Overseas votes flipped Tāmaki Makaurau in 2023 as enrolments now surge
August 19, 2026
Summarised by Centrist
Overseas votes were decisive in the extraordinarily close 2023 contest for Tāmaki Makaurau, where Te Pāti Māori’s Takutai Kemp defeated Labour’s Peeni Henare by 42 votes. The number of overseas voters enrolled in the electorate has now climbed to 1,920.
Across all seven Māori electorates, overseas enrolments have risen 67 percent since the last election, increasing from 6,891 to 11,511 by 1 July.
The official 2023 voting-place breakdown shows Kemp received 252 overseas candidate votes, including Defence Force votes, while Henare received 166.
That gave Kemp an 86-vote advantage among those ballots, twice her final majority of 42.
Without that overseas category, Henare would have led Kemp by 44 votes. The ballots therefore changed the result and helped Te Pāti Māori take the electorate from Labour.
The potential overseas voting bloc has since grown considerably.
Tāmaki Makaurau now has the largest number of overseas enrolments among the Māori electorates. Waiariki recorded the biggest numerical increase since 2023, gaining 820 enrolled voters.
Queensland-based enrolment advocates Rachael Marie Johnstone and Nicole Orzecki told RNZ they had noticed greater political engagement among Māori living in Australia, particularly younger people.
Orzecki attributed that interest to political conflict in New Zealand, growing Māori mobilisation and a Parliament that she said now appeared more representative.
“If anything, I feel more activated in the most recent couple of years than I probably have my entire life,” she said.
She said voting allowed Māori living overseas to retain a say in the future of a country to which they or their whānau might eventually return.
New Zealand citizens must now have visited within the past three years, while qualifying residents must have visited within the past 12 months.
Temporary rules in 2023 extended those periods to six and four years respectively.
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