PETER WILLIAMS: Should Nats follow the TPM Method?

Their best chance is to get a swag of electorate MPs

The lead story on Sunday night’s 1News was about Te Pati Māori and its plan to chase just the electorate vote.

For them, it makes sense. The party is hovering around three percent and dropping. They currently hold six electorate seats but two of their MPs have left the party after the internal squabbling.

Labour seem favourites to win Te Tai Tonga (all of the South Island and some of the lower North) and Te Tai Tokerau – parts of West Auckland and all of Northland.

With everything running in their favour, especially a strong turnout of Māori roll voters, TPM could finish up with four electorate MPs. In round numbers that’s about what their party vote would entitle them too. They’ll be less than five percent but will have a proportion of MPs in line with their popular vote.

They’d want to win more of course, what party doesn’t, but their announced and highly publicized strategy of going after only the electorate vote is completely logical. They won’t reach five percent of the party vote and TPM is telling its supporters to party vote either Labour or Green to get more Māori MPs in Parliament.

(They could vote Act or New Zealand First too and get just as many Māori MPs but they’d be the wrong kind!)

Whether this is in the spirit of the MMP electoral system is questionable but every party is allowed to play within the rules of the game.

The big question is – should the National Party follow the same strategy?

Former leader Don Brash and long time minister Maurice Williamson have been pushing this strategy in recent times. So let’s examine it in more detail.

On the numbers available from recent polls it makes absolute sense for the largest part of the current coalition to drop the “two ticks blue” approach.

National currently has 49 MPs. There are 44 who hold an electorate plus 5 from the list.

The five most recent public polls have National at between 31 (Roy Morgan in August) and 28.7 (RNZ-Reid Research) in July. There was a Talbot Mills leaked result over this last weekend which had the Nats at 29.

The average of those official public polls has the party at 29.86. In a 120 seat Parliament that qualifies National to have 36 MPs.

In 2023 they won 44 electorates. This time round they’ll lose a few but it would have to be a absolutely disastrous day to lose more than 8 - wouldn’t it?

A couple of things to note about this year’s election: there are new boundaries and there’re now just 71 electorates, down from 72 in 2023.

With help from my very good friend Chat GPT, the most vulnerable National constituencies are Waitakere - a new seat including much of the old New Lynn – Whanganui, Hutt South, Mt Roskill and Wairarapa.

East Cape, Maungakiekie, Hamilton East, Otaki and Whangarei are also identified as vulnerable with a swing from National to Labour of three percent or less.

That’s ten that could be lost.

But on the flipside boundary changes make it possible that National will pick up some new seats. Foremost among them is Wigram where the seat now includes more affluent areas like Prebbleton and Templeton while working class suburbs Addington and Spreydon are now in Christchurch Central.

Then there’s Auckland Central where a recent Taxpayer’s Union - Curia poll had National’s Candace Kinser ahead of Chloe Swarbrick. But that was from a sample of just 400 voters and the electorate now includes left sympathizing suburbs Grey Lynn and Arch Hill.

It’s not beyond the realms of possibility that the Nats could also pick up Henderson which has much of the old Te Atatu seat (held by Labour with a 131 vote majority) but now includes areas with potentially more National voters.

Other possibilities for a National gain are Palmerston North and Mt Albert, although the latter is complicated by the presence of Opportunity leader Qiulae Wong.

So doing the sums on a worst/best case scenario, National could lose ten, gain three meaning a net loss of 7 which means 37 MPs.

On current polling that’s an overhang of 1 and no list MPs – which means list only candidate Nicolas Willis is gone, along with Chris Bishop who admits his hold on Hutt South is over for now.

The numbers then are quite clear. Save some dramatic event to turn around their fortunes, National are unlikely to be entitled to no more than 36 MPs.

If they want more the best bet would be to push for more electorates. They should go hard in some of those marginal seats like Hutt South (if Ginny Anderson is the answer it’s a silly question) and Wairarapa. Then they have to make sure those “on paper” wins in Wigram and Henderson are rammed home.

National Party leaders won’t talk about such tactics in public but smart voters will see the way ahead.

An electorate vote for National plus a party vote for Act or New Zealand First seems the way forward to return a coalition of centre-right leaning parties.

Like with Te Pati Maori it’s not absolutely ethical or in the spirit of the electoral system but needs must. National should realise it’s their best practical way to be back on the Treasury benches with their current partners.

Any other combination is just too terrifying to think about.

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