ACT passes National in 2026 large-donations race
ACT has declared another $225,000 in large donations, taking its disclosed total for 2026 to $2.3 million and putting it ahead of National. Total large donations disclosed by all parties for 2026 now stand at $7.2 million, already above the large-donation total for 2023, according to RNZ.
The latest ACT tranche is four donations: $100,000 from Rank Group, $50,000 from Van Den Brink Karaka Ltd, $50,000 from investor Troy Bowker and $25,000 from Nick Mowbray. Rank Group is owned by Graeme Hart.
Those names recur across the 2026 disclosures. Rank Group has given $500,000 to National and $250,000 to ACT this year. Van Den Brink Karaka Ltd has given $150,000 in this election cycle, all of it to ACT. A separate donation of $20,100 to National is recorded from Tony van den Brink.
Bowker's 2026 total stands at $125,000, made up of $100,000 to ACT and $25,000 to NZ First. Mowbray's 2026 total stands at $475,000, split between National and ACT.
NZ First has also corrected a return. A donation from Brian Cartmell previously recorded at $100,000 is now recorded at $120,000. Cartmell's total giving for 2026 stands at $320,000, spread across The Opportunity Party, ACT and NZ First.
By bloc, parties in the current coalition government account for 74 percent of large donations declared so far in 2026. For comparison, the tracker notes unions donated $335,000 to Labour in the 2023 election.
The figures sit under continuous disclosure, which means gifts are reported during the year rather than all at once. For 2026, registered parties must notify the Electoral Commission within 20 working days of receiving more than $20,000 from a single donor, according to Elections New Zealand.
The broader context here is concentration rather than any single cheque. A small group of donors accounts for repeated large transfers, often to more than one party on the right. That structure favours parties that can service those relationships across cycles, and it leaves Labour and others reliant on funding streams that do not show up in this dataset.
In my view, the figures people will keep returning to are the $7.2 million running total and the 74 percent coalition share. Money is arriving early and in large parcels, and ACT's move to $2.3 million gives it assured resourcing for organisation, research and advertising. Whether that converts into durable advantage depends on spending choices and on donations at or below the disclosure threshold, which these returns by definition do not capture.
