Nearly a quarter of enrolled voters have already cast their ballots

Almost a quarter of New Zealand's enrolled voters have already cast their ballots for the 2026 general election, according to Electoral Commission data reported by RNZ. A total of 913,762 people had cast advance votes, meaning votes made before election day, by 1 November.

Voting opened on 26 October, 12 days before election day on Saturday 7 November. The 913,762 advance votes equal 24 percent of enrolled voters. The provisional enrolment figure is nearly 3.8 million people, as reported by the New Zealand Herald.

At the equivalent point in the 2023 election, 712,192 people had voted. That was just under a fifth, or 19 percent, of enrolled voters. In 2020, 1.16 million people had voted at the same stage.

The daily number of advance votes in this election has been higher than in 2023 on every day since voting booths, the places where people mark their ballots, opened. Vote NZ publishes a voting statistics page that compares the advance vote for this election with the equivalent days in 2023 and 2020.