New Zealand general election, 2017

Election date

Unless an early election is called or the election date is set to circumvent holding a by-election, a general election is held every three years. The last election was held on Saturday, 20 September 2014.

The Governor-General must issue writs for an election within seven days of the expiration or dissolution of the current Parliament. Under section 17 of the Constitution Act 1986, Parliament expires three years "from the day fixed for the return of the writs issued for the last preceding general election of members of the House of Representatives, and no longer." The writs for the 2014 election were returned on 10 October 2014, a day late due to a judicial recount of the Te Tai Tokerau electorate. As a result, the 51st Parliament will expire, if not dissolved earlier, on Tuesday, 10 October 2017. Consequently, the last day for issuance of writs of election is 17 October 2017. The writs must be returned within 50 days of their issuance (save for any judicial recount or death of a candidate), which will be Wednesday, 6 December 2017. Because polling day must be a Saturday and two weeks is generally required for the counting of special votes, the last possible date for the next general election is Saturday, 18 November 2017.

On 1 February 2017, Prime Minister Bill English announced that the election would be held on Saturday 23 September 2017. This will be the first election that both major parties, Labour and National are contesting under new leadership since 1990.

Key dates relating to the general election will typically be as follows:

Electorate boundaries

Electorates in the election will be the same as at the 2014 election. New boundaries are not due until early 2019, after the 2018 census.

Electoral law changes

As of March 2017, the Electoral Amendment Bill and the Broadcasting (Election Programmes and Election Advertising) Amendment Bill are before Parliament, proposing to make changes to the electoral law. Changes include the following:

Marginal seats in 2014

At the 2014 general election, the following seats were won with a plurality of less than 1000 votes.

Retiring MPs

Fourteen existing Members of Parliament have announced that they will not stand for re-election.

List-only MPs

Contesting parties and candidates

Political parties registered with the Electoral Commission on Writ Day can contest the general election as a party. Each such party can submit a party list to contest the party vote, and can have a party election-expenses limit in addition to limits on individual candidates' campaigns. As of 6 March 2017, fourteen political parties are registered and can contend the general election.

Campaign expense limits and broadcasting allocations

During the three month regulated period prior to election day (i.e. 23 June to 22 September 2017), parties and candidates have limits on how much they may spend on election campaigning. It is illegal in New Zealand to campaign on election day itself.

For the 2017 election, every registered party contending the party vote is permitted to spend $1,115,000 plus $26,200 per electorate candidate on election campaigning during the regulated period, excluding radio and television campaigning (broadcasting funding is allocated separately). A party contesting all 71 electorates is therefore permitted to spend $2,975,200 on election campaigning. All electorate candidates are permitted to spend $26,200 each on campaigning over and above their party's allocation.

Registered parties are allocated a separate broadcasting budget for radio and television campaigning. Only money from the broadcasting allocation can be used to purchase airtime; the actual production costs of advertisements can come from the general election expenses budget. The Electoral Commission sets the amount of broadcasting funds each party get; generally the allocation is based on the number of seats in the current Parliament, previous election results, and support in opinion polls.

Third party promoters, such as trade unions and lobby groups, can campaign during the regulated period. The maximum expense limit is $315,000 for those promoters registered with the Electoral Commission, and $12,600 for unregistered promoters.

All campaign expense limits are inclusive of GST.

Opinion polling

Opinion polls have been undertaken periodically since the 2014 election by Fairfax Media, MediaWorks New Zealand, The New Zealand Herald, Roy Morgan Research, and Television New Zealand. The graph on the left below shows the collated results of all five polls for parties that polled above the 5% electoral threshold at the 2014 election; The graph on the right shows results for parties that polled between 1% and 4.9%, or won an electorate seat, at the 2014 election.