Description of government structure:

• Chief of State: King CHARLES III*
• Head of Government: Prime Minister Chris HIPKINS
• Assembly: New Zealand has a unicameral House of Representatives with 120 seats.

* The King is represented by Governor General Dame Cindy KIRO

Description of electoral system:

• The King is hereditary head of state.
• The Prime Minister is appointed by the governor-general. Typically the leader of the majority party or coalition.
• In the House of Representatives, 70 members are elected by plurality vote in single-member constituencies to serve 3-year terms and 50 members are elected through a closed-list proportional representation system to serve 3-year terms.
  • The electoral system is MMP. The voter has two votes: one for a party, one for the respective single-member constituency. Seven constituencies are reserved to the Maori people. Once constituency seats are filled, PR list seats are allocated to each party until its overall seat share is proportional to its share of party votes. Parties must clear a national threshold of 5 percent or win at least one constituency seat in order to qualify for seats in the ordinal tier. If a party wins more seats in the nominal tier than it would have been entitled to based on its share of ordinal tier votes, it keeps these seats, known as "overhang."