DON BRASH: Want to keep the Left out of government?

The above advertorial ran in the NZ Herald on October 29. The copy follows for those unable to read the small print or who are using a mobile phone.

To check out how tight the race is in your own electorate and whether splitting your vote could make a difference go to www.VoteSmart2026.co.nz

Want to keep the Left out of government?

Then DO NOT party vote National!

BY DON BRASH

Former Governor of the Reserve Bank of New Zealand and former Leader of the National Party

It sounds backwards - but hear me out

National is asking its supporters for “two ticks blue”. Sir John Key has gone further, warning that National voters who split their votes would be doing something that is “the opposite of clever”.

In an ordinary election, he may well have a point. But this is not an ordinary election.

National's electorate strength is substantially greater than its current party-vote support. That creates the probability National wins more electorate seats than its party vote entitles it to.

And once that happens, party votes for National will not produce any more National MPs. Meanwhile, party votes for ACT or NZ First will produce extra right-side MPs.

Greater risk from not splitting your vote

That is why I, and the many people who support this plan, believe the greater risk lies not in centre-right voters splitting their votes, but in them failing to do so — with that failure producing the very left-wing government they are trying to avoid.

Right-bloc voters will be considerably aggrieved if they wake up after election day to find Chlöe Swarbrick, Marama Davidson, Rawiri Waititi and Chris Hipkins running the country, having concentrated on trying to save the parliamentary careers of Nicola Willis, Chris Bishop, Paul Goldsmith and Gerry Brownlee.

In this election, splitting your vote may be the smartest thing a centre-right voter can do.

A little Electoral Law and a simple maths lesson

You have two votes. The electorate vote chooses the local MP. The party vote normally determines how many MPs each party gets. Candidates winning electorates fill their party's entitlement first. List MPs then fill the remaining places.

Parliament is usually 120 seats. Suppose a party's total party vote entitles it to 34 MPs (list and electorate seats together). If that party has 32 electorate-winning MPs, it then receives two more MPs - being list MPs - bringing that party's total caucus up to 34 MPs. Clear, obvious and normal.

But this election is quite abnormal, with National suddenly having more local than national strength. Assume National wins 40 electorate seats (six more than its party vote entitlement, say). It would keep all 40 electorate MPs and would receive no list MPs, because the electorate-MP number exceeds its total entitlement (by six).

Parliament would thus expand, by those six electorate seats, to 126 seats, creating a six-seat “overhang” in favour of National (and the right-side coalition).

The Hard Left has already initiated its own overhang campaign

Te Pāti Māori has already called on its supporters to engineer a left-wing overhang by urging them to party-vote Green or Labour. Polling seems to show the tactic is working. Chris Hipkins has not ruled out governing with Te Pāti Māori if that party's plan produces a left-wing majority.

Our centre-right plan

We have called on right-side voters to react similarly. The plan is to create a decisive right-side overhang by educating voters to give their party vote to either ACT or NZ First. Further detail on how to use both votes is available at www.votesmart2026.co.nz.

Senior National Party MPs lost

Sir John Key worries that senior National list MPs will lose their places as a result of this plan and that National will have less influence within the coalition. Senior National MPs, however, lose their jobs not because of this vote-splitting strategy, but because National is polling so poorly, with its party vote likely to be correspondingly low.

Official National Party plan to lift party vote unlikely to work

Maurice Williamson, a former National Party Cabinet Minister (with a mathematician's brain), has helpfully studied this plan. Williamson notes that Key was right in every other MMP election, but not in this one, because National's polled party vote is presently looking to be so very low and its electorate tally, paradoxically, looks substantial. Williamson accepts that if National's support suddenly grows greatly, the maths may change. But, if National wins 40 electorates, which looks very possible, and its party vote, say, goes up by 5% from 28% to 33%,even that movement may not add one single National list MP.

Potentially every party vote for National wasted

There is more than one worry if the estimated 800,000 party votes stay with National, as Sir John Key asks.

Suppose an outcome in which only Nicola Willis (effectively at the top of National's list) scrapes in on the list. Then one additional National list MP has effectively been bought at a cost of 800,000 party votes.

If she doesn’t scrape in, then the entire 800,000 National party votes are completely wasted – yes, one hundred percent squandered and frittered away!

Far more right-bloc coalition MPs will rescue us from Chlöe and Co.

In comparison, it is likely to take only about 25,000 party votes to bring in each extra NZ First or ACT list MP. Thus, if voters cast their party votes wisely, they can greatly and safely increase the coalition's majority.

Our country is at an inflection point. Prioritising the careers of a few sitting MPs does not warrant the catastrophe of this country becoming another Venezuela.

 We need to think – and vote – as a team

As Maurice Williamson puts it: “It’s like a rugby game. It does not matter if the winger, the lock or the kicker scores, so long as the team wins”.

So, for centre-right voters, intelligent vote-splitting can save the day. By team effort, the coalition can survive. Ignoring the maths and putting party over country could well cost everything.