Election night results point to 31 new MPs in Parliament
Election night results point to 31 new MPs entering a 131-seat Parliament, according to RNZ. Some electorate results could still change after the final count, which is expected on 27 November.
National won more electorate seats than its share of the party vote, a first for the party. That gives it a six-seat overhang, meaning six more seats than its party vote would otherwise have given it. National also lost frontbenchers in the election: Nicola Willis, Chris Bishop, Paul Goldsmith and outgoing Speaker Gerry Brownlee.
Mahesh Muralidhar won the Tāmaki electorate for National, defeating Labour's Max Harris and ACT's James Christmas. He is chief executive of the venture firm Phase One Ventures. Muralidhar was born in Kerala, India, spent part of his childhood in Singapore, and moved to New Zealand in the 1990s to attend high school. He is National's first Indian MP to win an electorate seat.
In West Coast-Tasman, Katie Milne won the seat left vacant by National's Maureen Pugh. Milne defeated Labour's Rory Paterson and NZ First's Jamie Cleine, a former Buller mayor. She previously served as Federated Farmers president. In 2015 she was named Fonterra's Dairy Woman of the Year, and she won the Women of Influence rural award.
In Nelson, Blair Cameron won the electorate with a majority of 1210 votes. At the previous election he narrowly lost the seat to Labour's Rachel Boyack, by 26 votes, after special votes and recounts.
Several new candidates were selected for seats where incumbents had left. Emma Chatterton was selected for Papakura, vacated by Judith Collins' retirement. She had been a senior adviser to Erica Stanford. Matthew Paul was selected for Port Waikato after National's Andrew Bayly chose not to return. Jessica Rowe was selected to contest Kaipara ki Mahurangi after the incumbent, Chris Penk, quit Parliament.
The current Parliament has 123 MPs from six parliamentary parties, and 65 general electorate seats. The 2026 general election, held on Saturday 7 November, had 17 registered political parties and 530 candidates, according to the Electoral Commission.
