For official New Zealand election outcomes, start with the Electoral Commission’s New Zealand Election Results archive. To compare late-campaign polling with those results, use Research Association New Zealand’s (RANZ) historical political-polling tables—but note that they cover polls conducted in the week before each election, not every poll from the full campaign. Treat each poll as a dated snapshot of reported voting intention, not automatically as a forecast of election day.
Where to find historical New Zealand election polls
Official election outcomes
The Electoral Commission archive is the primary source for the result against which a poll should be compared. It lists general-election results from 1996 onward and links to results before 1994, as well as by-elections and referenda: New Zealand Election Results. The Commission also provides links to turnout statistics, election reports, and voter and non-voter surveys through its participation in voting page and election reports index.
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Final-week poll comparisons
RANZ’s Political Polling resource presents comparisons for the last six elections, including election results, polls conducted during the week before election day, and percentage-point differences. It is useful for assessing late polls, but it is not a comprehensive archive of all polling during those campaigns.
Interpretation and aggregation resources
RANZ links to a guide to understanding and reporting public opinion polling in New Zealand and describes political polls as showing “how the election could go if held at the time the poll was conducted”: RANZ Political polling. For wider context, Satherley, Greaves and Sporle’s 2023 article, Political polling in New Zealand, discusses how party-vote polls should be interpreted in the country’s MMP system.
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If you consult a poll average or seat projection, check the method and its publication date. As a version-specific example, NZ Polls’ Average v1.0 methodology, published 1 September 2026, uses the six most recent eligible polls with recency and sample-size weighting. Its stated limitations include not accounting for house effects, mode effects, correlated errors, or electorate-level swings; it is not an official archive or Electoral Commission forecast. See the NZ Polls methodology.
How to read a poll before comparing it with an election result
- Identify the pollster and sponsor. Name both the organisation that conducted the poll and the organisation that commissioned or published it. A polling company may produce surveys for different sponsors, so do not assume that results form one uninterrupted series. Satherley, Greaves and Sporle’s 2023 review names Verian (formerly Kantar Public/Colmar Brunton), Reid Research, Roy Morgan, Curia, and Talbot-Mills (formerly UMR) among the main companies.
- Use the fieldwork dates. A poll describes responses collected over a period, which may differ from its publication date. Where the original release provides them, record its sample, fieldwork dates, survey mode, and target population. If two polls’ fieldwork overlaps, or major events occurred during collection, note that context rather than treating publication dates as the whole timeline.
- Check who the figures represent. Look for whether the poll covers 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, excluded, or handled separately; that affects what the headline percentages mean.
- Match the measure to the result. Many New Zealand political polls report party vote, not electorate vote. Under MMP, party votes determine proportional allocation, while electorate victories also affect representation. A party can win more electorate seats than its party-vote share would otherwise provide, producing an overhang. Satherley, Greaves and Sporle give the 2008 Māori Party as an example: its 2.4% party vote would have entitled it to three seats, but five electorate wins resulted in a two-seat overhang. A party-vote percentage on its own is therefore not a seat count.
- Put small movements in context. A narrow lead or a small change between polls should not be read as a certain shift in public opinion without considering sample size, uncertainty, survey mode, weighting, and pollster-specific methods. There is no single margin-of-error figure established for every historical poll; consult the poll’s own technical note.
- Compare like with like. Compare party-vote estimates with official party-vote results, and electorate polling with electorate results. Keep party categories and the treatment of undecided respondents consistent. If using an average, state which polls it includes and how it weights them.
- Separate the result from explanations for it. It is fair to describe how poll figures differed from the final result. Claims that late opinion change, turnout patterns, or response bias caused the difference require separate evidence and attribution.
What final-week comparisons can—and cannot—tell you
RANZ’s tables are suited to asking how close polls conducted shortly before an election were to the outcome. 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, attributing the underlying comparison to RANZ. That historical summary does not mean every poll, party, or election fell within that range.
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The 2020 election illustrates why the poll figures and result should be read side by side. In RANZ’s final-week comparison, both Newshub/Reid Research and TVOne/Colmar Brunton reported Labour at 46% and National at 31%. The election-night results in the same RANZ table were Labour 49.1% and National 26.8%. The polls also listed ACT at 7% and 8% against an 8.0% result, the Greens at 6% and 8% against 7.6%, and NZ First at 3% in both polls against 2.7%.
Satherley, Greaves and Sporle summarize the 2020 final polls as overestimating National by 4 percentage points and underestimating Labour by 3 percentage points. In an October 2020 retrospective, RANZ Fellow and Political Polling spokesperson Murray Campbell noted that the polls shared an underestimation of the Labour–National gap. Campbell pointed to early voting as a possible contributor: almost 2 million people voted before election day, compared with 690,000 on the day itself. By the time final polls were fielded, some respondents had already voted, and their stated preference might differ from the vote they had cast. RANZ presented this as a possible explanation, not proof that advance voting alone caused the polling difference. See the RANZ 2020 election retrospective.
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Finding a fuller campaign chronology
No single comprehensive, authoritative public archive of every New Zealand political poll from every past election is established by the sources cited here. RANZ’s election comparison tables are explicitly limited to polls conducted in the week before election day. For a full campaign timeline, trace each poll to its original pollster or media release and verify its fieldwork dates, sponsor, population, and methodological notes there. The RANZ tables alone cannot answer what every poll said throughout a campaign.
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