In the first week of the 2026 New Zealand Social Media Study, 544 Facebook posts by political parties and their leaders were analysed by Dr Mona Krewel, director of the Internet, Social Media and Politics Research Lab at Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington, and her research team. The posts were published from 5 to 11 October.
“The 544 Facebook posts we’ve analysed so far provide interesting insights into how actively parties and their leaders are campaigning on social media, which issues they are prioritising, and how they are presenting themselves to voters,” says Dr Krewel.
This is the third election in which the study has been run to gauge how political parties are using Facebook in the lead-up to the election. Parties covered in the 2026 study are:
- six parties currently in parliament—National, Labour, Green Party, ACT, New Zealand First, and Te Pāti Māori
- three parties outside parliament—The Opportunity Party, Conservative Party, and NZ Outdoors & Freedom Party.
The Facebook page of each party leader is also included in the study.
Posting wars: who is posting the most?
National might not be leading in the latest political poll but it’s taken the top spot this year for the number of Facebook posts, out-posting ACT which was the most prolific poster in the 2023 election.
“What stands out this year is that ACT has either considerably scaled back its activities compared with 2023 or is saving its thunder for the final campaign stretch, when parties are trying to win over the so-called late deciders. At least for now, ACT has passed the social media torch to National.
“Among the party leaders, National’s Christopher Luxon is also currently the most active Facebook campaigner, with 36 posts in the first week, although Chris Hipkins is following close behind with 31 posts,” says Dr Krewel.
While National is posting frequently, Dr Krewel describes much of its content as “remarkably repetitive”.
“The party seems to be following the old spin doctors’ rule known as the 'vomit principle': the idea that a political message needs to be repeated so often that even those delivering it are sick of hearing it before it is likely to cut through with the public.”
What about the rest of the field?
“As in the 2023 election campaign, the NZ Outdoors & Freedom Party stands out for its exceptionally high level of Facebook activity, particularly given its marginal position in New Zealand politics. The party attracts so little electoral support that it is generally grouped with other parties polling below 0.5 percent.
“This illustrates two important things about social media campaigning. First, social media is a relatively cheap and accessible campaign tool, making it particularly attractive to smaller parties that lack the financial resources and organisational infrastructure of their larger competitors. Second, high levels of social media activity do not automatically translate into electoral success. Posting frequently is one thing; actually persuading voters to support you is quite another,” says Dr Krewel.
Overall, the 544 Facebook posts published from 5 to 11 October is lower than during the corresponding period in the 2023 election campaign, which saw 681 posts.
“This does not necessarily indicate a decline in parties’ social media campaigning efforts. It may rather reflect the growing number of platforms that parties need to maintain a presence on. With sites such as TikTok becoming more important for political communication, parties must now produce platform-specific content for different social media channels, spreading their campaigning efforts across more platforms than in previous elections.”
Figure 1: Facebook posts by parties and leaders
What topics are trending? It’s the economy, stupid
The economy is by far the most frequently discussed topic across all parties’ Facebook posts, appearing in about 60 percent of posts.
“The dominance of economic issues is hardly surprising. Much like the 2023 New Zealand election, and indeed in elections around the world, economic concerns remain at the centre of political competition and are consistently among the issues voters care about most,” says Dr Krewel.
More than three decades after US political strategist James Carville coined his famous phrase “It’s the economy, stupid”, political parties appear to be following the same basic campaign logic: if you want to win elections, you need to talk about the economy.
“This is particularly true at a time when many households are concerned about their financial situation, the cost of living, and their economic future. Parties know these are the issues that matter to voters, and they are competing to convince them that they have the better answers,” says Dr Krewel.
Figure 2: Topics of Facebook posts (% of posts on topic)
However, analysis of posts by the government parties (National, Act, New Zealand First) vs the parliamentary opposition parties (Labour, Greens, Te Pāti Māori) revealed a key difference in how they approach the economic debate.
“While both blocs place considerable emphasis on the economy, the opposition parties are particularly keen to put the cost of living at the centre of the campaign agenda, an issue that plays only a minor role in the government parties’ economic messaging.
“The opposition parties thus frame the economic debate in a way that aligns with their traditional left profile, emphasising household finances and appealing to so-called pocketbook voters—voters who evaluate politics primarily through the lens of their own financial circumstances. The government parties, by contrast, focus more on the economy as a whole, including businesses and broader economic performance.
“So both sides of the political spectrum are talking about the economy, but they are telling rather different stories. The potential Labour-led coalition is focusing on what the economy means for people's wallets, while National is looking more at businesses and their circumstances. This reflects the different economic priorities and traditional policy strengths that voters tend to associate with centre-left and centre-right parties,” Dr Krewel says.
What about potential new kingmaker The Opportunity Party (TOP)? Where is it positioning itself?
“Unlike the other parties, which overwhelmingly focus on the economy, TOP’s Facebook posts place the greatest emphasis on the environment and energy, which feature in almost 60 percent of posts. This is particularly striking because environmental issues currently play only a minor role in the campaign agendas of both the National-led government and the Labour-led opposition.
“On the basis of its current campaign agenda, TOP appears to have somewhat more in common with the Labour-led bloc. The presence of the Greens in this bloc could also make it easier to accommodate TOP's environmental priorities in potential coalition negotiations. However, campaign agendas are not the same as policy positions, and whether parties frequently talk about the same issues does not yet tell us whether they actually also agree on the solutions.”
Figure 3: Topics of government parties vs opposition parties (% of posts on topic)
A tale of two Chrises: one in the spotlight, one in the shadows
While Christopher Luxon and Chris Hipkins are currently neck and neck in the race for preferred prime minister, both polling at about 20 per cent in the latest survey, their parties are pursuing different strategies when it comes to putting their leaders in the spotlight. Labour mentions Hipkins in about one in five of its Facebook posts, while National refers to Luxon considerably less frequently.
“At first glance, this may seem surprising. After all, Luxon is the incumbent prime minister, a position that would normally give him a natural visibility and prominence in his party's campaign. However, given he has faced two leadership confidence votes within just four months, the second shortly before National entered the election campaign, the party's apparent reluctance to place him at the centre of its messaging is perhaps less surprising.
“Labour, by contrast, had good reason to put Hipkins in the spotlight, particularly after he was judged by viewers as the winner of the first leaders' debate. Labour seems much more willing to make this election a contest between the two Chrises, while National is putting considerably less emphasis on its own leader. This may well reflect the different positions the two leaders currently find themselves in. Hipkins appears to be an asset that Labour wants to showcase, while National seems more cautious about making Luxon the face of its campaign,” Dr Krewel says.
Mentioning a party leader does not necessarily mean that a post is about personality rather than policies. "Leaders can also be the messengers and champions of particular policy issues. Personalisation and issue-based campaigning are therefore not mutually exclusive.”
Figure 4: Posts mentioning party leader (% of party's posts)
Cry me a river? National is pouring on more negativity than Labour
In the usual course of elections, opposition parties tend to campaign more negatively than governing parties, while incumbent parties are more likely to defend their record and emphasise their achievements.
But National and Labour appear to be turning this conventional pattern on its head in 2026, says Dr Krewel.
“If we subtract the percentage of negative posts from the percentage of positive posts, we are left with what we call the ‘net positivity’ of the campaign. Our analysis clearly shows National has considerably lower net positivity than Labour. In other words, National is campaigning more negatively than Labour, despite National being the incumbent party.
“An RNZ analysis of Instagram posts between late August and late September found Labour to be the more negative of the two major parties. The change in tone that our results pick up could either indicate that the parties are not ‘staying on message’ across different social media platforms or that the tone of the campaign may have shifted as the election nears.”
With a loss in the first leaders' debate and no meaningful gains in the polls, the second reading may be a bit more plausible—that National has changed its strategy and decided to attack harder, while Labour went more positive given Hipkins’ recent successful debate performance, Dr Krewel says.
On current polls, neither of the two major parties has a clear lead, with both sitting at about 28 percent of the party vote.
“Combined with an economic record that is not exactly an easy selling point, National may be getting a little nervous. The party seems to have decided to campaign more like a challenger, going on the offensive rather than simply defending its record.”
Labour, meanwhile, appears to be taking a more restrained approach, perhaps calculating that the economic situation already provides “enough ammunition against the government” without having to attack too aggressively.
“That could be a deliberate strategic choice. Negative campaigning is always a double-edged sword: while attacks can damage an opponent, they can also backfire on the attacker. In a multiparty system such as New Zealand's, voters who are put off by negative campaigning do not necessarily switch to the attacking party. They may instead turn to one of the smaller parties. Whether National's more confrontational approach will pay off therefore remains to be seen.”
Figure 5: Negative campaigning (% of positive minus negative posts)
Dr Krewel and her team will continue tracking parties’ social media campaigns and release further findings in the coming weeks.
About the New Zealand Social Media Study
The New Zealand Social Media Study was run in both the 2020 and 2023 elections, and is running again this year. The study tracks Facebook posts by political parties and party leaders in the five weeks leading up to the general election. The study sources Facebook data from the Meta Content Library.
This year, the research team is using a hybrid approach to analyse Facebooks posts. The approach combines artificial intelligence (AI) for most coding tasks with independent validation by human coders. The main AI model used is Mistral Large 4, supported by Xiaomi MiMo-V2.6-Flash and Qwen3-Max.
The research team provided the AI model with detailed instructions based on a coding framework. This framework, used in the 2020 and 2023 studies for manual content analysis of Facebook posts, defines what to look for and how to classify it. Analysis considers written text as well as images and videos.
All AI classifications are automatically checked for consistency and compliance with the coding rules. Where claims need to be fact-checked, additional external sources are consulted and evaluated, and human data annotators further validate the LLM classifications.