National and Labour finished election night level on the party vote: RNZ reported "Labour on 29.3% and National on 29.3%." Together that is 58.6%, the lowest combined share in MMP history; the previous low was 62%, in 1996. National is down from 38.1% in 2023. These are preliminary figures from a count RNZ put at 98.5%.
The seats do not tie, and the sources we opened do not say why level votes give National a seven-seat lead. NZ Herald projected, with 97.6% counted, 42 seats for National and 35 for Labour. Add ACT on 13 and NZ First on 12 and the right reaches 67. Labour with the Greens (16) and Te Pāti Māori (5) reaches 56, and Opportunity holds seven. ABC reports that the National-ACT-NZ First bloc is projected to win 67 of 131 seats, one more than the 66 needed. That is a margin of a single seat.
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon says National has a pathway to forming the next government but that it is too close to call. NZ Herald reports that the government will operate in caretaker mode until the final count on 27 November.
The idea: Mosca and the political formula
Gaetano Mosca (our essay on him has the longer account) set out his best-known argument in Elementi di scienza politica (1896), later translated as The Ruling Class. In Sociopedia's summary, he believed that every society has an organised minority that rules over an unorganised majority. That minority, the summary adds, legitimises its power by invoking an abstract principle he called a political formula.
Mosca's formula explains the one live claim here. National cannot say it is the more popular party, since the two are level. Its claim to govern rests on a rule instead: the bloc that can command a majority of seats governs. RNZ's figures show why popularity settles nothing. The two big parties fell as ACT and NZ First gained and Opportunity crossed the 5% threshold to enter Parliament for the first time, so the mandate is spread across seven parties and the rule decides which of them may be added together.
The other side, and the limit of the idea
Our reading is that the arithmetic is the strongest objection. Sixty-seven seats against 56 is a majority, and on that view nothing is being justified after the fact: the bloc simply won.
Mosca also breaks down at one point. His minority is organised and the majority is not. Here the blocs are named parties that voters chose among, and the count is public. So the formula is not hiding a ruling few; it is the ordinary rule of a parliament. Our view: the rule holds, and the fight over legitimacy will be decided on 27 November, not on election night.
What is still unknown
The special votes are disputed, and that dispute matters in a one-seat contest. RNZ reports that the Electoral Commission "had forecast about 700,000 special votes", while Luxon puts the figure at "about 300,000 special votes." ABC says about 400,000, including overseas votes, remain to be processed. The figures differ and the sources do not reconcile them; the final count will. NZ Herald reports that late and special votes are expected to favour the left.
Watch for: the special-vote tally, and whether it takes National, ACT and NZ First below 67 seats before 27 November.
Cover image: The Beehive and Parliament House, Wellington, May 2026. Photo: Jakob (TheLoyalOrder) / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0.