RODNEY HIDE - Election outcome: the real losers won't be on the ballot

Here’s my election night prediction, for what it is worth.

We will get a centre-right government. National will win an overhang. ACT and NZ First will come out on top. Opportunity will not make it into Parliament. The big losers will be the New Zealand media.

The media are finished

The media ran a narrative all year. They said it was close. They said the government was in trouble. They said change was coming. The Opportunities Party was the Kingmaker.  Night after night, the same story.  There was no other story.

It hasn't worked. Voters aren't listening, and they won't be when they vote. When the seats are counted, the gap between what we were told and what happened will be plain for all to see.

A press that tells you what it wants to happen, as fact, not what is happening, can't be trusted. People have worked that out.

The overhang

I am not going on a hunch here. The best analysis is from a newsletter called The Overhang. Its latest issue, "Side splitting", is out. The author goes back through the Electoral Commission's vote-splitting figures to 2002, works out how each party's voters actually cast their candidate vote, and applies that to current polling.

His bottom line is that National wins about 40 electorates against a list entitlement of about 32. That is an overhang of around eight seats. The range runs from four to ten, but it never gets to zero. In his words, National are "almost certainly getting an overhang". He also expects the Māori Party to pick up about two overhang seats.

The reason is loyalty. On average, a National incumbent gets 91 per cent of National party voters. A Labour incumbent gets 87 per cent of Labour's. The centre-right vote holds together and the left vote leaks. In a tight seat, that is the difference.

National changed forever

This is the part nobody is talking about, and it is the real story of this election. An overhang changes National as a party, and I think for good.  And in a good way.

Think about what it means. If National wins more electorates than its party vote entitles it to, an extra party vote for National doesn't win it another seat. The seats are already won in the electorates. All that extra party vote does is shrink the overhang. For the voter, it is a wasted vote.

Centre right voters are smart.  They will work it out.  And even more will work it out in subsequent elections.  Once they have, it will be next to impossible to entice the party vote back to National. Why give National your party vote when it doesn't add a seat? You will give it to ACT or NZ First, where it counts.

So National will change how it campaigns. In future it will run marginal-seat campaigns. Win the electorates, leave the party vote to its friends.

And that changes who National picks. If the electorate is where the seats are won, the candidate has to win it. That means choosing people who can take a seat and hold it, not people chosen to push diversity buttons. Marginal-seat voters care whether a candidate will front up and represent them.  They are not interested in making up a National Party quota.

It changes the party too. Strong electorates need strong local branches, with members who knock on doors, raise money and pick their own candidate. A party built that way is revived from the bottom up. The membership grows and the members matter again. Head office loses its grip.

Under MMP, the list has been the power base. Get on good terms with head office, get a high list place, and you're in, whether or not a single voter has ever backed you. An overhang turns that on its head. When National wins its seats in the electorates, the list matters far less. The power moves back to the electorates and the people in them.

That's a different National from the one we have had under MMP. It is closer to the National of the first-past-the-post days, a party of strong local MPs answerable to local members. I think that is a good thing.

The winners

The big winners for now are ACT and NZ First. They are where the centre-right party vote goes once National's is wasted. The Overhang makes one assumption it admits isn't grounded in hard data: that NZ First voters will back National candidates five points more than they have in the past.

It wasn't always so. Between 2008 and 2017, NZ First voters favoured Labour candidates, possibly because John Key refused to work with Winston Peters. Those days are gone.

But both New Zealand First and ACT are up heading into this election.  That’s strategic voting in action.

Opportunity

Opportunity has had its moments. The Overhang notes it has been polling over six per cent. Soft support fades at the ballot box. Qiulae Wong won't win Mt Albert, and without an electorate the party won't reach five per cent.

The real losers

So here it is. A centre-right government. National with an overhang and a party vote it can't use. ACT and NZ First up. Opportunity out.

But the real losers are the NZ media. They had a story and they stuck to it. The voters had other ideas.

All we need is for centre voters to split their vote: electorate vote National and party vote New Zealand First or ACT depending on your taste.  That will ensure a centre right victory this election and many more to come.

Thanks to The Overhang (theoverhangaonz.substack.com) for the numbers. Well worth a subscription.

Rodney Hide is a former Minister and ACT Party leader