RODNEY HIDE: Two votes, one brain

You have two votes. Make them count.

That is the secret of MMP. The party vote decides how many seats each party gets. The electorate vote decides who represents your electorate. Treat them as one vote cast twice and you likely waste half your say. Split them smartly and you can change the government.

I know. I have been the beneficiary.

In 2005 ACT was in deep trouble. We were polling nowhere near five per cent. Without an electorate we were finished. So I begged the voters of Epsom to do something clever: give me their electorate vote.

They worked it out. Richard Worth, their National MP, was safe on National's list, so voting for me cost them nothing. They kept Richard. They got me. And because I won Epsom, ACT's 1.5 per cent counted, which brought Heather Roy in with me. Three MPs where they'd have had one, and ACT survived.

In 2008 they did it again. ACT won 3.65 per cent and five seats. Richard came back on the list and became a minister. Epsom voters delivered 6 MPs. And the centre right had the numbers to govern. Absent that strategic vote, there would be no ACT and no Prime Minister John Key.

That is strategic voting. It is not a trick. It is reading the rules.

This election the rules are screaming at us.

The polls are on a razor's edge. My average of every published poll, weighted for recency and sample size, puts National on 28 per cent, Labour 28, the Greens 14, NZ First 11, ACT 9 and TOP 6. Run those numbers through the Electoral Commission's formula, with the seats each party is likely to win, and Parliament has 123 MPs. National, ACT and NZ First have 59. The left has 57. The government needs 62. Nobody gets there. Not without the Opportunity Party

And here is the bit that should make every National strategist sit up. On these polls National wins about 35 electorates but its party vote earns it only 34 seats. It gets no list MPs at all. That has never happened to Labour or National under MMP.

Think what that means. Roughly 800,000 people will tick National on the party vote, and not one of those votes adds a single National MP. They are doing nothing.

So what should ACT do? What it has always done. Be smart, and lead.

ACT should tell its supporters in Epsom to give their electorate vote to National's Paul Goldsmith, and in Tamaki to National's Mahesh Muralidhar. And give their party votes to ACT.

That would be big news. And that is the point.

ACT loses nothing. Its seats come from its party vote, and at 9 per cent it clears the threshold without needing an electorate. It gets 11 MPs either way. National gains two MPs it otherwise wouldn't have.

But the real effect is what National voters would hear. ACT asking voters to give the seats it now has to National? Why? Because under MMP that is how you get the most out of your two votes. And a National voter hearing that would think: so that's how it works. National already has all the seats its electorates will give it. A party vote does nothing more for National. It would do plenty for ACT or NZ First.

ACT's gesture is the lesson. The shift in party votes follows.

How big a shift? It does not need much. If just two in every hundred voters, about 58,000 people, move their party vote from National to ACT and NZ First, the centre right has 64 seats in a Parliament of 127. A majority.

If six in every hundred do it, about 170,000 people, ACT goes from 11 MPs to 15 and NZ First from 13 to 17. National still has every one of its 37 electorate MPs. That is eight extra centre right MPs, conjured from votes that were otherwise wasted. Parliament grows to 132. The centre right has 69, two more than it needs.

And that is not all.

In Northland, East Cape, Wairarapa and Mt Roskill, National is narrowly behind on the national swing, and in each one the ACT candidate's vote last time was bigger than the gap. If ACT voters there gave their electorate vote to National, National would win four seats it otherwise loses. Because National has no list MPs, each one is an extra centre right MP. Add those four to Epsom and Tamaki and the centre right gets to 65 in a Parliament of 129, a majority, without a single party vote changing hands. The same logic runs the other way in Maungakiekie, Hamilton East, Whanganui and Ōtaki, where National is only just ahead. An ACT candidate splitting the vote there could hand the left a seat.

It is up to the voters. It always is. ACT would simply be providing the leadership. I should add, such a strategy is only possible because David Seymour has done way better than I ever did.

National will hate it. It doesn't want to be an electorate only party. But frankly, until it rediscovers its principles, that is what it deserves.

And electorate MPs sit in Parliament just the same and vote just the same. A National caucus made up entirely of electorate MPs is still a National caucus. ACT and NZ First become the party vote parties, competing hard for ideas and votes. ACT stops being the small mate and becomes a big player. The centre of New Zealand politics shifts right.

Some will say a 132 seat Parliament is absurd. Maybe. But Parliament has chosen to keep the overhang. I am simply suggesting we read the manual.

Would Labour work out how to do the same with the Greens? Of course. They are not stupid. But I doubt the Greens could ever soak up that many Labour party votes. Too many voters look at the Greens and see what I see: too nutty by half.

And there is another upside: the media party will hate it. They have been campaigning hard to have the Opportunity Party over 5 percent to ensure a Left Wing government. Voters using their votes to best effect would defeat their skulduggery. Their wailing and gnashing of teeth would just add to the enjoyment.

It’s simple really. Electorate vote National. In every electorate. And Party Vote ACT or New Zealand First depending on your preference. In every electorate.

Rodney Hide is a former Minister and ACT Party leader