Always intriguing, the electorates may prove decisive in 2026 in more ways than one.<\/p>\n
Since 1867, the M\u0101ori electorates have been the scene of enthralling drama. Since MMP was introduced there have been clean sweeps across the seats for New Zealand First, Labour and (almost) Te P\u0101ti M\u0101ori. It\u2019s not yet 12 years since John Key, in coalition with the M\u0101ori Party, said that adhering to his party\u2019s then policy to abolish the seats would spark <\/a>\u201ch\u012bkois from hell\u201d.<\/p>\n At the last election, six of the seven seats were won by Te P\u0101ti M\u0101ori. Today, after an extended, well-documented procession of internal bloodletting, the party holds four. Of all the races, those in Te Tai Tokerau and Te Tai Tonga \u2013 where the sitting MPs are no longer part of the TPM caucus \u2013 may be the most fascinating to watch, said Lara Greaves, speaking on an episode of the podcast At Large with Toby Manhire.<\/p>\n But, with just days to go to the roll-swapping deadline<\/a>, there is another layer of fascination, centred on the electoral maths in electorates where those enrolled have often proved savvier to strategic voting \u2013 a calculated overhang.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWith our electoral system, good old MMP, you have your electorate vote and you have party vote,\u201d said Greaves, associate professor in politics at Victoria University of Wellington. \u201cThe party vote is the one that determines the makeup of the house\u2026 If your party wins more electorates than your party vote entitles you to in the House, you still get those electorate seats. They can\u2019t take them away from you.\u201d<\/p>\n That in turn means adding seats to the default number of 120. Some have toyed with the idea <\/a>of Te P\u0101ti M\u0101ori, with an eye on removing the incumbent government, encouraging their supporters to vote TPM for electorate MP and Labour for the party vote, explicitly or tacitly.<\/p>\n \u201cThe idea is, if you add, say, seven extra MPs from the Maori electorates, then you\u2019d have seven more left-leaning MPs, and they would help make up the majority to form a government of the 127 or whatever it was.\u201d<\/p>\n It was far from a straightforward prospect, however, \u201cIt creates a lot of issues because firstly you\u2019ve got to nudge-nudge-wink-wink people.\u201d That was risky in any seat; if it were a M\u0101ori electorate that would only grow, she said. If you consider the outrage over deals in Epsom or Ohariu, she said, \u201cand then if we add a M\u0101ori layer to that, the public\u2019s going to frown a bit more, right?\u201d<\/p>\n And, were a handful of seats generated by overhang to prove crucial in determining which bloc became government, there was a reasonable argument that could be made about legitimacy, she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cAny time when you see people playing the system, people are going to look down on it\u2026 We don\u2019t want people to feel like the political system is being played in some way.\u201d<\/p>\n To get every episode of At Large with Toby Manhire in your podcast feed, follow here for Spotify<\/a>, or here for Apple<\/a>. You can watch the lot on YouTube by subscribing to the Spinoff here<\/a> or browsing all the episodes here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Always intriguing, the electorates may prove decisive in 2026 in more ways than one. Since 1867, the M\u0101ori…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":542789,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[257142,26380,201422,161047,105087,266932,111,43,139,69,135],"class_list":["post-542788","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-at-large-with-toby-manhire","tag-atea","tag-maori-electorates","tag-maori-seats","tag-mmp","tag-mmp-threshold","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/542788","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=542788"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/542788\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/542789"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=542788"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=542788"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=542788"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}