Its hold on provincial New Zealand is more than 10 to one over Labour, which has 40-plus urban electorate and list Members of Parliament.
Over half of National’s 55 MPs represent electorates with large rural areas, whereas the ruling Labour Party draws its support from Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch, Dunedin, Napier and Palmerston North.
A number of new faces will replace National’s 10 resignations and two expulsions – Jami-Lee Ross and Andrew Falloon.
Half of the exiting MPs were in rural or regional electorates: Hamish Walker (Clutha-Southland), Sarah Dowie (Invercargill), Nathan Guy (Otaki), Falloon (Rangitata), Amy Adams (Selwyn), and Alastair Scott (Wairarapa).
Five of those seats have strong National majorities – as high as 19,640 for Selwyn, where former reporter and political adviser Nicola Grigg has been selected to replace Adams.
In the marginal seat of Wairarapa sheep and beef farmer Mike Butterick has been selected by National to replace MP Alastair Scott, who is standing down. Scott’s majority in 2017 was 2872 votes.
Wairarapa will be a keen three-way contest between newcomer Butterick, Labour list MP Keiran McAnulty and NZ First list MP Ron Mark.
Penny Simmonds, National’s new candidate for the seat of Invercargill, is the long-serving chief executive of the Southern Institute of Technology.
Former Air Force officer Tim Costley is the National candidate for Otaki, standing to replace former Primary Industries Minister Guy.
Queenstown lawyer Joseph Mooney is the new National candidate for Southland, one of the largest electorates in the country with significant boundary changes.
The former electorate of Clutha-Southland has been enlarged with the addition of western Southland and the upper Clutha while the lower Clutha district is now part of the recently re-drawn and newly named Taieri electorate.
Taieri, also containing most of the Labour stronghold of Dunedin South, now takes in Milton, Balclutha and Lawrence districts.
National’s selection is Liam Kernaghan, a former senior political advisor to ex-party leader Simon Bridges, while Labour has selected mother-of-three and former journalist Ingrid Leary to replace four-term MP Clare Curran.
NZ First list MP and primary industries spokesman Mark Patterson, a sheep farmer, will also contest Taieri.
National’s 2017 majorities in the provincial seats were such that most sitting MPs should only fear an unprecedented swing to Labour outside the cities.
But there were some smaller margins: Agriculture spokesman David Bennett in Hamilton East (5810); veteran politician Nick Smith in Nelson (4283); newcomer Matt King in Northland (1389); Lawrence Yule in Tukituki (2813) in the Wairarapa electorate as mentioned; and Harete Hipango in Whanganui (1706).
The Northland electorate is shaping up as a crucial battleground for the outcome of the election.
King won the seat in 2017 from New Zealand First leader Winston Peters and is up against NZ First showman Shane Jones this time. Labour list MP Willow-Jean Prime will contest again.
Going on sample polling so far, NZ First may need Jones to win the electorate for the party to make it back to Parliament, which would be a first for him despite several attempts.
He has been a list MP for four terms, three with Labour and one NZ First.
King is a farmer and a former police detective and is the party’s regional development spokesman for the North Island.
Jones has been able to splash the cash around Northland from the government’s $3 billion Provincial Growth Fund and will rely on voters wanting more of the same.
Among the regional MPs in the strongest positions for National, based on the 2017 results, are Mark Mitchell in Rodney (19,561), now renamed Whangaparaoa; Andrew Bayly in Hunua (19,443), now renamed Port Waikato; Todd Muller in Bay of Plenty (13,996); and electorate neighbour Scott Simpson in Coromandel (14,326).
At the time of writing National had not selected its candidate for the assumed safe seat of Rangitata nor published its list of candidates.
In the 2017 general election total valid votes cast were 2.592 million, of which the National Party got 44.45%, the Labour Party 36.89%, New Zealand First 7.2%, the Green Party 6.27% and ACT 0.5%.
Seats in parliament were initially National 56, down four from the 2014 election, Labour 46 (+14), NZ First 9 (-2), Greens 8 (-6) and ACT one.
A total of approximately 120,000 votes were cast for the 11 parties that did not make it into Parliament, and a further 38,000 votes were informal and disallowed.
The total number of votes cast in 2017 was 2.63m, with a turnout of just under 80% of the 3.3m eligible to vote.
This year the Electoral Commission estimates that 3.77m people are eligible and the enrolment so far is 87%, including 64% of those aged 18 to 24.
People can enrol right up to election day on Saturday, September 19.
According to the Electoral Commission, around 500,000 people eligible to vote have not yet enrolled and half of those are under 30.
Within the 64 general electorate seats National won 41 but Jami-Lee Ross later resigned party membership. Labour won 23 plus the seven Māori electorates, and ACT won the single seat of Epsom.
National finished up with 15 list MPs, Labour had 17, NZ First had nine and the Greens had eight.
The state of the parties in Parliament currently is 55 seats for National, 46 for Labour, eight for NZ First, eight for the Greens, one for ACT and one independent (Ross).
The only regional seats held by Labour are Napier with Stuart Nash (5220) and West Coast-Tasman held by Agriculture Minister Damien O’Connor (5593).
Labour holds the seven Māori electorates and the incumbent MPs will all stand again.
