Your guide to the election’s coalition red lines - who’s ruled out who?

The list of parties New Zealand’s leaders are willing to work with is getting shorter, with coalition deal-breakers emerging as a defining theme of this election campaign.

The positions could matter more than usual. With both major parties struggling to reach the 30% mark, recent polls have put the minor parties in the driver's seat. Last night’s 1News Verian poll had Opportunity on 6% and potentially holding the balance of power.

That could leave some leaders facing an awkward choice on election night: stick to their stated limits, or reconsider them to get the numbers to govern.

With nine days until election day, here’s who each party has ruled out, where the red lines have been drawn, and which potential partnerships still come with strings attached.

National leader Christopher Luxon has rejected more potential coalition partners than anyone, ruling out Labour, the Green Party, Te Pāti Māori and The Opportunity Party.

Luxon crossed off the first three in January when he announced the election date at National's Christchurch caucus meeting, saying they were "pretty self-evident".

"We will not be working with Labour because they created this mess. They'll spend more, tax more, borrow more," he said.

"We're not going to be working with the Greens. They have a radical left-wing agenda that will only accelerate that: spend more, tax more, borrow more. We won't be working with Te Pāti Māori because they've got a separatist agenda."

Opportunity joined the list in July, when Luxon took aim at its land tax and universal basic income policies.

"We're a party of low tax. It wouldn't be surprising to any of you to say we don't think we want to do business with them ... we wouldn't be working with them."

Since then, a string of polls has shown paths to power for the right that would require Opportunity, with Luxon peppered with questions from journalists and supporters alike about whether he would change his mind if required.

He hasn’t budged, ruling the party out again numerous times. He has, however, ducked questions on whether he would take a call from Opportunity leader Qiulae Wong after election night.

Wong described the rule-out as "old-fashioned tribalism" and has said Opportunity would approach whichever major party wins the most seats first, and would open parallel talks if National and Labour were tied.

Chris Hipkins' Labour has returned the favour to the current government, ruling out National, ACT and New Zealand First.

Labour has long rejected a grand coalition with National, and campaign chair Kieran McAnulty confirmed in June the party would not work with ACT.

In August, Labour definitively ruled out a coalition arrangement involving New Zealand First, with Hipkins saying "overt racism" from the likes of Winston Peters and Shane Jones had made working together impossible. Prior to that point, he had made it clear he thought it "unlikely" the two parties could make a deal.

Peters hit back on social media, saying Hipkins had "severe learning difficulties" and that New Zealand First had repeatedly ruled out working with Labour since the 2023 election.

Labour’s door is open to the Greens and Te Pāti Māori, but with strings attached. Earlier this month, Hipkins ruled out both parties holding the police or corrections portfolios after Te Pāti Māori MPs Oriini Kaipara and Hana-Rāwhiti Maipi-Clarke, and Green MP Hūhana Lyndon, posed for photos with Mongrel Mob members at a gang pad in South Auckland.

“No, I don’t condone it. I think it was a bad judgment,” Hipkins said.

The Green Party hasn’t ruled out any party outright, though co-leaders Chlöe Swarbrick and Marama Davidson have made it clear they want a change of government.

Even in a Labour-led coalition, the Greens wouldn’t get everything they want. Along with the police and corrections ban, Hipkins has shut down any suggestion Swarbrick could be finance minister.

“Barbara Edmonds will be a finance minister in the Labour-led government. Full stop. End of story. Not negotiable,” Hipkins said in September.

While the Greens have not formally ruled National out, the prospect of two parties working together was a point of contention between Swarbrick and Opportunity's Wong at TVNZ's Multi-Party Debate.

ACT leader David Seymour has ruled out Labour and made clear his opposition to working with the left, including the Greens and Te Pāti Māori.

He made it the centrepiece of his campaign, kicking off ACT’s election rally in June by telling supporters the party’s first mission was to “Lock Labour Out”. He has also lumped the Green Party and Te Pāti Māori into the same unworkable category, positioning them as ideologically opposed.

Seymour has been less forthcoming on Opportunity, saying he could be open to a "four-headed beast" coalition, though he felt they may not be the kingmaker "despite the best efforts of the media".

Opportunity has pitched itself as the party that will work with anyone, but even it has started to pencil in a red line. Wong has said all campaign that Opportunity is willing to work with parties across the political spectrum. The exception is Peters.

Wong said in August she would not support any government with him as foreign minister, calling it a “bottom line” after he told Green MP Lawrence Xu-Nan to “go back to your own country” in the House.

Now she says ruling out New Zealand First entirely has become a “serious consideration”, after Peters claimed the captain of the sunken HMNZS Manawanui, Commander Yvonne Gray, had been a diversity hire who “was not qualified”.

Peters fired back on X: “Here is a ‘serious consideration’ - we long ago ruled out working with this bunch of pinko communists.”

Te Pāti Māori hasn’t ruled out any party, and has gone further than most in tying its fortunes to the left.

The party named a one-person party list earlier this month, asking supporters to give it their electorate vote and their party vote to the Greens or Labour.