Choose your own election result.

Election day is Saturday 7 November 2026.

Up for grabs
0.0%
NAT
38.1% · 49
LAB
26.9% · 34
GRN
11.6% · 15
ACT
8.6% · 11
NZF
6.1% · 8
TPM
3.1% · 6
TOP
2.2% · 0
NZL
1.2% · 0

Shrink a party and its votes go up for grabs. Dashed line: 5% threshold. Right: vote share · seats.

More in the sandbox →
Sandbox Rebuild the 2023 Parliament Drag the party vote, flip electorates, form coalitions — and watch all 123 seats recount live, by the actual rules. One vote Follow one ballot to the statute book A tied electorate, one voter, and a chain of consequences that moves 12 MPs and changes which law gets passed. Invented parties; real rules. History Every time the threshold bit, since 1996 In 2008, 85,496 party votes won ACT 5 seats. New Zealand First’s 95,356 won none. Pull the levers yourself. Close calls How close was your electorate? In 2023 Mount Albert was decided by 18 votes, and 5 electorates by fewer than 500. Find yours, and what it would have taken to change it. Coalitions What did the smaller parties get? Every government since 1996 but one needed partners, and partners put their price in writing. See what each one won, quoted from the agreements. Quiz Five questions a day Where is that electorate? Who got in on the lifeboat? A daily quiz drawn from the real results — no logins, no score-keeping by anyone but you.

MMP in sixty seconds

  1. 2
    You get two votes

    A party vote, which decides how many seats each party gets in total, and an electorate vote, which picks the MP for where you live.

  2. 5%
    The threshold

    A party needs 5% of the party vote — or to win a single electorate — before any of its party votes count. Below that line, they are thrown away.

  3. 120
    Seats dealt by Sainte-Laguë

    The 120 seats are handed out one at a time to whichever party has the strongest remaining claim, until none are left. It is close to strictly proportional.

  4. 61
    Then someone has to govern

    Whoever can gather 61 votes in the House forms a government — almost always a coalition, and coalitions trade policies for support.

The 2026 election

  • Wednesday 21 October Overseas voting opens New Zealanders abroad can vote from 21 October.
  • Sunday 25 October Enrolment closes You must be enrolled by midnight on Sunday 25 October to vote.
  • Monday 26 October Advance voting opens Vote early at any voting place from Monday 26 October.
  • Saturday 7 November Election day Voting places close at 7pm on Saturday 7 November.
  • Friday 27 November Official results The official result, including special votes, is declared on 27 November.

Dates from the Electoral Commission — vote.nz, which is also where to check you are enrolled.

Who made this, and whose side is it on?

Everybody’s. leaderscan is an independent, self-funded project. It recommends no party and no candidate, and the parties in its story are invented precisely so that it can’t. Every number on the site is computed from the Electoral Commission’s official results, by an engine that reproduces every MMP election since 1996 exactly. More about how, and what it doesn’t claim →