PETER WILLIAMS: National still refusing to accept the obvious

Is there a more sinister reason they don’t want vote splitting?

One week to go until the votes start being counted and National remains as staunch as ever in its opposition to the only voting tactic that will keep Christopher Luxon as Prime Minister and National as the main party of a governing coalition – tactical vote splitting.

The New Zealand Herald is reporting that Luxon is calling the promotion of such a strategy “disappointing” and his party says recent advertising placed by RCR Media and approved by Act and New Zealand First is “trying to confuse” voters.

The attitude is patronising in the extreme. Voters are not stupid. Supporters of Te Pati Maori worked it out some time ago. The 1 News -Verian poll had their party vote down to 0.1 percent this week but other electorate-by-electorate surveys has them winning 4 seats.

(Labour are likely to hold Ikaroa-Rawhiti and either Labour or the Greens will take Te Tai Tonga and Te Tai Tokerau. TPM will win the other 4 Maori seats.)

So if Te Pati Maori voters have worked out the best way to get their people into parliament and create a four seat overhang, why wouldn’t National Party voters come to the same conclusion?

There is nothing especially complicated about the tactic. MMP has given us two votes each election for thirty years. In the previous ten elections, hundreds of thousands of us, if not millions, will have split our votes. I’ve done it myself at least twice that I can remember, including in 2023. Just having the opportunity to cast two votes suggests that you think seriously about using them both for a strategic purpose.

Only the most tribal of supporters would vote two ticks for their favourite party. After all, what’s the point of voting for the Act candidate in Whangaparoa where Mark Mitchell has a 23,000 majority or ticking for the Green candidate in Dunedin where Rachel Brooking has Labour’s largest electorate majority (7980).

Recent poll results have been consistent for the National Party. 1News-Verian stretched them to 32 percent last week but back to 29 this week. Other results have them firmly anchored in the high 20s with RNZ-Reid Research suggesting a disastrous 24.8 earlier this week.

On the night and with a strong wind behind them National may get to 30 percent but that’s the best they can hope for. Act and New Zealand First together are consistently garnering around 20 percent but TPM’s likely results means getting 50.1 percent of the popular vote won’t be enough.

This will be the largest parliament in New Zealand history, possibly up to 130 seats depending on the size of what is certain to be an overhang of some sort from National electorates. If TPM have 4 electorates they could all be overhang because their party vote will so small as to not reach the threshold to claim a seat through their proportion of the party vote, a threshold around 0.8 percent.

The continued opposition to vote splitting by National’s leadership is understandable on two fronts: (1) they continue to hold a forlorn hope that their fortunes will rise in the polls during the last week of campaigning and (2) even the merest hint of support for vote splitting will see their party vote collapse even more.

But what if there’s a third, and more sinister reason?

A recent Substack from Zoran Rakovic, quoting a Norwegian political scientist Kaare Strom, offers the idea that “the party understands something that the electoral arithmetic does not measure. National might prefer to lose office, preserve political identity and rebuild electoral strength.”

The article goes on to say “the refusal to participate in a particular governing arrangement need not be evidence of political irrationality.

“The party that refuses to exchange long-term strength for short term office may be making a calculated choice rather than committing an elementary political blunder.”

It’s all rather heady, academic thinking with some logic behind it.

Except it fails on two fronts.

The reason National is flailing in the polls is that it’s forgotten many of its founding and current principles: equal citizenship and equal opportunity, individual freedom and choice, personal responsibility, competitive enterprise and rewards for achievement and limited government.

How can a National Party supposedly championing those values think about breaking up supermarket companies, not support a Treaty Principles Bill which wanted to legislate equality for all and make it illegal for under 16s to be on Instagram?

The current National Party is far too interventionist for many of its core supporters and is unlikely to get them back until it reverts to what the National Party is supposed to be about.

The other reason the Rakovic/Strom thesis falls short is what would happen to the country if a Labour-Greens-Opportunity-Te Pati Maori coalition is formed because National didn’t want an overhang to win them back the Treasury benches?

From where this observer sits, the prospect of asset taxes whether through capital gain, wealth or land is a horrendous prospect.

The old mantra that a country can never tax its way to prosperity is difficult to argue against. There is a distinction between redistributing wealth and creating wealth. They are not the same economic activity.

A coalition of the left says it wants to redistribute even more.

That should be discouraged and that’s why a right-leaning coalition, imperfect as it may be, is considerably better for the country than the alternative.

National will forlornly whistle in the wind about a “two ticks blue” strategy. But their leaders must know deep down it’s not going to work and that hundreds of thousands of people will back their local MPs but party vote elsewhere.

Writer and broadcaster for half a century. Now watching from the sidelines. Subscribe to Peter William's Substack here