More than 68,000 people voted on the first day of advance voting on Monday, a shade ahead of the 65,845 who turned out on the equivalent day in 2023 despite fears the Labour Day holiday would keep numbers down.

The Electoral Commission is publishing early voting figures about 2pm each day until election day on Saturday 7 November. Both this year's and 2023's first-day tallies trail the record pace set in 2020, when unprecedented numbers voted early.

For Invercargill and Southland voters, the early turnout matters because of a rule change that bites this election for the first time: nobody can enrol once advance voting has started. In previous elections people could enrol and vote at the same time, right up to and including election day.

Hundreds of thousands off the roll

As of the Friday before the deadline, 92.4 per cent of eligible voters were enrolled, compared with 94.7 per cent at the 2023 election. Provisional commission data released on Tuesday put the number of eligible people not enrolled at close to 300,000, with the final tally due on Thursday.

Labour's campaign chair, Kieran McAnulty, told Newsroom he expected many people to walk into voting places expecting to enrol on the spot, as they had in the past, only to be turned away. About 400,000 people enrolled during the voting period at the last election, he said, and he doubted that many had done so in time this year.

The commission is counting votes and enrolments but is not recording how many would-be voters are refused a ballot because they are not on the roll.

Party leaders have split along predictable lines. Labour leader Chris Hipkins said the Government had "deliberately tried to disenfranchise people", and Greens co-leader Chlöe Swarbrick argued the cut-off would fall hardest on young people, renters, Māori, Pasifika and migrant communities. Prime Minister Christopher Luxon said enrolling was "pretty simple and easy to do", and ACT leader David Seymour said it was a civic duty that people should have met.

The local contests

In the Invercargill electorate, National's Penny Simmonds, the sitting MP and Tertiary Education Minister, is defending her seat against Labour's Janice Lee and the Green Party's Dave Kennedy, the three candidates who faced off in the Otago Daily Times' electorate debate earlier this month.

In the Southland electorate, which takes in Gore and much of rural Southland, National's Joseph Mooney is defending the seat against challengers including Labour's Peter McDonald and New Zealand First's Jason Herrick. The full list of candidates for both electorates is published at vote.nz.

About 2,300 voting places will operate nationwide on election day, roughly 850 of them open through the advance voting period. Voting closes at 7pm on 7 November.