On 23 September, New Zealand will have its eighth general election under the MMP voting system and there are a few signs that both the political parties and the public are finally getting their collective heads around how it works.
The most important single lesson of course is that, except for the very small political parties, for which the electorate vote may be absolutely crucial to their survival, only the party vote really matters. It is the party vote which alone determines the number of MPs a party will have in Parliament, unless a party’s party vote falls short of 5% of the total. It has taken a surprisingly long time for the major parties to understand this point.
I had no involvement in the election campaigns of 1996 (the first under MMP) or 1999 (because I was Governor of the Reserve Bank on both occasions), but I know that in 2002 most of the National Party’s campaign was focused on winning electorates. The party put up only a small number of billboards exhorting the public to give National their party vote, and this was almost certainly one of the reasons why the party got its worst result in its almost 70-year history that year.
Two of the most high profile members of the National Party caucus at that time – Murray McCully and Maurice Williamson – were not even on the party’s list. In other words, in their electorates (East Coast Bays and Pakuranga) they had no incentive whatsoever to push for the party vote, only for the electorate vote, because it was only the electorate vote which was going to determine whether they returned to Parliament.
And from the point of view of the National Party, that was a disaster because it was only the party vote which would determine whether National was going to be able to form a government. Whether Messrs McCully and Williamson won their electorates was entirely irrelevant.
By the time of the 2005 election, when I was Leader of the National Party, the party had the benefit of a president, Judy Kirk, who had a very clear understanding of the importance of the party vote. She campaigned incessantly in every electorate for the party vote. But even then the message was slow to be absorbed: one very prominent National Party person volunteered to be in charge of the “marginal seats campaign”, not understanding that winning electorates was almost irrelevant in terms of National’s ability to form a government.
(I say “almost irrelevant” because, while winning electorates has no impact at all on the ability of a major party to form a government in the current election, it may have a small benefit in terms of winning future elections because being an electorate MP does give such a person some advantage in terms of visibility in the electorate and therefore some potential benefit to the party in winning the party vote in future.)
But even in 2005, the National Party board decided that a letter should be sent to the good people of the Epsom electorate urging them to vote for the National Party candidate in that electorate, Richard Worth, rather than the ACT candidate, Rodney Hide. That was a totally self-destructive decision because it was in the National Party’s interest that Rodney Hide won that electorate.
Indeed, it would have been in the National Party’s interest even if ACT had attracted no party votes given that losing Epsom didn’t deprive National of a single MP (the number of National MPs being decided solely by National’s share of the party vote) and the likelihood of an ACT MP voting against National was very low. In fact, ACT got enough of the party vote so that, having won Epsom, they were entitled to have a second ACT MP. So had Richard Worth won the Epsom electorate, the centre-right bloc would have been deprived of two MPs.
It now appears that the main political parties do understand how MMP works, and the general public are getting the hang of it also. In 2005, the people of Epsom voted for Rodney Hide despite the letter from the National Party urging them to vote for Richard Worth.
In the 2014 election, there was clear evidence of strategic voting in the Te Tai Tokerau electorate: neither National nor New Zealand First contested that electorate so that Kelvin Davis of Labour could win it against the Internet Mana candidate, Hone Harawira. This year, it appears that the Maori Party will not contest that electorate in the interests of Hone Harawira winning it against the Labour candidate Kelvin Davis.
The Greens have recently said that they will not contest Peter Dunne’s electorate, Ohariu, in the 2017 general election in the hope that by their not standing the Labour candidate will defeat Peter Dunne. While there is no direct benefit to Labour in winning Ohariu (again because the number of Labour MPs is determined only by Labour’s share of the party vote), knocking out an MP who normally votes with National makes sense from the point of view of Labour and the Greens. Logically, it would make sense for National not to contest the electorate vote in Ohariu to increase the chances of Peter Dunne holding the seat.
Similarly, it would make sense for the National Party not to put up a candidate against ACT in Epsom.
MMP has the great benefit that it does ensure that a broader range of views is heard in Parliament but it does on the other hand greatly increase the power of party machines (because it is political parties which determine the party lists, which in turn determine to a significant degree who gets into Parliament). It also significantly enhances the power of the very small parties, which often hold the balance of power between the two large rival blocs.
MMP also makes it more difficult to change the status quo in any significant respect. For the last eight years, John Key has been one of the most popular politicians in New Zealand history. Despite that fact, the John Key-led Government has clung to power with the slimmest of majorities in Parliament.
Had we had MMP when the Fourth Labour Government was elected in 1984, we would almost certainly never have had the wrenching reforms introduced by that Government. We might still be queuing for foreign exchange to buy travelers cheques, suffering from double-digit inflation, and waiting two years to get a phone connection.
Copyright © 2024 Don Brash.