New Zealand general election, 2017

2014 ←

23 September 2017

→ 2020 or earlier

All 120 seats (plus any overhang) in the House of Representatives 61 seats needed for a majority

Opinion polls

Leader	Bill English	Andrew Little	James Shaw / Metiria Turei
Party	National	Labour	Green
Leader since	2016	2014	2015 / 2009
Leader's seat	List	List	List / List
Last election	60 seats, 47.04%	32 seats, 25.13%	14 seats, 10.70%
Current seats	59	32	14
Seats needed	2	29	47


Leader	Winston Peters	Te Ururoa Flavell / Marama Fox	David Seymour
Party	NZ First	Māori	ACT
Leader since	1993 (party foundation)	2013 / 2014	2014
Leader's seat	Northland	Waiariki / List	Epsom
Last election	11 seats, 8.66%	2 seats, 1.32%	1 seat, 0.69%
Current seats	12	2	1
Seats needed	49	59	60


Leader	Peter Dunne
Party	United Future
Leader since	2002 (party foundation)
Leader's seat	Ōhāriu
Last election	1 seat, 0.22%
Current seats	1
Seats needed	60

Incumbent Prime Minister

Bill English
National

The 2017 New Zealand general election is scheduled to be held on Saturday 23 September 2017 to determine the membership of the 52nd New Zealand Parliament. The current Parliament was elected on Saturday, 20 September 2014.

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.

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

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.

As of February 2017^[update], 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:

...
Wikipedia