Opportunity Party wins 6 percent on election night as special votes are counted
The Opportunity Party won a projected 6 percent of the vote in the 2026 election, and it is the first party to enter Parliament from outside with no previous MPs among its candidates and without winning an electorate, according to RNZ. An electorate is one of the country's local seats.
The final shape of Parliament will not be known for some time. The Electoral Commission estimated that about 700,000 special votes would need to be counted over the next 20 days to confirm the results. Special votes include overseas votes and ballots cast outside a voter's own electorate. RNZ reported that special votes have traditionally favoured the left in New Zealand elections.
New Zealand uses the mixed-member proportional (MMP) system, in which voters cast one vote for a local electorate MP and one for a party. The party vote largely decides how many seats each party gets. When a party wins more electorate seats than its party vote entitles it to, it keeps the extra seats, which are called overhang seats.
On election night, RNZ reported a projected 11 overhang seats: six for National and five for Te Pāti Māori. On preliminary numbers, National's overhang gave the bloc of parties on the right a two-seat majority. A projected 131-seat Parliament would be larger than the 123-seat Parliament of the previous term.
The two main parties finished election night within one percentage point of each other on the party vote, 0.2 points apart with 99.9 percent of votes counted. Together they won less than 60 percent of the vote, below the previous low of 62 percent in 2002. Minor parties collectively won more than 40 percent.
The Greens and ACT each secured record support. The Greens came close to the 13.35 percent that New Zealand First set in 1996 for a smaller party, but did not exceed it. The Greens' result was not above that mark on the count reported.
Among the major parties, none won list seats, which are the seats allocated from party lists rather than electorates. Finance Minister Nicola Willis is leaving Parliament, and RNZ reported that 2026 is the first time a finance minister or deputy party leader has not returned on the votes. Qiulae Wong became the first Asian leader of a parliamentary party in New Zealand.
Overhang seats have been debated before. In 2012, a review of the MMP system recommended removing the provision for them.
