The Election, One Year Out

Chapter One: A Claim Incontestable

Christopher Luxon has stuck his foot in it. Again.

The media, engulfed in a flurry of rumours about caucus coups, sprang a juicy question on Luxon, and, don’t get me wrong - this headline is terribly ambiguous.

This should not be read as “Luxon doesn’t care about the colleagues he knows are going to lose their jobs.” (With the implied pang of “because of his unpopularity”.)

But his true meaning actually is as embarrassing as that reading looks. 

The PM’s press office texted Stuff afterwards to clarify: “The PM was answering a hypothetical question. He is confident all National MPs will be returned at the next election.”

But that surely just can’t be true, can it? National has spent the past two years declining in the polls - from 38% to just 31%, a smidge under Labour’s averages. Some optimistic polls show Labour as the one at 38%, better than 2017’s Jacindamania; none have placed National that high for quite some time. 

The public sector purge across Wellington has flushed blood from the streets onto the parliamentary carpets. Even the Yagodas and Yezhovs of the government must now take their turn to kneel and thank the Prime Minister for the privilege of political termination, as the price of him staying on in Luxongrad. 

It’s that mortal fear that no doubt motivated some backbenchers to cluster around Chris Bishop, and mutter too loudly about icepicks, and soldiers for breakfast. They didn’t come close to the summit this time, but what is Parliament if not a place for pathological climbers?

So who is going to be flung out of Parliament by electoral tremors? And who will wipe the parliamentary maces clean of blue blood and take up their places?

If we look back to our left, we can see the 2023 election results: the absolute low water mark for the Labour Party. The Overhang, a far more scrutineering analyst than I, predicted several seats as 90 to 100% safe for Labour, and National won them anyway. 

But eye up the benches to our right and the 2025 polling shows the political waters swirling - and the very ground moving.

The Electoral Commission has redrawn most electorates with varying degrees of impact. Depending on whether the one-in-ten voters bumped over to a neighbouring electorate mostly vote left or right, each sitting electorate MP can either thank their lucky stars their run just got easier, or shake their fist at the Great Orange Man in the Sky for making it a whole lot worse.

So let’s walk - not just looking over the lists each party put up in 2023 - but through the electorates of the country where it’s still hard to say which way the voters will break. And once we’ve finished that tour of fortune, let’s conclude back in Parliament, looking at the benches to our right - to see how a National-ACT-NZFirst coalition might return - and to our left - to guess at how a Labour-Green coalition might make enough friends to win out.

Of course, to subsume yourself into this tour, you’re gonna want a handle on how elections work in New Zealand under MMP. Feel free to skip to Chapter Three if you already understand, but otherwise, take this brochure and educate yourself.

Chapter Two: Me, Myself, and the Parliamentary Pie

The maths of MMP is simple. Every voter gets to vote for a person in their electorate, and a party, right? So, for instance, at the last election, because I resided in the Ilam electorate, I could cast one vote for incumbent MP Sarah Pallett of Labour, for National candidate Hamish Campbell, TOP leader Raf Manji or any other one of a host of individuals; and I could also vote for any party in New Zealand, from Labour to National to Te Pāti Māori to NZFirst. So what did my votes do?

Let’s start with the electorates - 16 in the South Island, 48 in the North, and 7 Māori electorates spanning the country that Māori voters can opt onto the Māori roll to participate in. If a candidate wins a plurality of their electorate - by which I mean they just have to win the most votes of anybody running; there’s no requirement to take over 50% of voters - then they get a seat in Parliament for the next three years. That’s over half our MPs already sussed. Take what percentage of Parliament’s 120 seats are currently made up by each caucus - let’s call it the parliamentary pie - and turn to the party vote. 

If a party’s percentage of the party vote is less than their slice of the parliamentary pie, that’s it. That’s all the MPs they get. Indeed, this can even create “overhang” seats, where Parliament is expanded past 120 seats for the next term to fit in these MPs who don’t proportionally “belong” under the party vote. At the last election, Te Pāti Māori candidates won six electorates, but just 3% of the vote. That meant they had three more MPs than they proportionally “should”, and thus, three overhang seats were created, expanding Parliament to 123 seats for this term. 

That, however, is rare. Far more common is that a party’s share of the party vote is more than their piece of parliamentary pie. Here’s how we resolve that: we get every party to submit a “list” of candidates before the election. Go down the list, ignoring every name who already won an electorate, until we find somebody who did not win an electorate. Add them to Parliament and check if the party vote and parliamentary percentage are now equal. If not, they go down the list and do it again, repeating these checks until each party is equal. 

And if a party has no electorates at all, they need at least 5% of the party vote to get counted like every other party. Otherwise, they fall below the MMP threshold and are out. 5% of the vote gets you 6 MPs; 4.9% gets you zero. 

What this process means in practice is that electorate votes decide most of the individual people in Parliament. The party vote ensures two things: one, that individuals highly valued by their parties who lose their electorates can still get into Parliament. Two, that the numbers of each party are proportionate to how many people chose to support that party. 

Party vote polling then gives us an idea of who will run the government after the next election. To simplify, if a majority of Parliament votes for something, it’s gonna happen. If any number of parties, who together have 61 MPs between them, agree to vote together all the time, then they’re gonna get to form a government. 

The most important things a government does is installing their parties’ leading MPs as ministers who run government ministries (e.g Health, Education, Transport); passing the annual budget that determines where the government’s getting its money from and how much spending each ministry receives; and proposing bills to then pass into law. 

In 2023, National won an impressive 43 electorates - a solid majority - but just 38% of the party vote. That meant that they were only entitled to 48 MPs, total - so only five people who either lost their electorates or didn’t run in one at all got the call up from the list, with everybody else on the list missing out. 

And then National turned to ACT and NZFirst. Despite winning only two and zero electorates respectively, they took 11 and 8 seats each through the party vote. Between them, the three parties formed a coalition of 67* MPs - a majority.

National’s current polling would entitle them to only forty or so MPs, so…

Who’s losing their jobs? 

Chapter Three: National - High Tide

Let’s start with their five current list MPs: Nicola Willis, Paul Goldsmith, Melissa Lee, Gerry Brownlee, and by far the least well known politically of these five, accountant Nancy Lu†. None of these five will win an electorate.

Nicola Willis somehow managed to lose swing seat Ohariu to Greg O’Connor, an erratic 67* year old. In the years that the nation has gotten to know her, that growing recognition has played only to her detriment, and nowhere more so than in ground zero for her public servant sackings. O’Connor is now being muscled aside for Mana MP Barbara Edmonds, and in the expanded new Keneperu electorate, which will bring many thousands in from the solid-red Mana seat. I doubt Willis will even stand in an electorate this time around.

Paul Goldsmith runs in Epsom, an electorate where National has repeatedly ankletapped its own candidacies for ACT’s gain, up against David Seymour, whose biggest haters will still concede that by all accounts he’s a good constituency MP. 

Melissa Lee had everything go her way - the 2023 environment was worst for Labour in Auckland, and the Greens’ Ricardo Menendez-March ran a third-party campaign that split the left wing vote with weak Labour candidate Helen White, yet even then Lee could not win Mount Albert. (Like Andrew Bayly, she has been demoted this term, and both are likely to conclude they have no future opportunities ahead of them and retire.)

Gerry Brownlee stepped down from the Ilam electorate after his 2020 defeat to focus on serving as Speaker of the House - Parliament’s referee.

Nancy Lu is stuck in Hutt South, where she wouldn’t have a shot even if Chris Bishop stepped aside for her. He made enough of an impression over the past several years as a hard campaigner for swing voters to be named National’s campaign chair‡ - and he still won the seat by less than two thousand votes. Too busy running the government to fight the tide of anguished civil servants, Bishop’s eyes are elsewhere - as evinced by the fact an earlier draft of this very article suggested that he might be “throwing hands for Luxon’s job - either before the election, right after in the case of a defeat, or in a couple years’ time if they pull this thing out”. 

If every single National electorate MP held their seat, then the party would win ZERO list MPs.

But they will  lose some electorates. The tide must ebb. Their only chance for a pickup is in Wigram - southwest, industrial Christchurch - where boundary redrawing landed its single most important blow. In order to accommodate the massive growth of towns like Rolleston just outside Christchurch, an influx of over ten thousand right leaning voters from Templeton and Prebbleton were sent out of rural Selwyn into Wigram. Last election, Tracy Summerfield ran it close, but she didn’t particularly impress me when I saw her; I would suggest that the party recruit Dale Stephens for this target. Whoever National select may be their first candidate in history to take the electorate.

Besides Bishop, the electorates that are going to be left high and dry are represented exclusively by MPs who are well further down their list and doomed to leave Parliament. And that, in turn, makes them prime candidates to eat their fingernails over Luxon’s leadership, and cluster around somebody like Bishop in the faint hope that he will deliver them better polling and save their jobs. Who are the poor unfortunate souls whose losses would see them ejected from Parliament - perhaps forever? 

1. Banks Peninsula (southeast of Christchurch)

Medical leader and army officer Vanessa Weenink benefited from major vote splitting for the Greens’ excellent Lan Pham and still squeezed through by a scant 396 votes. Weenink is doomed this time around, but she’s also the exact sort of storied professional National should cultivate on the list to keep reaching voters across party lines in the future.

2. Waitākere (west Auckland, formerly New Lynn)

Lawyer Paulo Garcia will face a rematch against Deborah Russell, who he beat by just 1013 votes. There’s no way he holds the seat, but given National’s pitiful levels of Asian representation§, and with Melissa Lee likely on her way out, somebody has to get bumped up the list specifically to spearhead the party’s outreach to various Asian demographics. Maybe that’s him - New Zealand’s first Filipino MP.

3. West Coast-Tasman (west of the Southern Alps)

Maureen Pugh won by an almost-identical 1017 votes. Whether lightning can strike once more hinges on if the also 67* year old Damien O’Connor retires; one way or another, this will be the final year for a political career spanning back into the 90s. Given Simon Bridges’ immortal words about Pugh, I am doubtful that she brings much to the table - if she hadn’t won West-Coast Tasman, after all, her mediocre list placing of 26 would have seen her just barely miss out on a spot in Parliament - or that most of the National caucus will be sad to see her go.

4. Hutt South

Chris Bishop belongs here in the order of smallest-to-largest Nat majorities.

5. Mount Roskill (southern central Auckland)

Scientist Carlos Cheung is easily comparable to Paulo Garcia - along with him and Lu, Cheung rounds out the trifecta of options for Asian representation - but despite having won by the marginally larger score of 1565 votes, Cheung has a far better chance than anybody above him of holding his seat. That’s because the Electoral Commission shunted thousands of 2023 National voters into his electorate, giving him a fighting chance if he runs another good campaign in his rematch against that classic partisan, Michael Wood. Even if Cheung falls, he can already take credit for doing significant damage to Labour’s front bench in Opposition by denying Wood the chance to spend the past three years attacking the government.

6. Wairarapa (east of Wellington)

Mike Butterick may be in a better spot at a 2816 majority, but he also faces a more challenging opponent than practically any other electorate MP in the country: Kieran McAnulty. Butterick is just another farmer National can easily afford to shed. At a dismal 61 on the list, 4 below Sam Uffindell - although then again the skilled Dan Bidois came in at an egregious 60, so maybe National are just kinda stupid? - I can’t see him making his way back into Parliament bar a disaster night for Labour.

7. East Cape (between Hawkes Bay and the Bay of Plenty, formerly East Coast)

National failed in 2023 to convince Tania Tapsell to come back for another run. Instead, National are represented there by CEO of Equestrian Sports New Zealand Dana Kirkpatrick, who sits on a deceptive 3117 majority. Kiri Allan had to bow out from her reelection race, leaving a retiring Tamati Coffey to cobble together a campaign with limited time. This’ll be another key seat to test how much appeal Labour has to voters in the regions. Are voters particularly aggrieved over the economy these past few years - or do they feel equally left behind no matter the year and the government?

8. Maungakiekie (eastern central Auckland)

Think-tank charitioneer Greg Fleming has a 4617 majority. He can most likely expect a rematch against Priyanca Radhakrishnan in a seat that’s been quite prone to big swings in the past. Fleming, a Christian, is going to be a curious one to watch for his appeal to moderates: a couple decades ago, he was a homophobic activist; now, he talks about peace in Gaza, mana motuhake and banning fireworks (the last of which could evoke a micro-debate of its own over Diwali). Who knows if he’ll see any saving grace on the list.

9. Hamilton West

Another apologetic for past comments in another bellwether seat, the aptly named perennial candidate Ryan Hamilton nabbed half of Hamilton by 5060 votes off of the capable Georgie Dansey. If he can keep his mouth shut about COVID and fluoride (and I'm honestly not sure the latter actually does polarise many voters against), then he’ll be a key indicator early on Election Night: Hamilton’s demographics align quite closely with New Zealand’s as a whole, so it’s a useful poll for the mood of the nation. But I doubt National are going to be bumping him far up the list.

10. Whanganui 

Businessman Carl Bates defends with 5417 votes, in what I’d call the first confident hold for National on this list. That’s right, National are on track to lose eight MPs, and yet only nine electorates even look strongly in contention.

11. Northland 

Farmer Grant MacCallum has the stablest footing of the three “poor regional communities” electorates on this list. His 6087 vote margin is actually more impressive than it seems on paper. If you go back and look at the 2023 election, there was a downright absurd amount of right-wing vote splitting - two thousand votes to Mark Cameron, four thousand to anti-vax Democracy NZ’s founder-leader Matt King (former Northland National MP) and eight thousand to Shane Jones. 

Given it’s highly unlikely that a full fourteen thousand votes are going to be docked by other parties who want Labour out of power two times in a row, MacCallum should be confident in his ability to deliver reelection. If he doesn’t, something has gone as catastrophically wrong for National as it has right for Labour.

12. Kapiti (along the eponymous coast north of Wellington, formerly Ōtaki)

Redistricting has seen a huge shift, with thousands of right-leaning voters going out to Rangitīkei and thousands of Mana’s left-leaning voters coming in. RNZAF wing commander Tim Costley, who previously won by 6271 votes, will now be in for a real fight against Terisa Ngobi. Unlike how significant some of these swing seats are as signals, National probably won’t be stressing if he loses his seat.

13. Hamilton East

Lawyer Tama Potaka enjoys not just a safer margin than his western counterpart - 6488 votes - but a higher and warmer profile. It would be a stinging indictment for National if he were ejected from Parliament by the voters, and tear a gaping hole in their already-ailing outreach to Māoridom.

14. New Plymouth

Career politician David MacLeod holds with 6991 votes the first National safe seat on this list - even Andrew Little himself couldn't come close to taking it, back before the past decade of intensifying town-country polarisation. This is the borderlands of competitiveness. 

15…?

Past this point, the list dissolves almost entirely into fake data. Labour aren’t winning the next one - Ilam, affluent northwest Christchurch, was only brought close by TOP leader Raf Manji’s two-tick run - and they aren’t winning #17 in this order - Napier was only made close by the candidacy of Stuart Nash, who has since crashed out into NZFirst instead. So there’s only one more electorate to mention. 

The recently created Takanini - the only competitive seat in South Auckland - was seized decisively by Rima Nakhle, building a commanding 8775 majority, in one of National’s most exciting underdog stories of the past decade. (Nakhle is not just a lawyer but, intriguingly for the National benches, has a background working in emergency housing and related services for poor people.) But the boundary changes here don’t favour her chances of hanging on, and in such a new electorate it’s always hard to say for sure where its history might lead to - least of all a National-voting electorate smack bang in the middle of South Auckland. Nakhle sat at 41 on the list, and I’ll be really curious to see if National promote her up or if they figure she’s out on an island anyway.

National needs to lose half these electorate battles above or they’ll wind up with fewer list MPs than last time. Anything tighter than that in the party vote going down, or, worse, National candidates winning unexpected electorate upsets against sitting Labour MPs, and the party really enters the danger zone. They have to hold three list spots open for Nicola Willis, Chris Bishop and Paul Goldsmith, at absolute minimum, or the engine block of their government is going to get ripped out. If National don’t clock over forty MPs in the party vote, then that means this scenario requires them to win just 37 electorates - shedding everything from Northland on down, which, as noted above, mostly hits lawyers, farmers, and businesspeople. And it’s the National Party; there’s more where they came from.

But if there’s any consolation for National, it’s that - two years after making like bandits out of their rivals hitting their floor - they’re not that far away from their own floor at this point. There’s only so much lower they can go.

In the red corner, picking themselves up off the mat: 

*Don't say it, don't think it; don't think it, don't say it.

†Andrew Bayly only came on through the list at the election because an ACT candidate’s death delayed the Port Waikato vote; once Bayly won the byelection, freeing up a list spot for National, Nancy Lu came in as next on the list.

‡However not-great National’s numbers were last election, they did actually overperform expectations on Election Night and celebrated a campaign well fought accordingly. It’s what they owe so many electorates to. (It’s also about the last time they have felt the golden touch of political fortune.) 

§How is it that a caucus of forty-eight MPs only has one Chinese member, when of any random forty-eight sample group of New Zealanders, an average of three are Chinese?

Chapter Four: Labour - Hang Ten

You're past the most complex part. This article gets simpler to follow from here on out, because every single electorate that National loses will be won by Labour. But that doesn’t cover everything that Labour might win, because the party faces a fight on a third front, too - a front that has, for once, assumed preeminence in the political story of this nation. Broadcaster and rugby CEO Cushla Tangaere-Manuel is safe as safe is in her seat, Ikaroa-Rawhiti, running up along the eastern coastline of the North Island. She won even at Labour’s low point last time around, removing Meka Whaitiri from the political chessboard, and she’ll do it again. 

But will Labour insert themselves back into the heart of the headlines by going to war in the Māori seats? I’m very confident they will. Besides Labour’s historical arrogance and entitlement to the Māori seats, TPM have rapidly turned from an asset to a liability in the election-winning balance sheet. Labour would be delighted to shake at the cameras polls that show TPM on track to lose seats, and shout into the mics “see, we won’t need them to govern! You can trust us with your vote!…please?” 

Labour are, out the gates, going to have to tank one more loss than Wigram. The Mana-Ohariu merger to create Keneperu that I mentioned earlier means that what was two electorates for Labour now shrinks to one. But past that, Labour are poised to rise. Who benefits?

1. Tāmaki Makaurau (Auckland Māori electorate)

Peeni Henare lost a 42-vote nailbiter in 2023, but in this year’s by-election, was blasted by a margin of 3519 votes - more than he actually won himself. Touted as a potential future Labour Party leader, he will have to show he can capitalise on the chaos in Te Pāti Māori.

2. Banks Peninsula

Unionist and sports psychologist Tracey McLellan reentered Parliament on the list last year anyway, but will now represent Banks Peninsula once more.

3. Te Tai Tokerau (Northland Māori electorate)

There’s been a real wave of replacement across the board in the Māori electorates through the 2010s, making it very hard to predict who’ll run in the seats for Labour. Deputy Leader Kelvin Davis held Mariameno Kapa-Kingi to a 517 vote margin in 2023, but now he’s out of the picture.

4. Waitākere

Deborah Russell stayed in Parliament on the list, and will now be back to play a key role in Labour’s economic team - more on that later.

5. West Coast-Tasman

Damien O’Connor is, with the departure of Stuart Nash, the last of a dying breed: the old boys’ club of Labour in the regions, on the right edge of the party. He’ll probably be quite pleased with the focus Hipkins’ leadership has placed on the essentials so far.

6. Hutt South

Ginny Andersen is free from running the Ministry of Police - now she can just run, and win. She is currently on track in a left bloc victory to become Minister of Police and, interestingly, Treaty of Waitangi Negotiations, a portfolio that demands great gravitas. Andersen has not had the best individual reputation and it will be interesting to see if that holds, or if Labour might rather offload that duty to a coalition partner.

7. Mount Roskill

Michael Wood is a classic of modern Labour: he will organise hard and, if he gets back in, will be one of the forces pushing from the left wing of the party for the government to take the side of workers and unions and to borrow to expand the state’s infrastructure. Hipkins will be wary of his success, depending on the kind of margin he might be able to put up, and while I’m sure he’d be returned to the front bench, he might be relegated to a peripheral role and denied the oxygen required to build his stature and someday fight the fight for a left turn in leadership.

8. Wellington Bays (east Wellington)

While Labour have no shot in Auckland Central against the indefatigable ally Chlöe Swarbrick, I expect that they’ll declare Tamatha Paul and Julie Anne Genter fair game in Wellington. Labour have scored the prime recruitment so far of this electoral cycle with union economist Craig Renney, whose office fought a better battle than Labour’s own campaign against Luxon last election. The entry of such a consummate economic professional into Parliament raises questions about whether he’ll promptly replace Barbara Edmonds, but I doubt it - promoting a union man straight to Minister of Finance could lead to dysfunction from a man who doesn’t know his way around the political process, and Chippy’s too cautious for that. 

Instead, he seems far likelier to be a backstop - a political understudy to round out Labour’s economically strong trifecta of Barb and Deb Russell, who can take up some economics-focused ministries they and the retiring Duncan Webb would otherwise have to handle - and some day a replacement. In particular, Edmonds has all the makings of a future Labour leader, short of not wanting it, and she’ll need a voice on finance she can trust totally at her side. Edmonds and Renney sounds like Labour’s most trustworthy team on the finances since at least Clark and Cullen, if not earlier - I rate them truly that highly on experience. This is perhaps the single best demonstration of how these forgettable, page-eight affairs could end up shaping the future of the country for years to come.

9. Wairarapa

The man in the red ute will want to squeeze out the best numbers he can to demonstrate that Labour does still have a future in the regions - and, perhaps, that he’s the only one who can get them there. McAnulty has disavowed any interest in the leadership, but if Labour lose the election, he’s surely going to be the first name on anybody’s lips to replace Chippy. Besides Wood and Edmonds, who else can you honestly name? Sepuloni? Henare? 

10. Te Tai Tonga (South Island & Wellington Māori electorate)

Rino Tirikatene was tossed out at the last election by a 2824 vote margin. Can Labour find another Tirikatene to run, or would such a reheated dynastic approach be the wrong way to go anyway? 

11. Hauraki-Waikato (Waikato Māori electorate)

Despite losing it by just 2911 votes, not only does Labour no longer have heavyweight Nanaia Mahuta to put up here, but consensus has it that this is now a safe seat for TPM. The party would have to fall into the throes of utter disintegration for Labour to have a chance, just like Waiariki.

12. East Coast

The East Cape has a real candidate quality issue. There was Kiri Allan, and now she’s gone; Tamati Coffey, and now he’s gone. Can Labour find a good candidate to keep up the effort on the ground here?

13. Maungakiekie

Priyanca Radhakrishnan once seemed pigeonholed in Asian voter outreach, but is currently a spokesperson on conservation, disability issues, and security. None of these are high priorities for Labour; she will have to build more experience governing before she is brought further into Cabinet.

14. Hamilton East

Unionist Georgie Dansey, having had to stand as the sacrificial candidate in the 2022 Hamilton West by-election and endure the racist sideswipes of Tākuta Ferris around the 2025 Tāmaki Makaurau byelection (where Henare’s victory would have promoted her into Parliament on the list), comes in as a respectable 31 on the list and, against an easier opponent, with a definite chance at finally claiming her place in Parliament. 

15. Whanganui

Lawyer Steph Lewis has a hard path to walk here and a terrible spot on the list - below Phil Twyford! -, but if she can pull it off, she’ll be fêted as a sign of Labour’s great success on the night.

16. Wellington North (formerly Wellington Central)

Tamatha Paul should be safe against Labour heavyweight Ayesha Verrall, with the latter destined to remain at a sky-high list placement. For that matter, Labour had bloody better offer Ibrahim Omer, who lost the race for this seat and fell out of Parliament last time, a good list spot this time. If the Labour Party is not of and for the Omers of the country, genuinely, who is it for?

17. Northland

Willow-Jean Prime can have another go at it. Of course, if a rising Labour star can’t win in one of the most impoverished regions in the country in an even-stevens nationwide environment, that raises big questions for Labour about whether they can compete in the regions anymore. Not politically existential - as we have discussed, the electorates are not important like the party vote for deciding which parties govern - but, even if the Labour Party does not exist for the purpose of serving the farmers and suchlike, it certainly does for poverty-stricken towns, wherever they may be. Regardless, at 9 on the list, she is assured another term in Parliament.

18. Kapiti

Public servant Terisa Ngobi will be clutching her fists with glee at the electorate boundary changes, but those cut both ways - other ambitious political actors might see this as their chance to snag a good seat to run in for a Labour candidate.

19. Hamilton West

Myra Williamson is a law lecturer at the University of Waikato, and doesn’t even have a Wikipedia page; at 62 on the list, she’s only got a shot into Parliament if Labour seriously overperform.

20. New Plymouth

Community worker Glen Bennett has a minor spot in the shadow cabinet and, as a Senior Whip in the Labour Party, can expect to improve his list position further from #29 and make it back into Parliament.

21. Takanini

GP Neru Leavasa represents the socially conservative South Auckland wing of the Labour Party, which is perhaps reflected in an iffy list placement of 38; we’ll wait to see if he returns, either in the electorate or in a viable spot on the list.

22. Te Tai Hauāuru (Western North Island Māori electorate)

Businesswoman and local politician Soraya Peke-Mason came off the list and lost by an eye-watering 9222 votes last time. Presuming that a high-quality candidate like her has moved on from politics, any chance Labour has here with her replacement will depend infinitely more on TPM dysfunction than Labour campaigning.

Which leads us nicely into an update on the subject of my last and best article (seriously, read it, it’s peak):

Chapter Five: Te Pāti Māori - In Te Tūtae

Here are the only certainties about Te Pāti Māori coming into this election: 

1. The co-leaders (and John Tamihere) have, shall we say, revealed their preference for burning the marae down around them if it means they get to hang onto their seats at the high table.

2. They will probably succeed at that narrow aim. They’ve been making the rules and cutting the checks for years, and barring disastrous news coming to light, should still enjoy commanding leads in their electorates.

Everything else is still up in the air, and not in a good way.

In Hauraki-Waikato, Hana-Rawhiti Maipi-Clarke could truly bounce in any possible direction. Will she resign from Parliament just to get away from it all, perhaps as the new director of Toitu te Tiriti? Will she put herself up for a byelection to determine her own mandate? Will she side with Mariameno & Tākuta; will she strike out on her own, or even set up a new outfit? Gun to my head, she gets behind the leadership and pleads for unity to focus on tossing this government out, but it’s impossible to predict. Whatever the case, I would be very shocked if she comes out of this morass consuming so much of the party looking anything but positively saintly.

As for the other four electorates, god knows who the Māori Party will be able to rustle up to run for them if this crisis continues. Who wants to risk this association? Who still believes in the mission? And, for that matter, are Mariameno and Tākuta going to stand and fight - I think probably so - and set up a new party - not likely, but who knows? Who might they recruit to stand at their side? This, too, is impossible for me to say, but here’s what I can comment on the independents.

Te Tai Tonga is bound to be tough for Tākuta - his Instagram rants not only convey somebody somewhat less than a laser-focused professional, but his deplorable comments are bound to be a drag. You have to remember that Te Tai Tonga includes not just Dunedin and Christchurch but Wellington - that’s a whole lot of young, progressive, uni-educated Māori voters to make a run against on a platform of “no more Indians, no more Asians and no more black people in my electoral process”. 

But I don’t forget, either, that Tākuta had to show up to a leaders’ debate last election and, with no parliamentary experience and under a national spotlight, performed really well. He won this seat against a dynast. He’s no political incompetent and, while it’s entirely possible he comes in a distant third as an irrelevant crank, these races could definitely become heated three-way contests. And what the leadership of Ngai Tahu decide is the best path forwards will be critical for the path of their island. But speaking of powerful and influential iwi, Ngapuhi have tipped their hand in…

Te Tai Tokerau, where they are openly sallying against TPM and for the Kapa-Kingis, calling for a change in leadership. Combined with not just TTT’s past independence from the TPM line under Hone Harawira’s MANA Movement, but the ability to claim a sexist boys’ club, the fact that Mariameno’s financial issues are potentially disprovable, and that I strongly doubt her son’s alleged years-old altercation will determine anybody’s vote if it sits in isolation without buttressing allegations of financial nepotism - I think she’s in a much stronger position than Tākuta to stand and fight against whoever TPM sends up to bat against her. 

And I think it’s important to note that Te Tai Tokerau could have a unique impact on the general election. The other Māori seats are so big that their voters are dispersed across the country, whereas so many of TTT’s voters reside in Northland general electorate. And that means that the more the race heats up - the more Māori voters who engage on the Māori roll for or against Mariameno - the harder it gets for Willow-Jean Prime to win Northland, as her natural voter base of leftie Māori voters drains away.

And - speaking of leftie Māori voters - there is one other figure who could complicate this race yet further. 

Chapter Six: Greens - Going Steady

The Green Party have never won a Māori electorate. That unambiguous history of failure in those electorates includes iwi CEO Hūhana Lyndon losing Te Tai Tokerau in 2023, claiming just 15% of the vote. But, back then, the Māori Party was the primary vehicle for all the change voters keen to punish Kelvin Davis for the Labour government’s failures. Now, in a race with two or three horses, with the Māori Party in disorder and a new and lower-profile Labour candidate in a not particularly strong position - if the Greens are willing to really invest in gaining a toehold in the Māori seats - this could be their one chance.

Their one chance at nabbing any electorate, because I don’t see them succeeding otherwise. Where are their only chances? 

Electorate border changes make Mount Albert harder to get when Ricardo-Menendez March didn’t even manage to come second place in the febrile 2023 environment, and I don’t personally rate him as a candidate. As for crunchier parts of the country, I’d suggest Nelson and Banks Peninsula as prospective targets for the future, but with no clear name I know of to run in the former, ECan councillor Lan Pham seems like the better bet in the latter case.

Most of the university electorates not already claimed are well out of reach - Hamilton East, Ilam, Palmerston North, Selwyn…the one big university calling the name of the Greens is the University of Otago. Specifically, calling the name of #1 Parliamentary poster Francisco Hernandez. He already built experience last time running a two-tick campaign. Dunedin is a red seat where, whoever replaces Michael Woodhouse will have absolutely zero shot at threatening a flip to the right. He should definitely go for convincing Labour voters, and particularly uni students, that their seat can do better than just another Labour MP in lawyer Rachel Brooking. (At #23, she should be safe on the list, anyway!)

And…that’s really all there is to say about the Greens! Their list from the last election would, if replicated at this election and keeping in mind the Green tendency to heavily underperform polling, see Francisco Hernandez and Christchurch local councillor Mike Davidson out of Parliament, and possibly former Wellington mayor Celia Wade-Brown too - these would be some troubling losses for a party trying to put down roots in more communities around the nation. They have been remarkably steady in the polls and unfelt in our politics for the past several years. They just keep offering up the same ideological pitch. 

Speaking of which…

Chapter Seven: ACT & NZFirst - Conserving the Conservatives

Goodness knows what new ideas ACT will have to offer. More austerity is a dangerous promise to make; for what was supposed to be the crown jewel, the Regulatory Standards Act is at serious danger of being universally written off as unserious lawmaking; and despite all the incredible hullabaloo over the Treaty Principles Bill, ACT have actually declined slightly in the polls over the last couple of years. 

And the closest thing I can come to suggesting as a target seat for ACT is Botany, which electorate boundary redraws have made deepest of deep blues. That invites a pitch to voters that says “you can split the vote all you like without worrying Labour will win, so why not chance somebody with real right-wing beliefs?” I have no clue who ACT would run, but it’s certainly worth flagging for the future that the party is running hard to persuade Asian and particularly Chinese New Zealanders that National can’t take them for granted. 

But to attack the sitting Prime Minister’s seat would be a declaration of civil war unprecedented in New Zealand coalition history. Even if National MPs might privately breathe a sigh of relief at the thought of ACT dealing to their Luxon problem, publicly, this would seriously harm the ability of National and ACT to project a stable coalition. Tuck the thought away and move on from ACT, there’s nothing else for them to do here. At this rate, we can expect them to drop Bay of Plenty builder Cameron Luxton and Banks Peninsula fire safety consultant Laura McClure, and potentially Pakuranga former National MP Parmjeet Parmar too, none of which will come as devastating losses to ACT.

ACT’s decline has been NZFirst’s delight. But that won’t translate to any electorate wins: Winston’s too busy stirring across the country, and Shane Jones, for all his many political talents, is no good at the dedicated doorknocking and commitment that an electorate race requires, and which could secure the future. For what it’s worth, my suggestion is that he should swap across from Northland to Te Tai Tokerau. He’s not gonna win anyway - his strength is in getting media attention - and the nationwide media is not gonna give a stuff about him running a losing campaign in Northland again. But how about Shane Jones inflaming tensions in debates about what it means to be Māori in Aotearoa today and what should - or shouldn’t - be done for Māori people? It’s perfect for taking the corner on monopolising the reactionary vote. 

The real bid to watch will be if NZFirst run Stuart Nash in Napier - surely a long shot, but if he can win, he anchors a future both for himself in the party and the party in Parliament. The NZFirst list matters the least of any party, given that it's a cult of personality and most of the rest usually get next to nothing to do; I have no clue who they’ll put up to benefit from their rise in the polls.

So can the conservative parties do it again? Can they turn enough voters out for a vision of “stay the course, and let us keep slicing up the cake”?

Chapter Eight: The Right Way

This scenario takes current polling averages, in comparison to the last election‖:

Labour: 33% (+6)

National: 32% (-5)

NZFirst: 11% (+5)

Greens: 10% (-2)

ACT: 8% (-1)

TPM: 2% (-1)

Other: 4% (-2)¶

In this scenario, National wins 37 electorates (-6) to Labour's 25 (+8). Labour loses a seat from the Mana-Ohariu merger but holds Wigram. They are able to claw back their lost strongholds in Auckland (Waitākere, Mount Roskill), the urban-adjacent regions (Banks Peninsula, West Coast-Tasman, Hutt South, Wairarapa, East Coast), the rogue Māori electorates (Te Tais Tonga & Tokerau) and reclaim Tāmaki Makaurau from a weakened TPM. But Labour cannot effectively challenge TPM in their strongholds. And they cannot punch through in any seats where National’s majorities exceed 4k votes. National holds the important swing seats of Maungakiekie in Auckland, both Hamilton electorates, Kapiti and Northland. ACT and the Greens hold their electorates and do not expand; neither does NZFirst.

In the party vote, TPM aren't getting any list MPs, and the appeal of the Greens, NZFirst and ACT are each baked in. Together, these four parties account for 30% of the vote; two thirds of the nationwide vote are split evenly between Labour and National. Under the pressure of a campaign, the usual National hits against Labour on issues like tax do some damage, but, above all, the hypothetical Opposition coalition looks deeply troubled. Under these numbers, the party caucuses form as follows (using the last election’s lists as a rough placeholder):

• ACT: 10 MPs (-1) - Cam Luxton out

• Greens: 12 MPs (-3) - Lawrence Xu-Nan, Francisco Hernandez, Mike Davidson out

• Labour: 41 MPs (+7) - Michael Wood, Georgie Dansey, Dan Rosewarne, Naisi Chen, Anahila Kanongata'a, Angela Roberts, Ibrahim Omer in

• Māori: 4 MPs (-2) - Mariameno Kapa-Kingi, Tākuta Ferris out

• National: 40 MPs (-8) - Vanessa Weenink, Paulo Garcia, Maureen Pugh, Carlos Cheung, Mike Butterick, Dana Kirkpatrick, Nancy Lu, Melissa Lee out

• NZFirst: 14 MPs (+6) - the weirdo caucus almost doubles!

National might grit their teeth in frustration at making up less than two thirds of their coalition, and winding up with fewer MPs than Labour, but 64 MPs remains a healthy governing majority - just three down from the previous election, and with the TPM overhang lowered to just one, a reduced requirement for a majority balances that out. 

‖I am pricing in the typical overperformance of right-wing parties and underperformance of left-wing parties on Election Day compared to polls. This is because the older you are, statistically, 1) the likelier you are to vote right and 2) the likelier you are to show up to vote.

¶This significant decrease lays two bets:

1. Opportunity (formerly TOP) will come in under 3%, and decline from previous results. The slick rebranding betrays no new understanding of their fundamental political problem. As Peter Dunne and his band of merry centrists found out long ago, you cannot reach political conclusions and promote political policies based on your political values while insisting to voters that, if they pick you over all the competition, you are the only option who will set aside your priorities in the name of depoliticising politics. At this point, we’ve seen enough to declare the Opportunity experiment a failure and a sink for progressive votes. Radical centrism does have an audience, but it’s not more than 5% of Kiwi voters.

2. Most of the remaining vote outside of Parliament at the last election went to conspiracy theorist parties aggravated about COVID lockdowns and vaccines. NZFirst have aggressively courted that vote in the last couple of years, and risen in the polls, while the crank parties have lost all salience, so I conclude that a lot of those voters now support NZFirst.

If that likelihood wasn’t to your liking, allow yourself to dream of a different outcome - where enough of the country votes for change. What might that look like?

Chapter Nine: The Left Turn

This scenario, as the fairest and simplest way to render a good election night for the left and a bad one for the right, tweaks every party in the left bloc up 1%, and every party in the right bloc down 1%:

Labour: 34% (+7)

National: 31% (-6)

NZFirst: 10% (+4)

Greens: 11% (-1)

ACT: 7% (-2)

TPM: 3% (-)

Other: 4% (-2)

In this scenario, the minor parties remain stuck electorate-wise. However, TPM are able to stabilise and the coalition’s attacks largely ping off of the Opposition, compared to the heaving issues - mostly economic growth, employment and the cost of living, with a side of struggling public health services - that the government is being judged upon. TPM holds all their seats by knocking Kapa-Kingi and Ferris off with new candidates. Labour easily claims every seat listed in the scenario where the right bloc won. In addition, they also manage to triumph in Maungakiekie, Hamilton East, Whanganui, Northland, Kapiti and Hamilton West. So that’s Labour on 29 and National on 31 - and the left bloc holds 38 electorates to NACT’s 33.

What’s more, in this timeline, these party vote results come out to:

• ACT: 9 MPs (-2) - Laura McClure also out

• Greens: 14 MPs (-1) - just Mike Davidson out

• Labour: 42 MPs (+8) - Neru Leavasa also in

• Māori: 6 MPs (=)

• National: 38 MPs (-10) - Greg Fleming, Ryan Hamilton, Carl Bates, Grant McCallum, Tim Costley also out, though this added demand for list MPs means that Melissa Lee, Nancy Lu, and Maureen Pugh now stay in and former MP Agnes Loheni comes in too

• NZFirst: 12 MPs (+4) - the weirdo caucus only grows by half!

It’s only a little nudge, changing each party’s fate by an MP or two, but it makes all the difference. (Note that TPM gets two overhang seats, meaning that the requirement for 62 seats to govern continues.) Where before the left bloc fell well short at 55 MPs, now they can tout 62 - the most razor-thin governing majority possible, given the potential for instability in TPM, but a win’s a win. 

Do I think this scenario is likely? No, but it really can’t be overstated how grim things are looking for National. The central dynamics are clear: ACT and the Greens are very unlikely to change the election much at all, with both consolidating what they have out of the spotlight; the focus is on if TPM implodes (and whether in turn there’s TPM overhangs or there’s a Labour sweep of Māori electorates), and on whether National can turn it around. NZFirst’s growth and crossover appeal to Labour voters provides a bit of a buffer for the right bloc, but we know Labour will gain MPs and National will lose them - the only question is whether that major party shift will be big enough to change the government.

But say the words “NZFirst” and “crossover” and one other possibility comes to mind - 

Chapter Ten: Sliced Down The Middle

In the past, NZFirst have been served well by exercising the power of kingmaker. Their commitment at the 2023 election not to go with Labour was a break from their usual form. They can expect to gain greater power in the coalition government as-is if returned by the voters - but there’s always the chance that the government loses, and NZFirst shut out in the cold. And who knows how that might threaten their thus-far unprecedented success, their best polling since all the way back in the 1993-1996 period when NZFirst was founded.

What might they stand to gain if they can threaten to go either way, and once again maximise their bargaining power? It’d be entirely in character for the often erratic and inconsistent Peters, who has frequently turned his back on a sure thing out of a pathological need to manoeuvre and skirmish, and he’s gotten away with playing the mercenary many times before. And, at his advanced age, there’s only so much longer for him to accomplish what he never has gotten to before.

Of course, Winston Peters and Chris Hipkins have both ruled out working with each other, and, of course, that doesn’t really rule out anything. Winston Peters’ career has demonstrated that, given the choice between telling the truth and personal power, he will opt for power and privilege, every time. He'll find any loophole he needs to talk around things - and while there's technically a possible world where Labour replace Hipkins specifically to offer Winston somebody he can work with, it’s hard to understand the argument as to what would make Chippy so different from other Labour figures, and a clear risk for Labour to begin pandering to Winston with decisions that could just destabilise themselves for his amusement.

Now, there is another way to sell that Winston would never serve in a Labour-led government…

To be clear, even before Hipkins ruled it out recently, Prime Minister Winston Peters was probably not happening: on some level, it would defeat the entire purpose for his coalition partners of forming a government, to put him at the head. Following his every beck and call would wreck the government’s popularity and defeat its purpose; refusing to obey the Prime Minister would bring it down early and deliver an unfavourable election result. But, short of that, Winston is always good at coming up with some new bribe ideas for each party to offer him. Chief Minister? Supertreasurer? Good Government Czar?

And it’d be hard to say that bribery isn’t on Labour’s mind. Labour’s incentives to court NZFirst are rising: they are practically guaranteed to grow their caucus at the next election and will certainly be competing with the Greens for the role of largest minor party. Contrast that with TPM, who may shrink, are certainly not going to grow, and are starting from a smaller place than NZFirst. In the scenario I laid out above with the wobbly left majority, NZFirst would provide the greater security of 68 seats - and, almost identically in the right bloc win scenario, Labour-Greens-NZFirst have 67 MPs between them. This is the other great temptation. Labour know that they are going to improve on election day, and the Greens will probably hold on fine - so if NZFirst swaps sides, then the biggest political success story on the right is turned to the benefit of the left, with every party doing its part to fire on all cylinders and change the government.

There’s a growing alignment between Labour and NZFirst on policy issues, such as the “Future Fund”’s focus on investment within New Zealand. It was hard not to notice in Hipkins’ speech to the Labour Party conference his rhetorical emphasis on serving New Zealanders, not overseas investors. And it must be remembered that many NZFirst voters defected from Labour in the first place. Current polling shows that they register displeasure with the rest of the government’s direction even as they trust Winnie. They might welcome a move away from soft austerity, provided Winston’s in the room to tell them everything will be all right.

That, of course, will certainly have to mean no Te Pāti Māori in this coalition. Each party’s base would utterly revolt at the idea of any compromise with the other. And Labour will welcome that price. They know that they can work with NZFirst - and they’ve done it before with the Greens in the tent. They don’t know that they can work with TPM - it’s never been done before, and in their current form, Labour figures seem positively relieved by the concept of not having to work with TPM. So NZFirst might just be the saving grace to the left bloc’s dilemma. 

The cost, of course, being that it does raise existential questions for the left bloc’s electoral programme in New Zealand if, every time they come to power, they will have an eighty-year-old’s hands around their throat, wringing their neck every time they so much as breathe a lick of socialism. In the unlikely event that the 2026 election delivers a Labour-Greens-NZFirst coalition, then by the next election in 2029, the following stat will ring true:

Since NZFirst was founded, of the 36 years since, the New Zealand Labour Party will have spent 18 years in Opposition, 9 in government with Winston Peters, and 9 in government without him. Or, put another way, that’s only a quarter of those thirty-six years that the left bloc will have won an election convincingly enough to govern as a left bloc. And that percentage declines from 25% to a scant 16.6’% if you count United Future against this time, too. I am once again left to ask what the purpose of the left is in New Zealand - and what they intend to do about it.

But Labour are not interested in answering that question this election. What they want to do is win first - and, to my surprise, at the end of this analysis, they do seem well established in striking distance to get her done. The great weakness of the left right now is, instead, their Māori Party flank, and however swing voters might react to chaos in the Māori electorates. This and NZFirst are the two big stories to watch…

But we cannot conclude without acknowledging once more what lies at centre stage. It’s all about National ailing in the polls. They are losing the lead to Labour on practically every issue bar crime, and I can only see them putting up a good fight on housing and education. And whatever arcane interest of ours it may satisfy to go over the National MPs currently tracking to lose their jobs to Labour replacements - that is of very immediate interest to those backbenchers who feel threatened. They cannot grow the economy or train the nurses overnight. But they can roll Luxon in the hopes that a better communicator can buoy their polling. At this point, Chris Bishop and Erica Stanford are their only options - not coincidentally, their two ministers with the strongest case for efficacy in this past term. 

So, really, Mister Luxon, I’d start showing a lot more concern for the MPs who may lose their jobs. Or your colleagues might just have no qualms about you losing yours.