New Zealand swings right

Last weekend’s big collection of electoral events was a good one for the opinion polls. Australia’s referendum produced exactly the result the polls had predicted, and Poland was very much in line with the polls as well – although observers had become so used to pessimism in that part of the world that the result still came as a surprise.

New Zealand too voted just as the polls had predicted (see my preview here). The National Party (centre-right) led very comfortably with 39.0% (up 13.4% on its 2020 debacle), twelve points clear of Labour on 26.9% (down 23.1%). They were followed by the Greens on 10.8% (up 2.9%), ACT (right-liberal) on 9.0% (up 1.4%) and New Zealand First (far right) on 6.5% (up 3.9%). The Māori Party with 2.6% (up 1.4%) was below the 5% threshold but still qualifies for list seats because it won electorate seats. The Opportunities Party (centrist) was the best of the rest with 2.1%.

Interpreting those results, however, requires some caution. The numbers I’ve quoted are from the electoral commission’s official results, which although they’re labelled “preliminary” also bear the notation “100.0% of results counted.” What the casual reader (such as, for example, the BBC reporters) is unlikely to realise is that they are only the results from polling places, both pre-polls (called “advance votes”) and on the day. They do not include any of the postal and absentee votes (called “special votes”), which are not counted until ten days have elapsed for stray ones to be received.

Since the special votes last time amounted to more than a sixth of the total, that’s a big omission. And the special votes tend to favor Labour: last time they brought its total up from 49.1% to 50.0%, and National’s down from 26.8% to 25.6%. So it’s entirely possible for the special votes to change the seat allocation (as it did then, with Labour picking up an extra one).

And that matters especially this time, because on the current seat allocation National and ACT between them have just a one-seat majority, with 61 (50 plus 11) out of 121. And if you do the maths and find that National is just scraping in on its final seat, the possibility that it will drop back on the special votes becomes a virtual certainty. It could quite conceivably drop two.

Nominally there are 120 seats in parliament, but that has increased by one because the Māori Party, whose party vote would only entitle it to three seats, actually won four electorate seats, creating an “overhang”. But that’s not all. There’s also to be a by-election* for one of the electorate seats, Port Waikato, on 25 November, because a candidate died just before the election; that won’t affect the party list seats – voters in Port Waikato still got to vote for those last Saturday – but the member to be elected will add to the total, taking it to 122.

Port Waikato is a safe National seat: even in 2019 they held it by more than ten points. So assuming National lose one seat on the special votes, that will bring them back up to 50, or 61 out of 122 with the assistance of ACT – tantalisingly short of a majority. And that brings Winston Peters of NZ First into the picture, with the balance of power for the fourth time in his infuriatingly long career.

Of the previous three, Peters has supported National once (in 1996) and Labour twice (2005 and 2017). But this time is different, not just because Labour has sworn in blood that it will never work with him again, but because even if he tried he can’t give Labour a majority; Labour plus Greens plus Māori plus NZ First will be only 61 seats. So it’s National or nothing, and National’s Christopher Luxon will be the new prime minister.

But exactly what price Peters will extract, and how long it will all last, is unknown. It will not be helped by the fact that relations between Peters and ACT leader David Seymour can best be described as poisonous (my 2020 preview discusses some of the background). Although there have been suggestions to the contrary, it seems unlikely that anything much will be settled until after publication of the final results, scheduled for 3 November.

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* In Australia we would call that a supplementary election, but the NZ electoral commission is saying by-election.