RNZ political donations tracker: Who's bankrolling the party campaigns?

RNZ is tracking the money flowing to the parties this election year and where it is coming from.

Here's where things stand.

When the donations made to the parties in the governing coalition are combined, the spread looks as below.

Who are this election's big donors?

The following donors have given $100,000 or more so far in 2026.

Not all donors are individuals. Companies, trusts and unions also give to political parties. The chart below shows the split between organisational and individual giving for each party.

In the 2023 election, unions gave $335,000 to Labour. National received no donations from unions, but did receive more than $1m from businesses.

Exploring the data in the below chart shows where donors have focused on a single party or donated to more than one party.

Each line represents a donor with wider lines indicating larger amounts.

How the money grew

Donations of $20,000 and more made from the start of the year are captured on the below chart.

If someone makes numerous donations under $20,000, once the cumulative total tops $20,000 it must be declared.

How much bigger could the donation pot grow?

The below chart shows the 2023 annual total of donations over $20,000, compared to the current 2026 total.

Some who donated in 2023 haven't given more than $20,000 so far in 2026 to the same party. The table below identifies who these donors are.

Each row represents a party. A donor may appear more than once if they gave to multiple parties in 2023.

The following donors haven't donated before 2026.

How we analysed the data

All original data comes from the Electoral Commission website. RNZ's analysis normalises names which may appear more than once, but with different treatment. For example a John Smith and J Smith with the same address are updated to both be John Smith. In some instances where people have given individually as well as jointly their names are collated. If Joan Smith had the same address as John Smith and had donated individually, as well as made a joint donation with John Smith, the name is updated to John and / or Joan Smith.

Donation dates are taken from the "date received by party" information. In some cases one donation entry will consist of several donations made over time. The date received is the date on the donation return and should be the date the total donated by the donor tipped over $20,000.

The following keywords are used to determine if the donor is an organisation: Limited, Ltd, Trust, Union, Incorporated, Foundation, Partnership, Holdings, Group, Properties, Investments, Enterprises, Finance, Capital, Trading, Stud, Studio, Nominees, Services, Corporation, Company.