IFES Election Guide - Country Profile: New Zealand

Country Profile:

Overview

Elections

News

Links

Region

Upcoming Elections

Parliamentary
2011
Referendum
2011

New Zealand
New Zealand
Region: Asia & Pacific

Description of government structure:

Chief of State: Queen ELIZABETH II *
Head of Government: Prime Minister John John KEYS
Assembly: New Zealand has a unicameral House of Representatives with 121 seats.

* The Queen is represented by Governor General Anand SATYANAND (since 23 August 2006).

Description of electoral system:

The Queen is hereditary.
The Prime Minister is appointed by the governor-general.**
In the House of Representatives, 70 members are elected by plurality vote in single-member constituencies to serve 3-year terms and 50 members are elected through a party-list proportional representation system to serve 3-year terms.***

** The leader of the majority party or the leader of a majority coalition is usually appointed prime minister.

*** The electoral system is MMP. The voter has two votes: one for a party, one for the respective single-member constituency. Seven constituencies are reserved to the Maori people. Once constituency seats are filled, PR list seats are allocated to each party until its overall seat share is proportional to its share of party votes. Parties must clear a national threshold of 5 percent or win at least one constituency seat in order to qualify for seats in the ordinal tier. If a party wins more seats in the nominal tier than it would have been entitled to based on its share of ordinal tier votes, it keeps these seats, known as "overhang."