A tight election looms in New Zealand. This time, overseas voters could be bad news for the big parties

New Zealander Kris Taute has lived in Australia for 15 years, but his head and heart are turning towards his home country and a looming general election that could be influenced by a large block of overseas voters.

From across the Tasman Sea, Taute has felt growing frustration at New Zealand’s centre-right coalition government, and analysts believe large numbers of New Zealanders who have left the country since they came to power in 2023 may be poised to vent their grievances at the ballot box in November.

“I see a lot of poverty among families and friends, and inequality … stuff that needs to be addressed,” Taute, who is Māori, tells the Guardian. He says the government’s removal of “quite a lot of Māori rights” troubles him deeply, and is why he’s more motivated to vote in this election.

Akhil Donthireddy moved to Melbourne last year after struggling to secure a job in New Zealand. The 29-year-old says voting enables to him to shape a future he wants to see, and he plans to vote for the Green party. “If the outlook for the future is hopeful, then I would consider moving back”, he says.

Polls show the right- and left-leaning coalition blocs will fight one of the tightest elections in years, so votes from New Zealanders abroad like Taute – who plans to vote for Labour or Te Pāti Māori (the Māori party) – could help shape the outcome on 7 November.

Stats NZ estimates there are about one million New Zealanders living overseas. Offshore voter enrolments are rising – currently – 104,164 – up a whopping 60% compared to the same point in the 2023 election cycle, according to the latest electoral commission data.

New Zealand’s overseas votes form part of a larger group called “special votes”. Special votes typically favour leftwing minor parties, says Lara Greaves, a political scientist at Victoria University of Wellington. In 2023, special votes resulted in Te Pāti Māori and the Greens gaining three seats between them.

“If I had to guess where the overseas vote would go this election … it will go to the minor parties, because they are all offering alternative visions for New Zealand,” Greaves says, adding “a lot of them” would be left-leaning.

“That’s been the conventional wisdom and I can see an argument for that this time around”, she says.

That would place the current government in a danger zone. The latest 1News Verian poll shows support for the two major parties at 28% each, and the Greens surging to their highest ever result of 16%. Other minor parties are polling above the 5% threshold of seats needed to enter parliament under New Zealand’s mixed member proportional (MMP) system.

If major parties do not get enough votes to form a government, minor parties can become “kingmakers”, with the power to decide who will govern.

Tracey Lee runs Every Kiwi Vote Counts, a non-partisan initiative to encourage overseas voting. With the polls so close, Lee believes overseas votes can “legitimately have an impact” and “a fraction of a percentage point can become a decider,” she says.

In a sign of how important that growing overseas voting bloc is, leaders of the prominent political parties will speak to offshore New Zealanders directly in a virtual town hall next month – a first for the country.

Record exodus

Australia is home to the biggest NZ diaspora. Those numbers have surged in recent years as NZ experienced record high departures of its citizens across the Tasman, many escaping a weak labour market, sluggish economy and high living costs. About 74,000 chose to move to Australia since the 2023 election adding to the roughly 600,000 New Zealanders already living there.

Some left because it seemed to be “the only option available to them to find work and experience”, Lee says. “They’d love to come home and voting is a way to ensure they’re part of making it a place they can come home to.”

Greaves says there is a disgruntled bloc of voters who left the country because they could not see a future for themselves. “There is a possibility that a good chunk of that bigger group that have now moved overseas are quite oppositional or quite opposed to what the government has been doing and do feel a level of spite.”

Australian-based voters told the Guardian of their desire to retain their voice in New Zealand’s election – either to help their families, or to shape the country for their possible return.

Onkar Singh has lived in Melbourne for more than 20 years and while he has no plans to return to New Zealand, he wants to keep the option open. Singh did not wish to disclose who he would vote for but said members of his New Zealand-Punjabi community “were happy with the current government”.

Most of those the Guardian spoke with, however, would be voting for change.

For Melbourne-based lawyer, Joseph Nunweek, a move back to New Zealand is likely. Despite living in Australia since 2014, he feels a responsibility to vote for policies that would support his family and community back home, particularly in healthcare, renewable energy and foreign policy. “Washing your hands of [the election] is not really an option,” he says.

Lee argues the “mega-electorate” living abroad should no longer be ignored.

“We’ve had the right to vote [overseas] since 1956, but it’s slightly frowned upon: ‘you left, it’s not your business’ is the unwritten rule,” she says. “But … democracy only works if we are all part of it.”