Ben is joined by James Mulrennan from The Overhang to discuss this weekend’s New Zealand election – the parties, the polls and the ways in which New Zealand’s electoral system might play out in circumstances very different to past elections.
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Ben: Welcome to the Tally Room podcast. I’m Ben Raue. New Zealand’s election this weekend is testing the limits of the proportional voting system the country first introduced thirty years ago, as more voters than ever look beyond the two major parties. In today’s podcast we’re going to look at the New Zealand electoral system, the parties, and what the polls say might happen on Saturday.
My guest today is James Mulrennan. James is the author of The Overhang where he analyses New Zealand’s elections. Hello, James.
James: Kia ora.
Ben: But first you can now buy tickets for the second Tally Room Live podcast recording in Melbourne on Wednesday, December 2nd, with The Guardian’s Benita Kolovos and the University of Melbourne’s Todd Farrell. There’ll be a link to buy tickets in the show notes. The first show is sold out, so get in quick if you want to grab your spot.
New Zealand first used the Mixed Member Proportional electoral system, or MMP, in 1996. This system opened the door for smaller parties to win significant numbers of seats and take on roles in government.
New Zealand has only elected a single party majority government once since 1996. But this year, declining support for the major parties have reached a point where the electoral system is struggling to accurately reflect voter intention.
James, the current conservative government has been in power for three years. In the past, the junior partners in government have usually been the ones punished at the following election. But this time it seems like the National party are the ones who are losing support. Why do you think that is?
James: So I think it’s a combination of things.
Obviously the state of the economy, cost of living is just constantly coming up as an issue in any issues based polling, which even for a first term government who came in with a sizeable majority, have, you know, had to face that down and struggle with it. And as the face of that coalition, I think National are the ones who bear the brunt of that.
But on the other hand, the realities of coalition politics means that they are in part accountable for the agenda of their partner parties, the New Zealand First party and the ACT party. and, you know, given their minority parties, some of those things are less popular. But as the face of it I think National are the ones who have suffered as a result.
There’s also some suggestion that Chris Luxon, their leader, the Prime Minister has not kind of connected with the public in the way that previous first term prime ministers have. He’s sort of constantly neck and neck in the preferred Prime Minister polling with opposition leader Chris Hipkins. and so I think that’s part of the story.
Ben: So why don’t we run through the parties? Most of the parties in New Zealand politics have been around for a while. So if someone’s previously looked at New Zealand elections, most of it won’t be a surprise. we effectively have three parties on the right, three parties broadly on the left, and then a seventh party that sort of sits outside of that. Let’s start with the parties of the government. So National Party, they’re the traditional conservative party, major party of the past. But then we’ve also got ACT and New Zealand First.
James: Yeah, so National will be familiar to anyone from a a Commonwealth jurisdiction. Longstanding centre right party formed in the mid 1900s, out of the the previous Liberal and Reform parties. so very similar to the situation with the Liberal Party in Australia, except the National party is the Nationals and the Liberals all in one. and, you know, for a long time prior to MMP they had the natural party of government status and held office for most of the time.
More recently they’ve been joined by the ACT Party. so they’re more of your kind of libertarian neoliberal right wing party. so very much focused on fiscal discipline, on reducing the size of government, on bureaucratic efficiency, things like this, initially formed as a breakaway from both the Labour and National parties after the market reforms of the 1980s. and so, very much sit to the right of the National party.
And then finally New Zealand First, who traditionally weren’t necessarily seen as right-aligned. They formed coalitions with both the Labour and National parties in the past and originally formed as a a splinter party from National with their leader still to this day, Winston Peters, breaking away with National over disagreements of some of the 1980s and 1990s reforms. They’re sort of more of your interventionist right wing party, a kind of more populist style of leadership. They’ve taken on many forms and many different issues and target audiences over the years.
For your Australian audience, there’s sort of a degree of comparison to Pauline Ho Hansen’s One Nation, formed at a similar time and addressing similar similar issues and audiences. a lot of focus on immigration as we see from conservative parties in the Western world. but also there’s a degree of Bob Katter in there in terms of Winston Peters’ personality and his at times contentious avuncular engagement with the media.
Ben: Yeah, so New Zealand First in particular, I feel like traditionally people would compare them to one nation and the fact that New Zealand First formed governments with Labour, I believe in 2002 and then definitely in 2017, they formed a government where Winston Peters took on that kind of deputy prime ministerial role.
And that didn’t seem to really fit the mould very much, but it does seem like in the last few years, particularly during the last parliamentary term when they were actually out of parliament, they swung quite clearly to the right and were very opposed to the Labour majority government to the point where in 2023 there wasn’t really any doubt about which way they would fall.
James: No, and I think the feeling is in many ways mutual there. given some of the issues that New Zealand First has picked up on, and the audience it’s appealed to since the Covid disruptions, and, you know, issues around vaccine mandates and lockdowns, that really drove if nothing else, a personal wedge between the New Zealand First Party and Chris Hipkins’ Labour Party, where there was just an inability to agree in the past.
And also I think on the substance New Zealand First have really drifted into some conservative social issue positions around gender, around migration, and you know, things that do border on the conspiratorial, that the Labour Party just isn’t willing to couldn’t, with their support base, go into government with and that’s even setting aside the inability of the Greens or Te Pati Māori to get along with New Zealand First.
So it has created, I think on both sides a kind of clear set of two governing block or two blocs looking to govern.
Ben: On the left you’ve got Labour, the Green Party, and Te Pati Māori. one thing I have found fascinating over the last few years of New Zealand politics is traditionally you’ve had parties on both sides forming government with various forms of government. You know, there was more uncertainty, more flexibility about who they would form government with. you know, Te Pati Māori in a kind of previous form, supported the John Key National Party government.
As we talked about New Zealand First going the other way, and there was other parties like United Future in the past that could have been seen as a right wing party but supported a Labour government. But it does feel very much now like putting aside the seventh party, which we’ll talk about in a minute. You effectively have two blocs of three parties each. And that isn’t to minimise the disagreement within them, the internal tension, the desire to maybe include or exclude fellow members of that bloc in government.
But effectively no one in either camp is willing or acceptable to the other camp. and so effectively if either of those camps gets a majority, it rules the other one out.
James: Yeah, and that’s exactly what we saw in 2023, even though New Zealand First support was necessary for ACT and National to form a government, there was never any prospect or discussion that New Zealand First would have worked with the parties at the left.
Ben: So tell us about those parties. Let’s maybe let’s start with Labour and and Greens and then we’ll get Te Pati Māori.
James: Yeah, so Labour are again fairly straightforward. centre left labour party, since the 1980s that sort of meant more of a third way type of vibe as you’d see with New Labour in the UK. and yeah, centre left social democrats. to their left, is the Green Party, which again, broadly similar, although I think there are some interesting differences between the the New Zealand Greens and Greens overseas.
Over the last twenty years, they’ve really occupied that role on the left of picking up social justice issues, economic justice issues, and increasingly indigenous rights issues. they’ve now started campaigning in the Māori seats quite actively. and in many ways filling a a gap that was created by the decline of a previous left wing party, the Alliance that the Greens were originally part of.
And so they’re nearing record highs in the polls at the moment, around sixteen percent, a bit like what we’re seeing on the right where New Zealand First and ACT are taking up space that was previously occupied by National. There’s a degree to which the Greens are taking up space that was occupied by Labour.
Ben: It’s always been interesting for the Greens, and I think the Australian Greens find themselves in a similar position, although it’s less about coalition government in Australia and it’s more about preferential deals before an election, where their position on the left of politics doesn’t give them a lot of options. Like they can they can try to hold a line against Labour, they can demand things, but Labour knows that ultimately they don’t really have any other option and they’re gonna have to work with Labour.
And I think we particularly saw that in 2017 where Labour needed both the Green Party and New Zealand First to form government. But New Zealand First’s position kind of in the middle of the political spectrum gave them the advantage of controlling who formed government and thus getting a better deal. And I think sometimes people have interpreted that as the Greens are bad deal makers.
But I think it also just reflects their position in the political spectrum. if they were a different party, they could negotiate differently. And I think we we will get to that in a minute with the opportunity party, but that has often held them back in terms of their ability to demand key roles in government. they have had ministers but they’ve been very junior roles outside of cabinet.
James: Yeah, no, that’s absolutely right. they’re playing on a higher degree of difficulty in some ways than the centre minor parties who have that option. It’s just they’re a relatively internally democratic party, as is pretty common for Green Parties around the world, and so their membership has approval over coalition deals. And there is just no reality, no universe in which the party would be able to do a deal with National.
So they have to take the world as they find it, which is how do you influence the Labour Party from the left without that negotiating position and we have seen in one of the minor party debates a real difference of views between the Greens, and in some ways similar but in other ways different opportunity party, around the philosophy of change or the strategy that they’re they’re bringing to the table.
Ben: Then Te Pati Māori, who have been around for a while but kind of declined in significance and then have come back and in the process changed their name from the Māori Party to Te Pati Māori, which is quite a convenient way to distinguish the earlier and latter eras of the party, but tell us a bit about them.
James: Yeah, so originally Te Pati Māori formed as a breakaway from the Labour Party. Um Labour, with one exception in the 90s, has basically held all of the Māori electorate seats, right back to the 1930s but then there was some particularly controversial legislation around what’s called here the Foreshore and Seabed Act, but effectively the legislative extinguishment of indigenous rights to, or the legal possibility of indigenous rights in the foreshore and seabed. and so that provoked a very strong reaction within kind of Māori politics more generally.
And then as a part of that an MP broke away from Labour and set up what was then the Māori Party. Then off the back of that, given the tension in the mid 2000s with the Labour Party, Te Pati Māori chose to enter a confidence and supply agreement with John Key’s National Party. Situation there was somewhat complicated that they weren’t necessary to form a government with National, but they were sufficient.
So you sort of had this multi party relationship between National ACT, United Future and Te Pati Māori, where National had separate deals with each of those three parties, but they weren’t all in in government together. And so yeah, that staked them out as more ‘centrist’, but it’s just really the axes on which they’re polarised and they’ve distinguished themselves from Labour just don’t necessarily neatly track with kind of left and right categories.
What has driven them into this wider left bloc is one of the unifying themes between National, New Zealand First and ACT in this coalition has been around indigenous rights and the role of the the Treaty of Waitangi. The view that the coalition takes of the role of the treaty and Māori in public life is diametrically opposed to Te Pati Māori’s view and was seen as an attack on the place of the treaty in New Zealand society.
It led to some of the largest protests we’ve ever seen in the country towards the end of 2024 and alongside that Te Pati Māori rising in the polls, to kind of record highs for them. That’s then since fallen away because of some internal ructions that have led to a split in the party. So now Te Pati Maori have lost two of their sitting MPs who are now running as
either a new party or independents, which has kind of taken some of the momentum out from behind that. But just again, with the issues that New Zealand First in particular are taking on there’s just no prospect of a government that includes them and Te Pati Māori being functional. almost by default, Te Pati Māori fall in with Labour and the Greens.
With the Greens I think that’s fine. I think there is still a reasonable degree of bad blood with the Labour Party, given both the split in 2005 and then Te Pati Māori’s support for the National government. but also I think Labour who have to consider their centre flank are kinda concerned about Te Pati Māori, you know, taking out some pretty radical positions that they feel they have to defend to centre voters who may not feel the same way.
So all things considered Labour would prefer no coalition partners, but I definitely think they see a a more stable relationship with the Greens. They’ve proven that during the Ardern government. but whereas with Te Pati Māori they obviously would if they had to, but they are very actively trying to win back the Māori seats for the Labour Party.
Ben: And let’s talk briefly about the Māori seats because that is a big difference with the electoral system that traditionally there were these electorates in New Zealand for people of Māori heritage. and it was previously a way to kind of segregate and reduce their power in some sense because, you know, these voters tended to be left leaning and these electorates produced enormous left wing majorities and it kind of was an inefficient way to distribute votes.
At least until this election, that hasn’t been such a concern with the proportional electoral system balancing out any of those issues now. And now Māori voters are given a choice every five years, or I assume when they enroll for the first time as well, whether they want to be on the Māori roll or the general roll. And then there are electorates drawn that overlap with the general electorates just for voters on that Māori roll. So there are seven of them around the country.
And so any area of New Zealand you’re in will have an local electorate MP, but also a local Māori MP. and they have played a very different dynamic, right, where Te Pati Māori its ability to get elected is pretty much entirely dependent on its ability to win individual electorates, in a way that at least until this year, the party totals in parliament for everyone else are largely dependent on their vote nationally, not about how they do in an individual seat. but that’s very much not true for Te Pati Māori.
James: Yeah, the history there behind the Māori seats a bit of an interesting one. Originally it was to do with the property franchise and the fact that Māori traditional title to land just didn’t mesh with a Western system, so as a compromise to ensure equal representation the Māori seats were created to manage that. the role the seats have played through our history has changed over time.
I think there was a time where it was more or less an act of continuing gerrymandering, where it kept a um separate representation that that did advantage National in the general electorate seats that would otherwise have those voters. But they’re now seen I think as a pretty important part of the constitutional settlement around Crown-Iwi relations and how, the promises of the Treaty of Waitangi are honoured.
They’re not explicitly referenced in the treaty, but they’ve formed part of maintaining the social peace around indigenous issues in New Zealand. The Māori seats are very unpopular on the right. it’s been a core issue for both New Zealand First and ACT and some factions within the National Party that are very opposed to what they see as a, you know, racially discriminatory form of representation. but also one that happens to have favoured the other side.
There have been overhangs created by the Māori seats in the past where Te Pati Māori doesn’t get enough seats on the proportional party vote to cover all of the electorates it wins, but it’s sort of of the order of one to three at most, and no elections ever hung on whether or not Te Pati Māori has those overhang seats. So it’s sort of been acknowledged as something that happens but it’s never really been much of an issue.
But this election Te Pati Māori have explicitly been running a strategy of give us your candidate vote in the Māori seats, but give your party vote to one of the other parties of the left, so that we can you know, enhance our position. and that’s new.
We have seen over the course of this year Te Pati Māori more or less disappear as a force in the party vote polls, well under 1%, under half a percent at times, which, you know, could reflect that strategy coming to pass, but we’ll find out in a week or so.
Ben: So in New Zealand there are 71 electorates, seven of which are Maori seats, 64 are general electorates. There used to be 72, but one of them was abolished in the last redistribution.
So each of those 71 seats elects its member through first past the post, and then there are another 49 seats which add up to a total of 120. So a voter has two votes. They cast their for their local candidate and then they cast another vote for a party at a national level. if you get over 5% nationally or you win an electorate, then you qualify for list seats,
But the list vote is used to work out what the total balance of the whole 120 is. So if a party wins a lot of electorates, effectively those seats are subtracted from how many list seats they get. And that’s what makes it a proportional system, as opposed to countries like Japan or Italy, which use a superficially similar system, but they don’t factor in the electorate results when the list seats are worked out.
Now the overhang, the name of your newsletter and what is seemingly of great relevance to this election, comes into play when a party wins more electorates than its share of the total vote. So if Te Pati Māori wins four electorates but only wins enough party votes for two, that creates two extra seats in the parliament to make up for that extra two seats. So everyone else still wins their share, but you win extra.
And it’s probably worth contrasting that with Germany, which has a very similar system to New Zealand, but until recently when they have tweaked their system further, They would then give everyone else extra seats to balance out that.
So if Te Pati Māori got double the number of seats it was entitled to, I guess that would mean every other party would also double the number of seats and it would create an overall balance. But in Germany that has led to much, much larger parliaments and they’ve now moved on from that. But New Zealand doesn’t even have that. So I think that’s all the basics of the system.
But now let’s talk about Opportunity because we talked about that 5% threshold.
If a party gets 4.999% of the vote and doesn’t get an electorate, they don’t get anything at all, right? Whereas if they get five, they probably get six, seven seats somewhere around there, depending on exactly how the rest of the parliament works. and so for Opportunity, tell me a bit about them and their chances of getting into parliament.
James: Yeah, so Opportunity Party was founded in 2017 by a wealthy entrepreneur by the name of Gareth Morgan, and has morphed over time, it’s fair to say. their slogan this time around is “not left, not right, but forward”, which will be familiar to anyone who followed Andrew Yang’s campaign for president in the United States, that it is very much sort of a progressive centrist style of politics that tries to focus in on just what works and just sensible policy and without too much ideology, is how they’d put it.
So they do have a lot in common on some issues with both National and Labour, and have been very explicit that they would be willing to work with either party.
Probably a somewhat good analogy is the teal candidates in Australia that sort of a lot of previously Liberal-National seats or voters who perhaps are a little dissatisfied with the current shape of the National party, are seeing opportunity as an alternative.
And then similarly, former Labour voters or former Green voters who are uninspired by the offering that Labour have put on the table are probably beginning to defect over to opportunity as well. We don’t have a super clear picture of that, and we probably won’t until we see what the spread of where their support’s coming from looks like.
Ben: Indeed, their party colours, at least according to Wikipedia, are teal. So, you know, like the teals in Australia, they’ve gone for that mix of blue and green. And I have seen in some of the debates them specifically targeting the Greens and talking about being an environmental party, but suggesting that the Greens have missed out on opportunities to contribute to government because of their refusal to work with the Nationals.
James: Yeah. and the reason I say they’ve had a few different forms and a few different priorities over there is some of their fundamental policies are fairly radical. a centerpiece of their program is a move to a land tax based tax system, rather than focusing on income tax, combined with a a universal basic income, which, yeah, it would be a a pretty radical change to tax and welfare laws in New Zealand.
But on the other hand, the issues they’ve chosen to prioritise and have declared as their bottom lines in negotiation are, probably much more realistic given they are for a party on near enough five six percent of the vote. around a few environmental issues, a few social issues.
So it has made them a bit difficult to classify and and and pin down.
They’ve got a new leader since the last election, Qiulae Wong, who is contesting the seat of Mount Albert in Auckland as an alternative way to try to get above the the threshold and qualify for seats.
But yeah, over the course of this year they’ve lifted from 1-2% in the polls, which has been traditionally what they’ve got at the last three elections, to first over five percent and now somewhere between six and eight. so whilst it’s fairly likely at this point that they will get in, there’s obviously some uncertainty there The most powerful vote you can cast statistically in New Zealand is the one that tips a party from 4.999 to 5.0.
And there is the possibility that Opportunity are quite close to that margin. and in terms of the likely shape of Parliament, whether they make it in or not really does have a big role in determining who’s likely to govern. With polls as they are at the moment, it would be very unlikely that Labour would be able to form a government without them. Never say never.
We’ve seen some big swings in the past. but absent Opportunity with National, New Zealand First and ACT picking up probably just enough seats to continue governing alone. So it’s been a real focus of debate and coverage over the campaign.
Ben Raue (22:53)
And something I’ve always found interesting about that 5% threshold is the tactical voting dilemma it creates for voters. Because in theory a proportional system should reduce that tactical voting question because every vote counts in some way. And you know, when we have proportional systems here in Australia using preferential voting, of course parties that poll poorly don’t get people elected, but you go from zero to one, you don’t go from zero to six or seven and
those votes can still be really valuable even if the number one person they voted for doesn’t elect someone, right? Like if one or two percent of people vote for a socialist party, those preferences might still help elect a Green over someone else at some point. whereas it does create this dilemma for people and clearly, Christopher Luxon has been trying to discourage conservative voters from voting for them by saying that he won’t form government with them and I mean
There’s a lot of skepticism about how serious he is about that promise, but it is clearly intended as a don’t go give them your vote. ideally for them they would have Opportunity pick up as much of the left vote as they could without getting past 5% and soak up those left votes. And effectively then those votes are all dead, right? They don’t count for anything at all.
James (24:00)
Yeah, the threshold effect is pretty extreme and it’s why you have seen in the past a lot of minor parties going the other route to qualifying for seats, which is to win a single electorate. but there is a credibility gap, I think, that you’ve got to get over as a minor party there’s sort of a dead zone between about 2% where you’re kind of not in it up to a little over five percent where once that
realistic prospect that you’re elected is established, then more support will flow your way.
the threshold has been one of the factors behind why New Zealand’s system hasn’t come to resemble proportional systems in other countries. It’s very difficult to enter parliament without pre existing representation. It hasn’t happened since I think the 1960s with the
social credit movement even before MMP came in. So if
Ben Raue (24:48)
Mm.
James (24:48)
opportunity do make it in, that will be the first time that’s happened without a breakaway from an existing party.
Ben Raue (24:54)
Right,
because ACT and New Zealand First were well, New Zealand First started before MMP ACT kind of started in that period where you knew that MMP was coming, but they both were founded by defectors from the major parties. Te Pati Māori was founded by a defector from the major parties. The Green Party wasn’t, but it was a member party of the Alliance and had members of parliament who then split off to get elected separately. Yeah.
James (25:17)
Yep. Yep.
and previous parties that have sort of been and gone, United Future, the Alliance, the Progressive Party and the Mana Party, were all, you know, defectors from previous parties. So,
Ben Raue (25:29)
Mm.
James (25:30)
opportunity coming in as something you know, there are obviously people involved who have been in involved in politics in the past, but it’s not that direct lineage. So it’s a tough ask in the system and you have to credit them
that they’ve been able to garner the attention and the support that they have.
Ben Raue (25:44)
Yeah, and the 5% threshold, a lot of countries that use proportional representation have some kind of threshold, often around that level, is a deliberately designed thing to limit the fragmentation, right? It is designed to avoid a situation where you have a party
getting two, three percent and having like six or seven parties in government. It does feel like despite that though, the amount of fragmentation in New Zealand politics has been growing a little bit. We’ve now got six parties, well, you can argue about Te Pati Māori, but certainly the other five, all with substantial numbers of seats. We’re not talking about parties only electing one or two MPs as we have in the past. And, right now a fully fledged coalition government with three parties all with substantial numbers of seats. Whereas traditionally, even if sometimes you had
three parties in government, usually one or two of them were very, very small. And it does feel like the medium sized parties have become bigger and more significant in New Zealand.
James (26:35)
Yeah, I think initially with the transition to MMP we operated under this two-and-a-bit party system where National and Labour were still very dominant and you’d only really see the medium parties rising to prominence when one of the major parties was collapsing. So if Labour were in opposition,
and failing to find a message that worked, you’d see support obviously moving to National but also moving to to the Greens in New Zealand First.
Ben Raue (26:59)
And ACT were also at their peak when the National party were very weak.
James (27:03)
Exactly, exactly. So that was the dynamic for a while where it was quite clear that Labour and National were the main games in town and they’re still polling thirty percent. But what we’re seeing now does more resemble what you see in, say, continental Europe of this sort of constellation of aligned parties of different sizes, probably clearer blocs as we discussed at the beginning, than you’ve seen in other systems.
So it’s an interesting question. given the size of our parliament and some of the seats to votes theories about the numbers of parties you’d expect to see in a proportional system like ours, we’ve up until probably 2023 or so, run well below that with Labour and National dominating. But
In some ways this could be just the realities of a proportional system asserting themselves. or it you know, the the kind of stable juncture we were at with the the boom of the 90s and the 2000s which supported the enduring three term National and Labour governments, has sort of given way to a much more disrupted macro environment.
And if neither of the major parties are being seen as dealing appropriately with that, that support is gonna go elsewhere. it’s partly personality. I think it’s probably not controversial to say that both Christopher Luxon and Chris Hipkins sit in the shadow of two very popular past leaders of their parties. And so without that kind of resonant figurehead like a John Key or a Jacinda Ardern,
the major parties haven’t been able to attract the support and attention that they’ve had in the past. and that’s seen the, you know, rise in visibility of the likes of Chlöe Swarbrick and Marama Davidson of the Green Party or Winston Peters and David Seymour of New Zealand First and ACT.
Ben Raue (28:46)
so we understand the parties, we understand the system. One of the big things we’ve seen in this term is the relative strength of the National Party compared to its minor party coalition partners has been going down. New Zealand First did appear to be on a particularly high point, whereas ACT polled more at the previous election. But in the last few months, New Zealand First vote has declined a little bit and ACT’s vote has gone up.
But it’s still interesting because New Zealand First three times in the past have formed government. All three times their vote then dipped below five percent, right? Sometimes they stayed back in because they had an electorate, sometimes they got knocked out of parliament. But a term in power for New Zealand First has always led to a big decline. Right now, they’re on track for a substantial increase, although not as much as they were getting in, say May. putting aside the question of left versus right.
If the right wing government is re-elected, that make up of that government would be quite different.
James (29:41)
Yeah, there’s a really good piece of analysis in a website over here called The Spinoff, the terms they put it in was everyone is in opposition now. And that has been the pattern we’ve seen with New Zealand First is they’re very effective in opposition at opposing at finding, you know, issues where people are frustrated with the governing parties.
And they’ve basically just continued that approach despite the fact that they are in coalition in cabinet, of taking issue with especially some of ACT’s proposals. but yeah, continuing to motivate that kind of protest energy from within coalition. so I think that’s a part of the continued support they’ve seen.
And then the other part is the weakness of National and Labour in government and in opposition has sort of left enough space available for them to occupy. I guess the other contributing factor is and this is a risk for opportunity if they are in a position to ACT as kingmaker, is roughly speaking, half to a third of
New Zealand First support at past elections wanted them to form a government with either National or Labour. That faction immediately gets disappointed when they support the other side. As we saw after
Ben Raue (30:49)
Mm.
James (30:50)
2017, there was a lot of voters who were not particularly happy with the decision to go with Labour. Saw the same in the 2000s or especially in 1996 with the decision to go with National. That probably wasn’t the case at the 2023 election where
it was very clear through the campaign from the statements Hipkins and Winston Peters had made that a vote for New Zealand First was a vote for a coalition with National. And so there hasn’t been that same sense of betrayal that’s driven some of their voters away.
Ben Raue (31:17)
so the kind
of green party approach of picking a side and being reliable and stable, maybe works well for your kind of long term vote stability because you’re not pissing off half your base when you do the thing
James (31:29)
Mm.
Ben Raue (31:30)
that everyone expected you to do.
James (31:32)
Yeah, it’s, not a choice that is open to the Greens to do anything else, but the advantage of being a stable, kinda ideologically distinct
Ben Raue (31:40)
I don’t know,
they could completely change what they believe in and change who their voters were, parties do it, you know.
James (31:45)
to an extent the Green Party has, a big part of their rise since the 2000s has been growth as we’ve seen in Australia and the UK as well. Growth in the inner city urban areas more focused around issues of housing, transport, social justice, and a decline in some of the more rural alternative lifestyle
type seats where they’d done well previously. The first seat they won was Coromdanel, which is a rural kind of alternative lifestyle beach towns type seat. Whereas now the first seat that they won more recently was Auckland Central, the center of the biggest city. and then the same in the central seats in Wellington.
So yeah, the parties do change, but I think people know what they’re getting with the Greens, whereas that might not have been true with New Zealand earlier in the 2000s, whereas now it’s a clearer picture of what people are voting for. So I think they’ve been able to hold on to some of those voters. and also just the you know, the issues have been favorable for them. one of their
core issues has been around the oil and gas sector, and the decline of the fossil fuel industry in New Zealand. That has become much more prominent, with both domestic energy prices in New Zealand even before the Strait of Hormuz was closed. and obviously now with disruptions to the global oil supply, that’s a coherent message that resonates with people. the
Greens and opportunity have their own version of it around electrification, but it’s played to their strengths in a lot of ways.
Ben Raue (33:06)
so that’s been going on the right. it’s not quite so obvious on the left where Labour has had a polling increase throughout the term, but certainly in the last few months we’ve seen the Green Party picking up its support while Labour and Te Pati Māori are falling. But probably the more interesting
polling trend in theory under a proportional system you put aside the overhangs, you put aside who gets over the threshold. You would expect that if one bloc is in total polling more than the other bloc, they probably form a majority under this kind of everyone’s picked a side system. And in that regard, the right wing parties generally have been polling a little bit better than the parties of the left, but it’s not super clear.
James (33:47)
Yeah, so I think what was unusual about this term, and I think it partly is to do with the state of the world, is basically no honeymoon period for Luxon’s government. that there was a year or so where they stayed basically where they were at the 2023 election. But since then Labour did see a sustained recovery, which is unusual for a first
term opposition government in New Zealand to a point where over 2024, 25 they were ahead of National in many polls, even where the left bloc was sort of just behind. But then yeah, the dominant trend in polling over 2026 is support for Labour falling away as support
for the Opportunity Party and then more recently the Greens has increased. obviously post hoc ergo propter hoc doesn’t mean that it’s the same voters that are moving, but it’s a pretty compelling trend.
that opportunity have been rising while Labour has been falling. The Greens rising over the course of an election is not unusual. The minor parties tend to do well once they’re on a more of a level footing with the major parties over the course of a campaign. So that increase that they’ve seen is
You know, it doesn’t always happen, but it’s it’s not surprising to see. and we see the same with ACT over the the past couple of months of increased prominence with some high profile candidates. but yeah, since the beginning of this year, the right bloc has been sustainably 3-5% of the collective left bloc. but the real
uncertainty that’s been injected into the outcome has come from the opportunity party and from the prospects of National and Te Pati Māori winning additional seats,
Ben Raue (35:20)
let’s go to that and let’s talk about that element because, until this election, and honestly, until the last couple of months I don’t think people have been talking about it very much. You you have, but the electorate contests in New Zealand outside of those Māori electorates
Have largely seemed like a sideshow to those of us watching from the outside. They obviously matter to the individual candidates who are running because it can matter to the personalities of who actually sits in parliament. And there’s dynamics where who you nominate in an electorate can have an effect on how you poll in that area on both ballots and all of those kind of dynamics. But ultimately, in terms of who gets elected to parliament, They haven’t mattered, right? And the example I like to use is I think it was 2014. There was actually two elections in
a row where it was really close. Jacinda Ardern ran for Auckland Central and lost to Nikki Kaye, who was the National Party candidate. In 2014, that was the last seat to be decided, and whoever lost that seat would then fill the last list seat. And if the lead changed, the party that had gained the lead would then lose a list seat, and the candidate that had fallen behind would have then gained a seat on the list. So, in terms of the actual makeup of parliament, in this super, super close contest, which would be
a really big story in Australia made no difference to who sat in parliament. And I know there’s resourcing things as well. You have a local electorate office and all that kind of stuff as well that you get with being the local MP. But what’s interesting this year is because the National party’s vote has fallen so far, but under those dynamics of first past the post, you look at a UK election or even a single member election in Australia, the major parties still get these big winners bonus from being the bigger parties. National
are in a position where they will do very badly out of the list vote, but actually do quite well out of the electorate vote, we suspect. It’s hard to say. And that could create a
James (37:02)
Mm.
Ben Raue (37:02)
mismatch where they win a few more or maybe even a lot more electorates than their share of the party vote, which has both consequences internally for them, but also probably would lock in a right wing government.
James (37:13)
no, it’s exactly right. Electorates aren’t supposed to matter to the overall proportionality of of Parliament. In many ways it’s a bug that they do. there was some concern when MMP was first introduced that parties might do this tactically. It was kind of mooted of, well, should we split the party into a an electorate party and a nationwide party to game the system? Very quickly kiboshed as being sort of constitutionally illegitimate.
But it it has been this persistent risk with mixed member systems that eventually the pressures in the system and the incentives the parties face, as I think we saw in in Japan or other places, they’d eventually default to being mixed member majoritarian systems where you’ve got two separate pools of candidates, one proportional
Ben Raue (37:55)
Mm.
James (37:55)
and one electorate.
Ben Raue (37:56)
it’s
definitely happened in Italy, which now has a
James (37:58)
Italy,
Ben Raue (37:58)
mixed member majoritarian system where the link between the two has been separated. But you effectively could have Labour One and Labour Two, and Labour One only runs in the electorates and Labour Two runs in the list, at which point the linkage is completely broken. we’ve seen in New Zealand, I think we’ve definitely seen it in Scotland, which has a similar system, but like New Zealand, relatively large proportion of the seats are local electorates compared to the number of list seats.
and in Scotland they also calculate the proportionality by region. they don’t have overhangs, but if a party wins more than its share of the electorates, other parties just miss out on list seats to make up for it. But what has definitely happened in Scotland is there are people who are pro-independence, will vote for the Scottish Greens on the list and they’ll vote for their local Scottish nationalist candidate
on the constituency vote and effectively that boosts the overall pro independence share in Parliament compared to what their vote is. And those people are voting sincerely, and I think you could also argue there are sincere people who are like, I’m gonna vote for the Māori party in my Māori electorate vote and then I’m gonna vote for the Greens or Labour.
people do this naturally. They sincerely go, Well, I like both these parties and I’m gonna split my vote. But it does feel like in New Zealand we’re beginning to see particularly some
independent groups that are not running their own candidates, encouraging voters to go, you can do this on purpose. You can say vote for one party on one and one party on the other. The problem being if one side of politics does it, they get a short term advantage, right? But effectively then when the other side does it in response, it just breaks the proportionality entirely.
James (39:26)
Yeah, and it’s almost happened by accident a couple of times in the past. So National have come very close I think they only had four seats on the list at the 2023 election. And you know, is there gonna be a major party overhang sort of fulfills the role of the contested convention in the United States where it’s fun to talk about but it never really happens.
but
partly because of the Māori seats being a separate block of electorates where a lot of Labour’s vote, you know, a tenth of their vote comes from. what that means is in the general seats, along with Labour being quite concentrated in kind of working class areas of the major cities, is that
on average National just have more seats that they can win when the parties are neck and neck in the polls. What that means is put aside tactical voting, people just sort of sincerely splitting their vote as they always have, where, people understand the electorates are an FPP race and so you see ACT voters voting for National candidates, green voters in most seats voting for Labour candidates. even just with
that kind of ordinary behaviour, we probably will see a National overhang at this election. but yeah, now there’s been some talk, it must be said
vociferously opposed by National party leadership, that people should engage in tactical voting to kind of boost their side’s chances. and really what’s driving that is the relative position of
National versus the other parties of the right where, you know, roughly speaking, ACT on ten, New Zealand First on ten, National on thirty, that kind of ratio is sort of unheard of, at least in situations where National is doing well, where National’s
votes collapse, that we saw that kind of gap emerge in 2020
Ben Raue (41:09)
if you look at an Australian election or a UK election, because I don’t actually think preferential voting would help very much with this phenomenon, just to be clear, I’m sure we’ll get some comments going, if we had preferential voting it’d fix that. I don’t think it would help very much, to be honest, because you can have a majority block, but thirty percent of the vote is enough if you’re a little bit ahead of the other major party to win most seats, right? To just sweep it in. but thirty percent is not enough to win a large number of list seats.
James (41:36)
No, and you know, that’s not a
Mathematical necessity. what’s driving it is the ratio of available list seats versus the number of electorates. Because we have increased the number of electorates since MMP was first introduced, but haven’t increased the size of parliament in response to that, what that’s usually meant is election to election, there’s one or two fewer list seats than there have been previously for
complicated reasons I won’t go into we lost an electorate seat which at the last redistribution which has made things slightly easier. where you have plurality voting in the electorate seats and proportional voting nationwide and then layer on top of that the uneven distribution of party support across the country, it’s just a kind of
natural outcome of that process.
Ben Raue (42:23)
And it’ll be interesting after the election because of the simple calculations of the New Zealand electoral system, it will be quite easy to go, well, if we had 20 more list seats, this wouldn’t have happened, or something like you know, to do those calculations afterwards. one element of the overhang means that sometimes there are prominent politicians for a major party who don’t run for an electorate, they only run for the lists.
And they’re really high up on the list, maybe they’re number two, number three on the list. but they are relying on their party at least getting a couple of list seats. But it looks like Nicola Willis in particular, who’s the finance minister, she’s not running for an electorate. So if the party gets any kind of overhang or even gets exactly the right number of seats, she won’t get elected.
Paul Goldsmith, who has traditionally run against the leader of ACT in Epsom, he won’t win that electorate. So he’s relying on the list. And then Chris Bishop, who represents a marginal seat in the Wellington suburbs, is also a very prominent minister. So all three of them are in danger. I mean Bishop could survive if the party does particularly well on the electorates, but three of them are in danger of effectively being squeezed out by the party’s very successful local electorate backbenchers
who are more likely to survive if this sort of thing was to happen.
James (43:30)
Yeah, between the two, three, four, and five on the National Party list, I think you’ve got seventeen ministerial portfolios and the Speaker of the House, all of whom
Ben Raue (43:40)
Mm.
James (43:40)
would Bishop aside, who has at least some prospect of retaining his seat, although the party is not popular in Wellington at the moment.
Ben Raue (43:48)
Hm.
James (43:49)
you know, all of whom are really going to struggle to make it into the House, which long term has to be of concern to the National party that
their ability to attract and retain capable people who, there may not be space for them, in a safe electorate seat where constituency parties have a a big role in picking candidates. it’s been a really useful feature of MMP that the major parties place a lot of value on is their ability to put someone near the top of the list if they’re a prospective finance minister or foreign minister or speaker of the House.
And National looks like they’ve all but lost the ability to do that.
Ben Raue (44:24)
Mm.
James (44:25)
and I think that’s part of what’s driving National’s opposition to any suggestion of tactical voting is they want to be the strongest party within their block. They want their relative power compared to New Zealand First, ACT or potentially opportunity to be as large as it can be. But they also want to retain the top of their list because those are you know, the finance minister is a
very important role and you know bishop who’s sort of seen as the obvious successor if Nicola Willis does look out may lose his seat as well. So it really creates a problem for them, which is part of why they’re so opposed to tactical voting.
Ben Raue (44:58)
Is there any evidence that like say for example Labour or maybe the Greens by kind of staying out of particular electorates are trying to minimise that overhang by winning some of those marginal seats? Like that they’ve responded at all? Because I could imagine from their perspective they’ll be like, normally we don’t really care that much about winning these individual electorates, but in this case a split Labour Green vote may like lock us out of government.
James (45:19)
Yeah.
Ben Raue (45:20)
Is there any evidence that they’re responding in their campaigns?
James (45:23)
So I haven’t seen anything about that from the parties themselves. the Greens with their own voters traditionally do very well on the candidate vote, even in seats where there was never a prospect the Green candidate would win, people two tick. I think where that becomes more relevant is after this election, if they do miss out partly or entirely due to National having an overhang,
you may see a natural response to that.
Are we seeing evidence of ACT and New Zealand First voters moving more towards National than they have previously? And have we seen tactical voting in response? what we do see is in a few key marginal seats, both ACT and the Greens choosing not to stand candidates. more ACT than the Greens. I think there’s probably only two seats where the Greens aren’t standing. and in some of those close races, you know, their voters understand the
two horse race dynamics and tend to support either the National candidate or the Labour candidate, whereas they’re more free in safe National or safe Labour seats to vote their heart.
Ben Raue (46:21)
It is fascinating how the proportional way of thinking can sometimes coexist for people in their brain with effectively a first past the post way of thinking, right?
James (46:28)
you and I and others think about this a lot more than other people do, and and a lot of times it’s just they like the local candidate or, they’re prominent in the area or whatever it is. But yeah, if it does happen, I think there will be serious questions about what the right tactical response is from Labour and the Greens. But I think it will also prompt a conversation
about, do we feel this is legitimate? It is a mixed member system. In some ways
Ben Raue (46:51)
Mm.
James (46:51)
the adoption of a mixed member system was kind of a compromise in the move away from first past the post. So I think some would say that local MPs matter and it’s a perfectly legitimate outcome. The Labour Party will not be saying that if this is what causes them to lose. but I think we will see a debate about
what is to be done about it. you’d have to say a government that was elected off the back of this kind of support’s probably not going to be particularly enthusiastic about giving up that advantage. but
then, the history of how we got MMP in the first place did come in part from National winning two elections in the 1970s and 1980s with a minority of the vote just because of the way
FPP operated. So it could be that this’ll kick off another round of reconsideration, at least on the left, of what form the electoral system could take.
the other approach would be adding more seats to maintain proportionality. I can’t see that happening here because of what it would mean with Te Pati Māori, who okay, they’ve only got an overhang of two, two seats is not a lot, but that’s double their proportional entitlement. And so to cancel that out you’d have
an unforeseen doubling of the size of Parliament, that
Ben Raue (47:55)
Mm.
James (47:56)
kind of uncertainty, not least it would probably begin to exhaust the major parties lists. I can’t see that getting off the ground. I’ve seen some speculation and argument that that’s actually what our legislation says ought to happen. I don’t agree with that, but it’s an opinion I’ve seen people posting from the Labour side.
and if things are close, and I think this is true both of the nationwide vote and the electorate vote, things could be more contentious and we may see recounts, litigation about the validity of ballots, because there’s been some changes to the enrolment laws that are creating
Ben Raue (48:29)
Mm.
James (48:30)
problems there. So if the election is close, I think we could be in for
a rocky democratic ride over the next couple of months, as those things work through. fortunately New Zealand has largely been spared that because of the simplicity of the proportional system. The electorate votes matter to people in that electorate, but they don’t matter to the outcome. If
Ben Raue (48:50)
Mm.
James (48:51)
that’s now no longer true, yeah, things could get quite tense.
Ben Raue (48:55)
So that’s about it for this episode of the Tally Room podcast. Thank you, James, for joining me.
James (48:58)
Thanks, Ben.
Ben Raue (48:59)
I’ll be covering the New Zealand election this Saturday night with a live blog, kind of on and off through the evening, so please check it out. And you should also check out James’s newsletter, The Overhang, which is providing the best Psephological analysis of the New Zealand election. James, what are you gonna be doing on election night if someone wants to read what you’re saying?
James (49:15)
so probably the easiest way to follow the live results is via X or Bluesky. that’s @ overhang AONZ. and we’ll know pretty quickly given how fast the votes are counted, what things are shaping up and then we won’t know for two weeks until provisional votes come in what the final results are.
Ben Raue (49:31)
So a lot of votes are effectively entered into the count right on 6pm when polls close, because those are early votes and they’re effectively counted on the day and then published at six o’clock. So we get a lot of those results straight away and then we get a lot of other ones through the night. But New Zealand, differently to Australia, all the extra votes that can’t be counted on the night will get processed over a two week period. But here in Australia
We get gradual updates and we gradually call those last few seats. But in New Zealand you have radio silence for two weeks and then you get everything in one go. Is that right? Yep. Yeah.
James (50:03)
Yep. Nervous weight on the specials is how we talk about it here.
Ben Raue (50:06)
And I’ve said a couple of times to people in New Zealand, like when people are like, we we have to cut down on this time because this is bad. In Australia we also have that kind of two week wait, but the commission reports updates gradually as votes come in and almost everything is determined
before the very last day of the count. and I suspect the same would be true in a lot of ways of New Zealand. You know, you might not have the full picture, but the picture would gradually fill in rather than this yeah, radio silence. and also remember if you want to buy a ticket to the live show I’m doing in Melbourne the week after the Victorian election, please do so now. I’m looking forward to it on December 2nd. Link will be in the notes.
You can find this podcast on your podcast app of choice. If you like the show, please consider rating or reviewing us under Apple Podcasts or Spotify. You can follow me on Bluesky at www.benraue.com You can now also follow the Tally Room on Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube @thetallyroom This podcast is made possible thanks to the generous support of our donors on Patreon. Sign up at patreon.com/tallyroom Ad-free versions of this podcast are now available for Patreon subscribers. And if you sign up for $10 or more per month, you can join our Discord
where we’re having great conversations about elections. If you’re a Tally Room member, you can now also access election guides for the next federal election and state elections in New South Wales and Queensland. Information about this podcast is available at tallyroom.com.au and you can email questions or feedback to podcast@tallyroom.com.au Thanks to Chris Dubrow for writing the music you hear in this episode. Once again, thanks for listening.
