Biggest winners and losers in Labour’s new list
Monday, 8 June 2026
ANALYSIS: Labour has just completed its most critical internal task ahead of the election - formulating its party list.
This list will do much to shape the party’s next three years and more, whether or not it wins the election.
It is the result of a series of regional conferences and an internal decision-making conference by a special “moderating committee” featuring the party’s top dogs. It will act as a signal both within the party and outside it on exactly what Labour wants to be in 2026 and beyond - from the movements within the obviously winnable top 10 to the exact placement of candidates who have no hope of entering Parliament.
Below you can read an analysis of who exactly is up and down within the party, and see two interactive charts that show the movements between the 2023 list and the 2026 one, and the most recent caucus rankings and the new list.
The winners: First-time candidates the party clearly likes
The most obvious winners are the candidates who have never stood for Parliament, but have been rocketed into very winnable list slots.
These include:
Rakesh Naidoo: a police superintendent and member of various high-powered boards, at 13.
Chris Flatt: a unionist and former general secretary of the Labour Party, at 20.
Kingi Kiriona: a member of the Waitangi Tribunal and former journalist, at 22.
Sophie Handford: the co-founder and leader of School Strike 4 Climate NZ, at 26.
Max Harris: an activist, lawyer and commentator, at 29.
Warrick Cleine: chairperson and chief executive of KPMG in Vietnam and Cambodia, at 30.
Several of these candidates can fill experience gaps the party might be worried about. Naidoo is a policeman in a party that is about to lose the former head of the police union. Cleine has serious business experience not many in Labour could approach. And Flatt is an old school unionist from the agricultural sector.
The biggest loser: Greg O’Connor
Before we get onto the MPs still on the list who dropped down a tad, we should probably acknowledge Greg O’Connor, who is simply not on the list at all. This means he is now set to leave Parliament at the election, despite expressing a desire to stay on and serve as speaker earlier this year.
O’Connor held onto Ohariu at the last election, beating out Nicola Willis for the seat, but then saw that seat dismembered in the boundary review. He was unable to win the candidacy for the successor seat of Wellington North - losing to Ayesha Verrall - and it now seems he was unable to win a list spot he was happy with either. We’ll undoubtedly learn more about his placement today.
The winners: Māori in and out of caucus
Several Māori MPs made major jumps from their current caucus ranking to their new list ranking.
Cushla Tangaere-Manuel, Labour’s only current holder of a Māori seat, jumps from number 20 in caucus to number 9 on the list. Both these positions are essentially a guaranteed entry to Parliament, but the 11-spot jump is still significant and brings her into the front bench, if we assume caucus rankings soon match list rankings.
Shanan Halbert made a large jump too - nine spots from 28 in Caucus to 19 on the list.
And the co-chairperson of the Māori caucus Willie Jackson also saw a little bump from number five to number four.
Outside of current MPs, Kingi Kiriona enters the list at the extremely winnable slot of 22, and Te Pūoho Kātene at the likely winnable slot of 34. These two are both fighting potentially winnable battles in Māori electorates againt Te Pāti Māori (TPM), but it seems they have not taken the route Labour’s Māori candidates took in 2017 to wipe TPM out - standing its candidates only on the list, so that voters had to choose between TPM and Labour instead of getting “two for the price of one”. One Māori seat candidate is doing this: Mananui Ramsden in Te Tai Tonga.
Not all Māori candidates got solid placement: Labour’s candidate for Tāmaki Makaurau Kerrin Leoni, who the party notably did not endorse in her mayoral run, has been placed at 43, which will likely be quite a stretch for the party.
The so-so: MPs running for safe electorates
The biggest drops versus the caucus rankings are clutch of MPs who will likely win their electorates anyway, making their list ranking somewhat irrelevant.
This includes Arena Williams in Manurewa (down 17 spots), Phil Twyford in the new seat of Henderson (down 15), and Lemauga Lydia Sosene (down 11) in Māngere. The last time Manurewa elected a National MP was 1975 and Māngere has never done so.
Both Labour and National have traditionally ranked some very safe candidates low down the list, seemingly without any ill will towards the candidates.
This means it is perhaps easier to compare these MPs not to their current caucus rank but to their place on the list in 2023. If we do that this group actually seems to be on the up.
Still, these low rankings generally don’t happen to MPs actually on the front bench, which none of this group are, despite quite a bit of experience between them. They might have a route back to Parliament guaranteed, but it can’t leave that nice of a feeling.
The potential losers: MPs and candidates in competitive seats
Among those drops are MPs in seats that are perhaps tighter.
Rachel Boyack can probably be sure that her win in Nelson in 2023 against the tide can be repeated in 2026, making her fairly low list ranking irrelevant. But what about Helen White in Mt Albert? This used to be a safe Labour seat but was won with just 18 votes in 2023, thanks to a strong campaign to White’s left from the Greens. White is ranked at 38 meaning a loss in her seat could easily send her packing from Parliament altogether.
(Working out exactly what list placing is unwinnable is hard even with the best national polling, as one needs to also estimate which electorates go which way. The more electorates Labour win the less list candidates it gets, meaning if it has some surprises with candidates that are low down the list or off it altogether relatively high list spots won’t get MPs a place in Parliament.)
There there are some new candidates in competitive seats who have list rankings so low that these seat races are their only route to Parliament. You could read these placements as the party simply believing in their campaigns - or you could read them as a kind of shrug, as an invitation to the Labour Party only open if they manage to win it as an electorate candidate.
These include CTU economist and former Grant Robertson staffer Craig Renney, who is at the almost certainly unwinnable slot of 51, but is competing in what used to be safe Labour territory in Wellington Bays. The Greens won this seat at the last election and could well keep it.
Just behind him is George Hampton, the party’s candidate for Christchurch Central, currently held by the retiring Duncan Webb. The Green Party’s Kahurangi Carter is running a two-tick campaign in this seat, which could make it tough for Hampton. Then behind him is another Christchurch newcomer to a traditionally Labour seat - Dominik Yanzick in Wigram. Another candidate we can somewhat put in this boat is one who went off the list altogether - Michael Wood, who is fighting to retake the Mt Roskill electorate he lost to National in 2023.
These candidates might all win if Labour has a good night on November 7. But unlike some of their fellow candidates for 2023, it is far from a sure thing.