With the election only days away and early voting open, the Herald has created an interactive to explore the key policies of our top six polling political parties.

It includes political promises from Labour, National, Te Pāti Māori, New Zealand First and Act across five areas: education, transport, climate change, social development, law and order, and health. The interactive will be updated right up until election day so check back in for the latest policy additions.

Each section of the interactive includes a link to more detailed coverage of the topic from the Herald’s political and specialist journalists.

Click on a topic from the menu bar and scroll down to compare the parties’ policies.

Voting is open from now until election day – October 14. Anyone eligible to vote can do so at one of the more than 400 polling booths across the country. The Herald has also created an interactive map displaying the voting locations near you and both general and Māori electorate boundaries – click here to access the map.

If you’re not enrolled or need to update your enrolment details, you will need to fill out an extra form when you vote.

The Herald series, the poll of polls, uses polling data including the recent Newshub Reid Research and 1News Verian Polls to simulate election outcomes to work out the probability of different scenarios. The results are for if the election was held at the time the analysis was produced.

The September 28 analysis showed National and Act had both slipped in public polls. The poll of polls reckoned they had just a 39.9 per cent chance of being able to form a government without support from other parties, dropping below 50 per cent from the last poll of polls.

That probability rises to 99.7 per cent if you throw NZ First into the mix.

Labour had very slim odds of being able to get over the line. The poll of polls gave Labour, the Greens, and Te Pāti Māori a zero per cent chance of being able to form a government if the election were held the weekend of September 30, rising just slightly to 0.1 per cent for the actual election date.

The poll of polls has National’s likely party vote at 36.1 per cent, Labour at 27.2 per cent, the Greens at 12.2 per cent, Act at 11 per cent, NZ First at 5.2 per cent, Te Pāti Māori at 2.8 per cent, and TOP at 2.1 per cent.