Election 2026: A stark choice between a left or right bloc. What you might be voting for

There are also many determinants in what happens after the election that remain hard to predict. Will Opportunity make it? Will there be an overhang, left or right, and to what degree? Will there be any list MPs for National?

About all that is certain is that it will be a three-headed governing partnership, perhaps even four-headed.

Let’s start with the left because there’s only one combination that can make the numbers work: a Labour-Green-Opportunity arrangement that may or may not need Te Pāti Māori.

Labour’s fiscal plan is so similar to National’s that it’s seen as an attempt to blunt attacks over how it might manage the government finances.

This has also left Labour with ongoing questions over whether there’s enough fiscal headroom for its policies, including in pay equity, the public service, Fair Pay Agreements and welfare.

Let’s assume that Labour leader Chris Hipkins would hold his ground in post-election talks and only introduce one new tax: a target capital gains tax.

Without cutting spending beyond what the coalition has planned (notwithstanding Labour’s intention to scrap Investment Boost), this would box his government into a fiscal corner, leaving minimal room for the Greens’ most expensive policies for job creation, free healthcare, higher child payments, and income tax changes.

These would have all been funded through the wealth tax that Hipkins has repeatedly vetoed.

Labour could walk back some of its campaign policies to free up some cash, but at the risk of upsetting Labour supporters who voted in the hope for what was axed.

Hipkins would more easily make room for Opportunity’s less pricey bottom lines:

Opportunity has a high price tag for some of its policies in these areas – such as lifting health funding from 7.4% to 9% of GDP – but these can be side-stepped because its bottom lines contain no such detail.

This bloc is potentially more likely than the right (where Act opposes government intervention) to step into the market when it comes to supermarket and energy, though they differ on the best way to do so.

Other areas where the left bloc parties broadly align, with minimal fiscal impact, include:

There are also many policies the Greens and Opportunity could negotiate that are not in Labour’s manifesto:

Law and order is generally an area where the Greens and Opportunity could push Labour, but expanding specialist courts, such as Alcohol and Other Drug Treatment Courts, would come with a hefty price tag.

It would be inexpensive, though, to axe the coalition’s Three Strikes and reverse its sentencing law reforms. This could also free up some fiscal headroom by weakening the ongoing need to build more prison beds.

Hipkins would be cautious, though, given how voters viewed Labour’s law and order record in the 2023 campaign. He may be similarly cautious on anything resembling co-governance.

The Greens and Opportunity could also push Labour to commit to offsetting New Zealand’s carbon emissions according to the Paris Agreement.

This could mean sending $5 billion offshore, though not until the early 2030s.

One of the coalition’s main pitches for re-election is its management of the books, including bending down the spending trajectory it inherited (Labour’s fiscal plan now seeks a similar fiscal track).

A re-elected coalition would likely commit to no new taxes, a continuation of pro-development planning and regulatory reforms, and an ongoing shrinking of the public service while trying to minimise frontline impacts.

One clear point of difference between the blocs is that National, Act and NZ First have all agreed on zero offshore Paris Agreement payments.

Another is how the coalition is tightening how the Treaty of Waitangi is relevant in specific statues; Act and NZ First object to how the judiciary is interpreting the Treaty, and they also want to abolish the Waitangi Tribunal.

This is not territory National would necessarily tread if it didn’t have to compromise, as National’s deputy Nicola Willis has said, nor is it unwilling to tread there.

All coalition parties disagree with co-governance, though National leader Christopher Luxon has repeatedly stressed his support for “by Māori, for Māori”.

The parties agree broadly on welfare and law and order, but the fiscal circumstances are restricting.

NZ First wants longer mandatory minimum sentences for “serious violent and sexual offenders”, but this would increase the need for more prison beds.

This was already an issue this term, when the National-NZ First agreement committed to abolishing concurrent sentences in certain circumstances; this was amended because it might have doubled the prison population.

Resourcing for police is also something NZ First has prioritised, but this also comes with a price tag. This year’s Budget already injected $100 million into NZ Police over two years to prevent what Treasury called a “fiscal cliff”.

The issue (which a left governing bloc would also face) has just been delayed rather than resolved.

Coalition agreements inevitably require the swallowing of proverbial dead rats, but predicting what they might be is anyone’s guess.

There are many areas of ideological tension between Act and NZ First where rodential consumption might be required.

Among them are asset sales, government handouts for failing businesses, foreign ownership, and whether to break up the supermarket duopoly or the energy gentailers, though there is broad agreement on the benefits of more competition.

It’s fair to say that NZ First’s wish to buy back the BNZ, with a price tag in the many billions of dollars, looks like a step too far for Act and National.

NZ First leader Winston Peters doesn’t do bottom lines, but has a record of digging in on issues where Act and National would like movement, such as lifting the superannuation eligibility age.

He has already signalled fierce resistance to any cuts to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade’s baseline funding, or swapping foreign aid money to boost Pharmac’s medicines budget.

He has also talked up cutting the company tax rate to 20% for small- to medium-sized businesses, part of a vaguer plan to double the economy by 2050 that includes a sovereign wealth fund. National and Act have not embraced these policies.

Act leader David Seymour has prioritised constitutional reform, including narrower and more targeted applications of the Treaty. National and NZ First may well be open to this, having been part of a coalition Government that passed laws overturning judicial rulings it did not agree with.

Seymour may find it harder to push through his tax-free KiwiSaver returns, which he has also prioritised; National and NZ First both want to make it compulsory for workers, and enrolment at birth with a government contribution.

A coalition with a weaker National Party, relative to its coalition partners, could translate to bigger movements in areas where NZ First and Act agree, but where National is more cautious.

That includes climate policy – where Act and NZ First want to take New Zealand out of the Paris Accord – Crown-Māori issues including the fate of the Waitangi Tribunal, and culture war or anti-woke issues where NZ First has a constituency and Act may not oppose.

A weaker National might not be an issue, if the party was returned with all of its senior list MPs and a party vote in the 30s.

National might also be in the mid-20s to high-20s, and Luxon without Nicola Willis, Chris Bishop, Paul Goldsmith and Gerry Brownlee.

Who would be Finance Minister in Willis’ absence? Would the Prime Ministership be shared, as the deputy role this term was shared?

Would Luxon last the term? One of the challenges of rolling him has been no obvious successor, but that may be less of an issue if Willis and Bishop aren’t there but Erica Stanford, who has a safe blue seat, is.

And if Luxon is replaced, what happens to the coalition agreements he’d have signed?

There’s also a scenario where the right bloc needs Opportunity, a four-headed arrangement that includes a new party with no experience in Parliament.

That makes it an unknown quantity, though Opportunity has mitigated this by releasing bottom lines.

Of those, a cap on political donations, phasing out bottom trawling and restoring climate credibility would be the thorny issues where four-party agreement on the right might be scarce.

There’s also the tension between Opportunity and NZ First, most recently with NZ First candidate Michael Laws’ comments that have been widely condemned as sexist and misogynistic. Opportunity leader Qiulae Wong has described NZ First’s rhetoric on gender and diversity is dangerous and divisive.

She also said she would rather walk away from negotiations than support a bill to select committee that she strongly disagreed with, such as one abolishing the Waitangi Tribunal.

But she hasn’t ruled out working with anyone.

On the possibility of supporting the coalition, she has sought to position Opportunity as a voice for the environment, honouring the Treaty, and standing up to what she calls the “politics of division”.

While it might be hard to see this four-party arrangement as workable, it shouldn’t be shelved as impossible. The same question was asked of NZ First and Act, who both contributed to what many were sceptical about: a stable government that lasted the term.

Negotiations in all of these scenarios, with the collapse of the purple vote, would likely be complex and lengthy.

Hipkins has promised negotiations will be wrapped up by Christmas. Luxon said it will take as long as it takes.

Who wins, how long it takes, and what emerges from negotiations will all unravel in the coming weeks.

Derek Cheng is a senior journalist who started at the Herald in 2004. He has worked several stints in the press gallery team and is a former deputy political editor.