David Farrar: Media missed the big story on donations

The annual donations returns were recently published, and the media focused on how CR parties had more than CL parties. They failed to look at the trend,

In the table below I compare 2025 donations to 2022, as like vs like. Both are mid years in the three year cycle.

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National and ACT in 2025 got in around 20% more than in 2022. A modest increase.

The huge increases were Labour, Greens and NZ First. They all quadrupled their donations.

In an absolute sense, Labour had the biggest increase of almost $2 million.

Now let’s look at how the donations are made up.

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With small donations under $1,500 National and Labour do best bringing in $2.1 and $1.4 million. Labour has an impressive 65,000 small donors. ACT and Greens also have over 10,000 small donors.

In terms of medium sized donors, National cleans up. They had over 600 donate an average 2,300. National gets in 10 times more than other parties when it comes to medium sized donors.

National also does best with large donors, but the average donation is around $18,500. Labour is lower at $13,500 but ACT is $39k, NZF $24k and Greens $21k.

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The proportion of donations that comes from large donors is:

1. NZ First 69%
2. ACT 61%
3. Te Pati Maori 55%
4. TOP 52%
5. National 43%
6. Labour 36%

It is worth reflecting that the average large donor to National gives $18,500. This is 0.3% of their total donation revenue. Anyone who thinks that a donation of that size can influence policy is being ridiculous.

David Farrar runs Curia Market Research, a specialist opinion polling and research agency, and the popular Kiwiblog where this article was sourced. He previously worked in the Parliament for eight years, serving two National Party Prime Ministers and three Opposition Leaders