New Zealand Election Ends With No Clear Winner as 400,000 Special Votes Hold the Balance

WELLINGTON — New Zealand woke on Sunday without knowing who will govern it, after a general election on Saturday delivered the closest result in a generation and left both major blocs short of a decisive victory. With the preliminary count complete, the shape of the next government now rests on nearly 400,000 special votes that will not be counted until the official result is declared on November 27.

Prime Minister Christopher Luxon told supporters in Auckland shortly before midnight that the result was "too close to call", while Labour leader Chris Hipkins declined to concede and insisted that every ballot must be counted. Neither man claimed victory. Neither could.

A photo finish, seat by seat

On the preliminary count, Labour won the most votes — 710,330, or 29.4 percent — edging National's 706,680, or 29.2 percent, by just 3,650 votes out of more than 2.4 million ordinary ballots cast. It was a measure of how far the country's politics have fragmented that both major parties finished below 30 percent of the party vote.

But under New Zealand's mixed-member proportional system, votes and seats do not move in lockstep. National won 42 of the 64 electorate seats, against Labour's 21, and that advantage carried it to 42 seats in Parliament. With its coalition partners — ACT on 13 seats and New Zealand First on 12 — the governing bloc holds 67 seats in a Parliament swollen by an 11-seat overhang to a record 131 members. A majority needs 66. The coalition's edge is a single seat.

Labour holds 36 seats, alongside the Greens on 16 and Te Pāti Māori on five — 57 between them. The new Opportunity Party, which crossed the 5 percent threshold with 6 percent of the party vote, takes seven seats, the first new party to enter Parliament in more than a decade. Even with Opportunity, the left bloc reaches only 64 seats — two short of a majority.

For National, the night was a warning as much as a reprieve. The party fell from 38.1 percent at the 2023 election to 29.2 percent, and lost senior figures including Finance Minister Nicola Willis and Cabinet minister Paul Goldsmith. Luxon, who congratulated Hipkins on what he called a hard-fought campaign, said National had "a pathway to forming the next Government" but stopped well short of claiming it.

The special votes that will decide it

The Electoral Commission estimates that about 399,365 special votes remain to be counted, including nearly 97,000 cast from overseas or by dictation. Special votes are ballots cast outside a voter's home electorate, by people on the unpublished roll, or by voters who could not reach a polling station. They are counted after election day, and the official result is due on Friday, November 27. By law, the final result must be declared by December 3.

History says those votes matter. Special votes have consistently favoured parties on the left, and in 2023 they moved three seats leftwards after election night. More than 600,000 special votes were cast in 2023; this time the estimate is lower, but at roughly 400,000 they still represent about one in six of all ballots cast.

At least six electorate seats were decided by fewer than 1,000 votes on the night, including Wairarapa and Hamilton East, and each will be re-examined as the special votes are counted. For Hipkins to form a government, the specials would need to move at least two seats from the governing bloc to the left — and Labour would still need the support of Opportunity, whose leader, Qiulae Wong, has said the party will speak first to whichever party won the most votes.

A kingmaker in the middle

Opportunity's arrival changes the arithmetic for both sides. The centrist party entered Parliament for the first time after years on the margins, and its seven seats could decide who governs if the special votes erode the coalition's one-seat edge. Wong's pledge to talk first to the party with the most votes puts Labour — narrowly ahead on the party vote — first in line for a conversation, though not necessarily for a deal.

ACT leader David Seymour made his own position plain on the night. "Frankly our job is to lock Labour out of government," he said, a reminder that the coalition partners intend to fight for every seat the specials might move. Until November 27, both blocs will be counting, and neither can negotiate a government it does not yet know it can form.

The two party caucuses meet in Wellington on Tuesday to take stock, farewell departing MPs and welcome new ones. Until then, Luxon remains prime minister at the head of a caretaker government, and the country waits.

A verdict that fits a wider pattern

The dead heat fits a wider pattern in a year when voters have punished incumbents and split their support among smaller parties. In South Africa's municipal elections this week, the governing ANC slipped to about a third of the vote in its weakest showing since the end of apartheid, while the Democratic Alliance ran it close in the big cities.

In the United States, voters handed Democrats control of Congress in midterm elections held days earlier, a result that reshaped the balance of power in Washington. New Zealand's verdict belongs to the same season of unsettled politics: neither of the two parties that have dominated its politics for a generation could command even a third of the vote.

The wait until November 27

The count will take three weeks. Officials will check the electoral rolls, recount the ordinary votes and then count the specials, with recounts possible in the tightest electorates. Only then will Luxon or Hipkins — or both — be in a position to open formal negotiations on forming a government.

"Tonight, New Zealand has spoken," Hipkins said on the night. "It may take us a little bit longer to figure out exactly what it is that you've said." For three more weeks, the country will wait to find out — and so will the two men who would lead it. News Plus Globe will update this story as the special votes are counted and the official result is declared.