Election signs in New Zealand’s
2017 mixed member proportional
(MMP) general election

New Zealand’s eighth general election under the country's mixed member proportional (MMP) representation electoral system was held on 23 September 2017. Although the National Party won the largest share of the party votes cast in the 2017 general election, two of its governing-partner parties during the previous nine years – the Maori and United Future parties – did not win any seats in Parliament. This left the National Party with just one ally in the House of Representatives (namely, the ACT party, which won only one seat), and together the two parties had only 57 of the 120 seats in Parliament. This enabled the Labour, New Zealand First, and Green parties (with a combined total of 63 seats) to form a government led by Jacinda Ardern, who had assumed the leadership of the Labour Party less than eight weeks before the general election. Consequently, the 2017 New Zealand general election resulted in an historic first under the country’s proportional representation electoral system: the party with the largest number of votes and the largest number of seats in Parliament was not part of the government that took office after the election.