Each voter (person over the age of 18) gets 2 votes.
The first vote is for the political party. However many votes a party gets will reflect on how many seats that party get in parliament. A party has to get over 5% of votes to get any seats in parliament.
The second vote is for your local MP. The MP is the person that will represent your electorate (region). NZ has 71 regions, therefore there will will 71 MP's. Many people will run for MP and the person with the most votes wins.
NZ parliament has 120 seats so if a party were to get 30% of party votes they will get about 36 seats in parliament (being 30% of 120) If that party wins 20 electorate seats it will have 16 List MPs in addition to its 20 Electorate MPs.
You need over half the votes to call yourself "government". So some parties do whats called a coalition. For example: National may join with Act which will then get them over half of the votes.
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