The Maori Party has named just one list candidate beyond its seven electorate contenders, general secretary Lance Norman. It is asking supporters to give their candidate vote to The Maori Party and their party vote to the Greens or Labour.
The aim is to win as many Maori electorates as possible, while directing party votes to parties that can turn them into list MPs. Under MMP, if a party wins more electorate seats than its party vote entitles it to, it keeps those seats and Parliament grows. This is known as an overhang. It happened in 2023, when The Maori Party won six electorates on a 3.08% party vote that entitled it to four.
“This list proves we are putting our money where our mouth is,” co-leader Rawiri Waititi said. “Our strategy is clear. We want more Maori in Parliament.”
At National’s campaign launch, former Prime Minister Sir John Key warned supporters against doing something “you think is clever” that is the “opposite of clever”. National leader Christopher Luxon later called strategic voting “an insanely stupid idea”. His coalition partners disagreed. ACT leader David Seymour said “both votes belong to the voter,” and NZ First leader Winston Peters called Key’s comments “very, very ill-informed”. Peters said the “very manipulation of the electoral system” by The Maori Party and the left “has to have a response”. Speaking with RCR, Labour leader Chris Hipkins said, “I don’t agree with people trying to manipulate the electoral system”.
On RCR’s The Fourth Estate on Friday, political commentator Peter Williams said, “It’s not a rort, it’s the rules”. He pointed to 1999, when he said Helen Clark signalled support for Greens co-leader Jeanette Fitzsimons in Coromandel. Judge David Harvey agreed: “It’s the way the system was designed”
Former National Party leader and Reserve Bank Governor Don Brash told RCR that National was “very worried” because “as polls stand, the likelihood is that National will get no list MPs at all”.
A Horizon Research poll of 607 Maori roll voters, commissioned by Mata Reports, put the Greens on 28% and Labour on 27% for the party vote, with The Maori Party on 16%.
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Dole blodgers
The gimme other people’s money, coz I don’t like workin, coalition….