Overhang arms race as left and right eye split-vote paths to power

Summarised by Centrist

Te Pāti Māori is asking supporters for their electorate vote while directing their party vote towards Labour or the Greens, but a mirror strategy is also being promoted on the right.

Both plans aim to use the gap between electorate victories and party-vote entitlement to produce extra seats through an MMP overhang.

Te Pāti Māori revealed its strategy at its campaign launch in Gisborne.

“There’s one plan, two votes. Our plan has to be to focus on the candidate votes,” co-leader Debbie Ngarewa-Packer said.

Under the plan, supporters would elect Te Pāti Māori candidates in the Māori electorates but give their party vote to another left-wing party.

Co-leader Rāwiri Waititi used Te Tai Tokerau as an example. He said voters could elect Te Pāti Māori’s Aperehama Edwards while Labour’s Willow-Jean Prime and Green MP Huhana Lyndon entered Parliament through their party lists.

“You get three, and so on and so forth, and that’s how you work it out,” Waititi said.

He claimed the strategy could help elect as many as 13 Māori MPs.

The party vote normally determines how many seats each party receives.

A party winning 5% of the party vote is entitled to approximately six seats. If it also wins seven electorates, it keeps all seven, receives no list MPs and creates one additional seat.

Parliament increases in size to accommodate that overhang. The other parties do not lose any of their allocated seats.

That is the opportunity Te Pāti Māori hopes to exploit. A low party vote combined with several electorate victories could add seats beyond the party-vote allocation, while its supporters’ party votes elect additional Labour or Green MPs.

A centre-right strategy attributed to former National leader Don Brash has also begun circulating online.

It urges centre-right voters to give their electorate vote to National but direct their party vote to ACT or NZ First.

National could retain dozens of electorate seats while receiving a party vote too small to justify them all, producing its own overhang. ACT and NZ First would meanwhile gain additional list MPs from the transferred party votes.

Supporters claim this would make the coalition “unstoppable”.

Hear more at X and 1News

Image: Panamitsu

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