For official past election outcomes, use the Electoral Commission’s results archive. For a quick comparison of late campaign polls with those outcomes, Research Association New Zealand (RANZ) publishes tables covering polls fielded in the week before each of the last six elections. Those tables are useful for judging final-week estimates, but they are not a complete archive of every poll throughout each campaign.
Where to find election results and historical polls
Official results
Start with the Electoral Commission’s New Zealand Election Results archive when you need the official outcome. It lists general elections from 1996 onward and links to results before 1994, as well as by-elections and referenda. The Commission’s Participation in voting page also links to turnout statistics, election reports, and voter and non-voter surveys; its Election reports page indexes reports for recent general elections.
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Final-week poll comparisons
RANZ’s Political Polling resource provides comparison tables for the last six elections. The poll tables include only polls conducted within a week of election day, and a separate table shows percentage-point differences between those polls and the results. Use it to examine how close late polls were, not to reconstruct a campaign’s full polling history.
Finding polls from earlier in a campaign
The available sources do not establish a single comprehensive public archive containing every New Zealand political poll from every election. For a campaign chronology, trace each poll to its original pollster or media release and check its fieldwork dates and technical notes. RANZ’s tables alone cannot answer what every poll said over the full campaign.
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How to compare a poll with the election result
- Choose the matching official result. Use the Electoral Commission archive and compare like with like: party-vote estimates with official party-vote results, and electorate polling with electorate results.
- Record the poll’s identity and timing. Note the polling company, commissioning or publishing organisation, fieldwork dates, sample, mode, and population where disclosed. Use fieldwork dates rather than the release date, and note major events during that period. A company may conduct polls for different sponsors, so do not assume separate releases form one continuous series.
- Check who answered and how responses were handled. Identify whether the poll represents all eligible adults, enrolled voters, likely voters, decided voters, or another group. Check whether undecided respondents or people unwilling to state a preference are included or excluded; that choice affects what the headline percentages mean.
- Check the measure and party categories. Many political polls report party vote, not electorate vote. Keep categories and undecided handling consistent when making comparisons.
- Read the poll’s own uncertainty and methods notes. Consider sample size, weighting, mode, and pollster-specific methods before interpreting small gaps or changes. There is no single margin-of-error figure that can safely be applied to every historical poll; use the technical note for the specific poll.
- Separate the poll result from any average or projection. If using an average, state which polls it includes and how they are weighted. If using a seat projection, inspect the model assumptions rather than treating a party-vote percentage as a seat count.
Why party-vote polls are not seat forecasts
New Zealand’s mixed-member proportional (MMP) system makes the distinction between party vote and electorate results important. The party vote determines proportional allocation, while electorate victories also affect representation. A party that wins more electorate seats than its proportional entitlement can receive an overhang. Satherley, Greaves and Sporle’s 2023 article in the New Zealand Population Review gives the 2008 Māori Party as an example: its 2.4% party vote would have entitled it to three seats, but five electorate victories produced a two-seat overhang. A party-vote percentage on its own therefore does not tell you the final seat count.
RANZ’s endorsed interpretation guide describes a political poll as showing “how the election could go if held at the time the poll was conducted.” Treat it as a snapshot of intended support at the time respondents were surveyed, not automatically as a forecast of election day—especially when the poll was taken well before voting.
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What historical polling comparisons can tell you
The 2020 final-week comparison
RANZ’s 2020 retrospective lists both Newshub/Reid Research and TVOne/Colmar Brunton at Labour 46% and National 31% in their final-week polls. The election-night figures in the same comparison were Labour 49.1% and National 26.8%. The polls therefore showed a narrower Labour–National gap than the result: 15 percentage points in each poll, compared with 22.3 points in the election-night figures.
The same RANZ table lists ACT at 7% and 8% in the two polls versus 8.0% in the result, the Greens at 6% and 8% versus 7.6%, and NZ First at 3% in both polls versus 2.7%. These are comparisons of the figures reported in that retrospective; they do not establish why the differences occurred.
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Writing in October 2020, RANZ Fellow and Political Polling spokesperson Murray Campbell noted that both polls underestimated the Labour–National gap. The retrospective reports that almost two million people voted before election day, compared with 690,000 on election day, and discusses early voting as a possible contributor: by the time final polls were fielded, some respondents had already voted, and their stated intention could differ from the vote they had cast. This is a proposed explanation, not proof that early voting caused the polling miss.
Accuracy varies across elections
Satherley, Greaves and Sporle’s 2023 review reports that, between 2002 and 2017, the average party-vote difference between polls and election results was generally between 1 and 2 percentage points; the article attributes that historical comparison to RANZ. It also notes that in 2020 final polls overestimated National by 4 percentage points and underestimated Labour by 3. The broader comparison and the 2020 example show why one election should not be treated as a universal measure of polling accuracy. The authors also note that many polling companies explicitly say their polls are not intended to predict the election outcome.
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How to read poll averages and seat models
An average or projection is an additional layer of analysis, not an official result. Check its publication date, included polls, and weighting rules before comparing it with either another model or the eventual outcome.
For example, NZ Polls’ Average v1.0 methodology, published 1 September 2026, uses the six most recent eligible polls and applies recency and sample-size weights. Its listed limitations include not modelling house effects, mode effects, correlated errors, or electorate-level swings. It is a version-specific example of a poll-average method, not an official Electoral Commission archive or forecast. Its assumptions should not be generalized to other averages or models.
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A practical comparison checklist
- Are you comparing the same election and the same kind of measure?
- Who conducted, commissioned, and published each poll?
- When was the fieldwork, and how close was it to election day?
- What population was sampled, and what were the sample size and survey mode?
- How were undecided respondents and non-voters treated?
- Are the figures individual poll results, an average, or a seat model?
- Does the source provide a technical note or methodology that explains uncertainty and weighting?
- Are you describing a difference, or claiming to explain its cause? A causal explanation needs evidence beyond the fact that a poll and result differ.
For further New Zealand context, RANZ links interpretation resources and its 2020 retrospective from its Political polling page. The wider methodological discussion appears in Satherley, Greaves and Sporle’s 2023 Political polling in New Zealand.
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