National’s 2026 party list
National has released their 2026 party list. The top 23 are above. What is important is to try and work out the effective list – so you remove the MPs who are in safe National seats. When you do that, the effective list is:
- Nicola Willis, List
- Chris Bishop, Hutt South
- Paul Goldsmith, Epsom
- Gerry Brownlee, List
- Nancy Lu, List
- Dale Stephens,. Christchurch Central
- Mahesh Muralidhar, Tāmaki
- Katie Milne, West Coast-Tasman
- Angee Nicholas, Henderson
- Melissa Lee, Mt Albert
Of course some of those above could win their seats – these are just the non-safe seats.
To try and work out who gets in at what share of the party vote, I have done a table (as I have done for the last six elections), showing different scenarios. There are three main variables:
- What party vote does National get
- How much wasted (votes for parties that don’t make the threshold) vote is there
- How many electorates National wins
Assume 5% wasted vote
In 2023, 6.4% of the vote was wasted – as in went to parties that did not make Parliament. This meant National 38.1% of the overall vote was 40.3% of the effective vote, and they got 48 MPs.
This scenario assumes a 5% wasted vote. It also assumes National wins 37 electorate seats (it won 44 in 2023). On this scenario National gets one List MP at 30%, two at 31%, three at 32% and five at 33%.
Assume 3% wasted vote
In this scenario, I assume a 3% wasted vote, reflecting that TOP are currently polling over 5% and hence likely to be less wasted vote.
On this scenario National gets one List MP at 31%, three at 32% and four at 33%.
Assume 3% wasted vote and variable electorates won
Under this scenario, I assume that the lower the party vote for National, the fewer electorates it wins (based on applying party vote swings to the electorate vote).
At 38% National gets 48 seats – the same as in 2023. However they only get three List MPs as Port Waikato wasn’t counted on election night due to a candidate death, and on paper Wigram would be held by National on 38% on the new boundaries.
At 35%, National would lose two electorates, so hold 43 seats. This would get one List MP. But this is based on uniform swings, which never occur in reality.
One could have a situation where National gets 33% party vote, and holds just 35 electorates, so they would then get seven List MPs.