With the poll results out, we're free to discuss campaign tactics, media coverage and voting trends to our hearts' content. (Downtown Wellington's solid blue! Newtown voted Green, the hippies!)
But trying to find out who your workmates voted for? That's just asking for trouble.
As someone who moved here from the United States, I've always found this intriguing. Ask a Kiwi colleague in the staff kitchen about their individual vote and you're likely to make the whole room feel uncomfortable.
In contrast, we Americans are a bit intense about our politics. We tend to announce our voting preferences to anyone who will listen. We wear campaign buttons on our coats and put bumper stickers on our cars.
Why the difference? It's not because Kiwis are less engaged.
I've spent plenty of morning-tea breaks answering questions about who I support in United States elections, or what I think of the New Zealand system.
I suspect it's about how each country deals with the politics of personality. These days, who you vote for makes a big fashion statement about who you are, and it tends to divide people along binary lines rich or working class, old or young, religious or secular.
This is perfect for the US, where everything is about individualism and competition. By announcing their vote in public, Americans dare each other to get into an argument about it.
In New Zealand, the cultural divides and party loyalties are still there, but how we deal with them face to face is different.
We live in a small country. Everyone seems to know everyone else and you need privacy and courtesy if you want the day to go smoothly, and unlike in the US, New Zealand's different cultures tend to be next door to each other.
Take Wellington and the Kapiti Coast, for example. I may have opinions on the environmental impacts of Transmission Gully, but I'm likely to have colleagues who drive from Paraparaumu every morning and have a few opinions about the traffic.
That doesn't make the disagreement any less real, but I'm much less likely to start a political debate with someone I have to work with every day.
I'm a bit cautious about this issue, because political discussions are important. We need people to pay attention if we want elections to work the way they're supposed to, and I worry that the 5 per cent drop in voter turnout since 2008 means that New Zealanders are turning away from politics.
But looking at how dysfunctional things are in the US, I like the fact New Zealanders tend to put neighbourly unity over political party in their everyday lives.
We've had a tough year, and we've survived it by pulling together and concentrating on the things we have in common.
As long as we stay involved and have political discussions in the appropriate time and place, I think it's good to maintain a few rules of etiquette. So far I haven't found a Kiwi equivalent to the phrase "un-American", and I'd like it to stay that way.