MMP is finally showing its true self as parties accept strategic voting – Editorial
The true nature of MMP continues to reveal itself as this year’s election campaign gets into swing.
And it appears Kiwis are finally starting to get the hang of it and all its quirks.
Speaking at a public event on Friday night, Act Party candidate Paul Henry said the coalition would have a “much better chance” of re-election if its supporters gave their party vote to Act and supported National candidates in their seats.
It raises the same issues that some political commentators had about intentionally engineering an overhang in Parliament when Te Pāti Māori openly said this was its strategy.
But strategic voting is MMP. The voting methods Henry and Te Pāti Māori have talked about are built into the system.
Henry said MMP “lends itself to strategic voting” and he believed people were coming to grips with that.
“We’ve got a situation now where very clearly Te Pāti Māori is training people to do a particular thing that up until now, no party has in its entirety,” he said of MMP.
“We had the situation obviously in Epsom where there was a bit of talk around it, but it’s quite a different thing when a party has an entire strategy such as Te Pāti Māori.”
When referring to Epsom, Henry is of course conjuring up the image of John Key and John Banks sitting in a cafe working out a deal for the Auckland seat.
At the time, many described it as brazen and cynical. But it was simply playing MMP by its rules.
In previous campaigns, National has told its voters to give the Epsom seat to Act to ensure the minor party gets into Parliament, providing National with a partner on the right.
This wasn’t the first time this strategy has been used either.
Helen Clark encouraged Labour voters to give their candidate votes to Jeanette Fitzsimons in Coromandel to guarantee the Greens would be elected in 1999.
Te Pāti Māori’s strategy this year, meanwhile, is simply to ask its supporters for the candidate vote in the Māori seats. Party-vote for either Labour or the Greens, it said.
The strategy could create an overhang in Parliament, resulting in more than 120 MPs in the House.
An overhang could also result from centre-right voters giving their party tick to Act and electorate vote to a National candidate.
There is currently a two-seat overhang from the 2023 election after Te Pāti Māori received only 3% of the party vote but won six seats.
The use of these strategies, particularly by the minor parties, is not deceptive or an attempt to rig the system. It’s just smart politics.
The quirks of MMP have always given disproportionate power to so-called minor parties.
Both National and Labour are barely clinging to 30% of support and neither are remotely close to forming a government themselves or with the help of just one partner. In this year’s election, therefore, more power and seats could swing the way of the smaller parties than ever before.
If you don’t like it, hate the game, not the players. And you might consider a referendum on MMP – as Christopher Luxon suggested – is worth supporting.