went up to seven.

Developments in voting rights and eligibility

Secret ballot

In European seats, the secret ballot was introduced in 1870. However, Māori continued to use a verbal system – whereby electors had to tell the polling official which candidate they wanted to vote for. Māori were not allowed a secret ballot until 1938 and even voted on a different day. According to NZ History online: "Up until 1951 Maori voted on a different day from Europeans, often several weeks later." It was not until 1951 that voting in the four Māori electorates was held on the same day as voting in the general election.
NZ History also states: "There were also no electoral rolls for the Maori seats. Electoral officials had always argued that it would be too difficult to register Maori voters. Despite frequent allegations of electoral irregularities in the Maori seats, rolls were not used until the 1949 election."

Women's suffrage

In early colonial New Zealand, as in most Western countries, women were totally excluded from political affairs. Led by Kate Sheppard, a women's suffrage movement began in New Zealand in the late 19th century, and the legislative council finally passed a bill allowing women to vote in 1893. This made New Zealand the first country in the world to give women the vote. However, they were not allowed to stand as candidates until 1919, and the first female Member of Parliament was not elected until 1933 – 40 years later. Although there have been three female Prime Ministers, women remain somewhat under-represented in Parliament. Following the election in 2011, 39 MPs were women. After the 2011 election, on a global ranking New Zealand is 21st in terms of its representation of women in Parliament.

Prisoners' right to vote

Restrictions have also been imposed on prisoners. In 2010, the National government passed The Electoral Amendment Bill which removed the right of all sentenced prisoners to vote. The Attorney General said the new law was inconsistent with the Bill of Rights Act which says that "every New Zealand citizen who is over the age of 18 years has the right to vote and stand in genuine periodic elections of members of the House of Representatives". Prior to the 2010 Act, only prisoners with a sentence of three years or more were not allowed to vote – which is also inconsistent with the Bill of Rights Act. The Electoral Disqualification Bill was also opposed by the Law Society and the Human Rights Commission who pointed out that, in addition to being inconsistent with the Bill of Rights, the legislation was also incompatible with various international treaties that New Zealand is party to.
Law Society Human Rights committee member, Jonathan Temm, in a written submission, told Parliament's law and order committee that: "It is critical for the function of our democracy that we do not interfere with the right to vote." With specific reference to decisions made by courts in Canada, Australia and South Africa, and by the European Court of Human Rights in respect of the United Kingdom, she pointed out that "every comparable overseas jurisdiction has had a blanket ban struck down in the last 10 years".

Election day

Until the, elections were held on a weekday. In 1938 and in, elections were held on a Saturday. In and, elections were held on a Wednesday. In 1950, the legal requirement to hold elections on a Saturday was introduced, and this first applied to the. Beginning with the, a convention was formed to hold general elections on the last Saturday of November. This convention was upset by Robert Muldoon calling a snap election, which was held on Saturday 14 July. It took until the to get back towards the convention, only for Helen Clark to call an early election in. By the, the conventional 'last Saturday of November' was achieved again. The last election was held on Saturday, 23 September 2017.
Prior to 1951, elections in Māori electorates were held on different days than elections in general electorates. The table below shows election dates starting with the first election that was held on a Saturday in 1938:
Key
Parliamentgeneral electionnotes
26th15 October 1938First election held on a Saturday; Māori election held the previous day
27th25 September 1943General election on a Saturday; Māori election held the previous day
28th27 November 1946General election on a Wednesday; Māori election held the previous day
29th30 November 1949General election on a Wednesday; Māori election held the previous day
30th1 September 1951Snap election due to waterfront strike;
general and Māori election legislated to be held on a Saturday from now on
31st13 November 1954
32nd30 November 1957
33rd26 November 1960
34th30 November 1963
35th26 November 1966
36th29 November 1969
37th25 November 1972
38th29 November 1975
39th25 November 1978
40th28 November 1981
41st14 July 1984Muldoon's snap election
42nd15 August 1987
43rd27 October 1990
44th6 November 1993
45th12 October 1996Called early to circumvent a by-election in Hawkes Bay
46th27 November 1999
47th27 July 2002Clark's early election
48th17 September 2005
49th8 November 2008
50th26 November 2011
51st20 September 2014
52nd23 September 2017

MMP in New Zealand

Until 1994, New Zealand used the first-past-the-post electoral system, whereby the political party that won the most seats in a constituency elected the only MP from that constituency. This system favoured the two-party dominance of the National Party and the Labour Party. Smaller parties found it hard to gain representation; for example, despite gaining 16% of the vote in 1978 and 21% in 1981, the New Zealand Social Credit Party won only one and two seats, respectively.
Spurred by public disillusionment in the political system, Labour campaigned in 1981 and 1984 on a promise to establish a Royal Commission into the electoral system. Following their election into government in 1984, Labour established the Royal Commission into the Electoral System, and the commission's 1986 report recommended the adoption of mixed-member proportional representation. After the government sidelining the issue for years, the Bolger National government responded to public pressure by holding an indicative referendum on the electoral system in 1992. After an overwhelming majority for change, a second, binding referendum was held in 1993 asking voters to choose between FPP and MMP.
In 1994, New Zealand officially adopted MMP as its electoral system. Its defining characteristic is a mix of members of Parliament from single-seat electorates and MPs elected from a party list, with each party's share of seats determined by its share of the party vote nationwide. The first MMP election was held in 1996. As a result, National and Labour lost their complete dominance in the House. Neither party has yet been able to govern on its own and has had to form coalitions to govern. The closest either party has come to governing alone was the 2014 election, when National won 60 seats, just 1 short of a majority.
Under MMP, New Zealand voters have two votes. The first vote is the electorate vote. It determines the local representative for that electorate. The electorate vote works on a plurality system whereby whichever candidate gets the greatest number of votes in each electorate wins the seat. The second vote is the party vote. This determines the number of seats each party is entitled to overall – in other words, the proportionality of the House.
Thresholds: There are two thresholds in the New Zealand MMP system. The first is that any Party which receives 5% or more of the Party vote is entitled to a share of the nominally 120 seats in the House of Representatives – even if the Party does not win a single electorate seat. For instance in the 2008 elections, the Greens failed to win any electorate seats but won 6.7% of the party vote and thereby earned nine seats in Parliament.
The second threshold is that any Party that wins one or more electorate seats is entitled to an additional share of the nominally 120 seats in House of Representatives based on the percentage of the party vote – even if it doesn't win 5% of the vote. In 2008, the ACT Party won only 3.6% of the Party vote. But ACT got a total of five seats in the House of Representatives because an ACT candidate won the Epsom electorate; this has been called the "coat-tailing" rule. However, the New Zealand First party which got 4.07% of the list vote or below the 5% threshold was not returned to parliament in 2008.
Seats in parliament are allocated to electorate MPs first. Then Parties fulfil their remaining quota from their list members. A closed list is used, and list seats are allocated by the Sainte-Laguë method, which favours minor parties more than the alternative D'Hondt method. If a Party has more electorate MPs than proportional seats, then it receives an overhang. This first occurred following the 2005 General Election when the Māori party won 4 electorates despite its overall party vote only entitling it to 3 seats, thus it received one overhang seat and the 48th Parliament subsequently consisted of 121 MPs. The 2008 and 2011 elections also saw the Māori Party receive overhang seats, whilst the 2014 election saw United Future receive their one and only seat in the House as a result of an overhang.
Only parties registered with the Electoral Commission can submit party lists; unregistered parties can contest elections but cannot provide party lists. Not all registered parties submit a party list. Reasons for this may vary and include missing the deadline. The following registered parties did not submit party lists:
The 2014 case of the Internet Party and the Mana Movement not submitting lists was due to their forming an electoral alliance called Internet MANA. This alliance had to be registered as a separate party, but the individual component parties were not deregistered, and are thus listed as not having submitted a list. Internet Mana was deregistered in December 2014.

Strategic voting

The two largest parties National and Labour usually "top up" their electoral candidates with list candidates, so that supporting a candidate of a minor party allied with their party will not reduce the number of seats that the major party wins, but supporting the minor party will increase the number of MPs who support their party in coalition. This is called "strategic voting" or sometimes "tactical voting".
In 1999 when Jeanette Fitzsimons contested the seat of Coromandel for the Greens, it seemed that the Greens' chances of entering parliament were dependent on Fitzsimons' performance in Coromandel; in order to receive proportional representation, the party needed to either gain five percent of the national vote or win an electorate seat, and it appeared that the former option was unlikely. Labour Leader Helen Clark openly encouraged Labour supporters to give their constituency vote to Fitzsimons and their party vote to Labour. When normal votes had been counted, it appeared that Fitzsimons had been defeated in Coromandel by National's Murray McLean, but when special votes were tallied, Fitzsimons had a narrow lead. This guaranteed the Green Party seats in parliament regardless of whether it crossed the five percent threshold.
In several recent elections in New Zealand National has suggested that National supporters in certain electorates should vote for minor parties or candidates who can win an electorate seat and would support a National government. This culminated in the Tea tape scandal when a meeting in the Epsom electorate in 2011 was taped. The meeting was to encourage National voters in the electorate to vote "strategically" for the ACT candidate. Labour could have suggested to its supporters in the electorate to vote "strategically" for the National candidate, as the Labour candidate could not win the seat but a National win in the seat would deprive National of an ally. However, Labour chose not to engage in this tactic instead calling it a "sweetheart deal".
From 2008 onwards United Future also benefited from the strategic vote. Party leader Peter Dunne was re-elected into the Ōhariū seat in 2008, 2011, and 2014, becoming a coalition partner with National, despite receiving under 1% of the party vote. In 2017 National stood candidate Brett Hundson in the electorate, but National leader Bill English vocally advocated strategic voting, saying: ”We are encouraging National supporters to give their electorate vote to ACT candidate, David Seymour, in Epsom, and United Future candidate, Peter Dunne, in Ōhariu – and their party vote to National.” In 2017 the Green Party did not stand a candidate in Ōhariū in order to strengthen Labour candidate Greg O’Connors chance at beating Dunne. When Dunne resigned from politics just a month out from the election after low polling results, the Green Party decided to stand Tane Woodley in the electorate.

2011 referendum and Electoral Commission 2012 report

A referendum on the voting system was held in conjunction with the 2011 general election, with 57.8% of voters voting to keep the existing Mixed Member Proportional voting system. The majority vote automatically triggered under the Electoral Referendum Act 2010 an independent review of the workings of the system by the Electoral Commission.
The Commission released a consultation paper in February 2012 calling for public submissions on ways to improve the MMP system, with the focus put on six areas: basis of eligibility for list seats, by-election candidates, dual candidacy, order of candidates on party lists, overhang, and proportion of electorate seats to list seats. The Commission released its proposal paper for consultation in August 2012, before publishing its final report on 29 October 2012. In the report, the Commission recommended the following:
Parliament is responsible for implementing any changes to the system, which has been largely unchanged since it was introduced in 1994 for the 1996 election. In November 2012 a private member's bill under the name of opposition Labour Party member Iain Lees-Galloway was put forward to implement the first two recommendations, although the bill would have to be chosen in the member's bill ballot.
In May 2014 Judith Collins and John Key said that there was no inter-party consensus on implementing the results of the Commission, so would not introduce any legislation.

Electoral boundaries

The number of electorate MPs is calculated in three steps. The less populated of New Zealand's two principal islands, the South Island, has a fixed quota of 16 seats. The number of seats for the North Island and the number of special reserved seats for Māori are then calculated in proportion to these.
The number of electorates is recalculated, and the boundaries of each redrawn so as to make them approximately equal in population within a tolerance of plus or minus 5%, after each quinquennial census. After the 2001 census, there were 7 Māori electorates and 62 general electorates, or 69 electorates in total. There were therefore normally 51 list MPs. By a quirk of timing, the 2005 election was the first election since 1996 at which the electorates were not redrawn since the previous election. A census was held on 7 March 2006 and new electorate boundaries released on 25 September 2007, creating an additional electorate in the North Island. For the election in 2011 there were 63 general electorates, 7 Māori electorates and 50 list seats, plus one overhang seat. For the election in 2014 there were 64 general electorates, 7 Māori electorates and 49 list seats, plus one overhang seat.

Representation statistics

The Gallagher Index is a measurement of how closely the proportions of votes cast for each party is reflected in the number of parliamentary seats gained by that party. The resultant disproportionality figure is a percentage – the lower the index, the better the match.
ElectionDisproportionalityNumber of Parties in Parliament
1946–1993 average11.10%2.4
19963.43%6
19992.97%7
20022.37%7
20051.13%8
20083.84%7
20112.38%8
20143.82%7
20172.70%5

Political parties

, there are 13 registered political parties in New Zealand.
Party NameShort NameDate of RegistrationIn Parliament
New Zealand National PartyNational Party2 December 1994Yes
New Zealand FirstNZ First20 December 1994Yes
ACT New ZealandThe ACT Party17 February 1995Yes
New Zealand Labour PartyLabour Party17 February 1995Yes
New Zealand Democratic Party for Social CreditDemocrats for Social Credit10 August 1995No
Green Party of Aotearoa/New ZealandGreen Party17 August 1995Yes
Aotearoa Legalise Cannabis PartyThe Cannabis Party30 May 1996No
Māori Party–9 July 2004No
Mana Movement–24 June 2011No
New Conservative–6 October 2011No
The Opportunities PartyTOP6 March 2017No
New Zealand People's PartyNZPP30 June 2017No
New Zealand Outdoors Party–11 August 2017No