Candidate bios and voter traffic: Policy.nz by the numbers

Earlier this year LGNZ supported Policy.nz to provide a candidate information platform, including sending a survey to all candidates (with a valid email address) following close of nominations and showcasing validated candidate bios on the platform. The platform went live on 29 August 2025, containing bios for 1,340 candidates from across 67 local councils and 11 regional councils. Analysis shows more people used Policy.nz in 2025 than in any previous election.

LGNZ also created a promotional plan to drive potential voters to the Policy.nz website, designing a marketing campaign across NZ Herald, The Spinoff and Phantom advertising platforms, supported by an LGNZ media and social media campaign. Here’s some stats from the campaign:

Candidate engagement

• From the 3,423 candidates who were successfully sent a survey by Policy.nz, 1,340 candidates responded and had their bios, photo and policy positions published on the platform.
• This was 39.1% of all candidates, down on the 45% response rate from the 2022 elections.
• All 3,423 candidates were included on the Policy.nz platform, and if a bio wasn’t provided their section was left blank.

Marketing engagement

• NZ Herald’s digital advertising saw 1,153,639 total impressions, resulting in 2,026 clicks to the website (0.18% click rate)
• iHeart radio served 299,906 audio impressions across 105,100 unique users, a 2.9 frequency rate.
• The Spinoff digital advertising saw 268,700 total impressions, resulting in 841 clicks to the website (0.33% click rate).

User engagement

• More people used Policy.nz than with any previous campaign. In cities, around one in five voters used Policy.nz, and around one in eight voters nationwide.
• Total users: 169,661 active users.
• Use rate: 12% of voters, or one in eight voters.
• Page views: 1.1 million.
• Average session time: around 3 minutes per active user on average.