Election 2026

Tonight on the Huddle, Josie Pagani and Trish Sherson join Heather du Plessis-Allan for a pre-election special.
On the table today: Should Chris Luxon be worried about his position as Prime Minister?
Will the spit-vote tactic cost National significant negotiating power?
And Heather asks our guests about their picks for campaign highlights, and lowlights.
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With election day tomorrow, how would you rate the campaign?
It feels to me like we’ve been in campaign mode for the whole year. I couldn’t even bring myself to watch TV1's People’s Debate last night all the way through to the end.
Elections are never an overly positive affair, but this campaign has been pretty awful.
So much so, that I reckon a lot of people will have forgotten a lot of the policies that have been trotted out.
And I’m not the only one thinking it’s been a bit of a cluster.
Some of the political leaders don’t think it’s been all that great, either.
Labour leader Chris Hipkins says National has run the most negative campaign of any first-term Government. And the results of a new study would suggest he’s right on that.
The Internet, Social Media and Politics Research Lab at Victoria University has done some analysis and has found that 65 percent of National’s Facebook posts have been negative.
A lot of that will have come from the relentless online attacks the party has made on Greens co-leader Chlöe Swarbrick.
It’s been so relentless, that Swarbrick herself has said that she’s effectively being cyber-bullied by National.
I agree with her. Bearing in mind too that it was only a few weeks ago when National’s Selwyn MP Nicola Grigg went public with some of the online bullying she’s been dealing with.
Since then, National has continued having a go at Chlöe online. Using unflattering photos, all of that. Just really nasty stuff.
Not that Labour has been squeaky clean, either.
Because the study which has found that 65 percent of National’s Facebook posts have been negative also found that just over 50 percent of Labour’s posts have been negative too.
So Chris Hipkins may be right when he says it’s been the most negative campaign ever by a first-term Government. But there’s a bit of the old pot calling the kettle going on.
Then we get to how Winston Peters feels the campaign has gone.
The NZ First leader thinks it’s the worst one he’s ever seen. He’s seen a few and is describing this one as a circus. Criticising the party leaders who have been clamouring to the gelato shop in Christchurch to try the gelato flavour named after them.
He’s been saying: “It's just astonishing what's happened here. It's turned into, sadly, a circus. This idea of having an ice cream poll and every leader dutifully turning up, subservient as it is, to such an unscientific, unprofessional thing is beyond me.”
He goes on: “And then you've got people petting dogs. I love dogs, but you know, going around petting dogs can be very dangerous sometimes, you pat the wrong dog.
“They’re talking about a cost of living crisis, and they’re flipping hamburgers.”
He’s talking there about Christopher Luxon and David Seymour who have both been filmed in the past week making burgers.
I don’t get too upset about that kind of thing. It’s just politicians being politicians.
But I do think that it’s a campaign we’ll all be pleased to see the end of. For me, it’s been too long and too negative, with too many debates.
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Well, the polls close at 7pm tomorrow, fat orange pens notwithstanding, and the votes will be counted. By the time I'm back here on Monday, we should have a fair idea of what the government for the next three years could look like. Notice I have used a conditional sentence: should, could, because really, who would know if you look at the polls?
It's been a funny old election. At least it'll be interesting – the electorate battles, there are many of those that are going to be fascinating. I will be glued to ZB throughout the evening. This is one of the times when you think, oh, wish I could be working on Election Night. It's great being part of the team that brings you results. But the next best thing is being able to hear the fruits of everybody's hard work, so I'll be listening to ZB – I'll find that more interesting than the television coverage.
And there were so many undecided voters, myself included. I think the most helpful comment came from a texter a couple of weeks ago who said, "rule out who you simply cannot vote for and tick the box for who's left", which is advice I've heard before, but that text came at a time when I needed to hear it. Are you still undecided? I think I'm clear now, pretty clear now.
Are you still undecided? Have you changed your mind over the course of the election campaign? And when it comes to the election campaigns, who in your mind ran the best one? As far as I'm concerned, National and Labour ran terrible campaigns, absolutely awful. Boring, repetitive, uninspiring, negative, nasty.
Losing Chris Bishop as campaign manager as punishment – never have the lines "this is going to hurt you more than it's going to hurt me" or "this is going to hurt me more than it's going to hurt you", never have they rung more true, as you dump Chris Bishop as campaign manager for being involved in the attempted coup. And that's cost National. I don't think Simeon Brown will be getting another call up. The National campaign was so bad that Harry Mowbray and Don Brash decided to put down the lattes and take over the campaign. And then core voting messages were a distraction. Split voting: no, yes, no, yes. To convince voters you're a strong and stable party, surely you need your supporters to be harmonising and singing from the same song sheet. So no, absolutely dreadful.
Their coalition partner hasn't helped them either. ACT's been very sensible, they've learnt their lesson from the last campaign, but ew, Michael Laws, ew. But then Labour's coalition partners haven't helped them either. The Greens and Te Pāti Māori might have policies that their voters support and that they believe in and that they think will reduce the impact of gangs and the misery they wreak by engaging with the gangs. But good solid swing voters get mightily spooked by soft on gangs policies and Chris Hipkins had to come out all puffed of chest and steely of jaw to try and right the ship.
No, the minor parties have run relatively good campaigns: ACT, the Greens, Opportunity, they've stuck solidly to their guns. They probably will get over, just. But for if you're a centre swing voter, it's been pretty uninspiring.
When it comes to voting, are you pretty clear? Have you been clear all the way through? What was the pivotal moment of the campaign for you, or was it simply taking the advice of my texter: ruling out the parties you simply cannot, cannot bring yourself to vote for and ticking the box for what's left?
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This week's Politics Friday Election Special focused on the Christchurch East electorate.
The candidates, National's Alexandra Davids and Labour's Reuben Davidson, made their pitch to become the next local MP.
They discussed their backgrounds before entering politics and outlined how they would tackle the key issues facing the electorate, including homelessness, economic development, and the amount of vape shops around schools.
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A political commentator is struggling to predict the outcome of the election.
Election Day is tomorrow, and thousands of votes have already been cast.
Polls released throughout the campaign have fluctuated, no party showing a clear lead across all of the polls.
Brigitte Morten told Ryan Bridge the election is all over the place.
She says something that's also different now is it's not just a red-blue race, we're talking about individual electorate seats having a massive impact.
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