With National polling below 30%, lower than the 38% it received in 2023, some projections suggest Bishop entering Parliament via the list could be under threat if the party retained many of the electorates won in 2023.<\/p>\n
Act candidate Paul Henry held a public meeting in Lower Hutt last night. Photo \/ Adam Pearse<\/p>\n
Asked whether Henry supported Hutt South constituents voting for Bishop, the Act candidate instead focused on the party vote. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe best way to secure a right government that will do things to improve this country is to party vote Act, that is 100% the best thing to do,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
\u201cWhat I would encourage everyone in this room to do is look at your candidates and vote for the candidate in your area that is most likely to answer a phone call from you at 5 o\u2019clock on a Friday night.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat could be, in many areas, a National member of Parliament, and I know there are people out there saying, \u2018Constituency vote National, party vote Act\u2019.<\/p>\n
\u201cAbsolutely, party voting Act is the best way if you want to secure a right-wing government that will do stuff for you.\u201d<\/p>\n
Henry was later challenged by another attendee about why Act was not getting more \u201cmongrel\u201d about the electorate vote, with the man referencing Te P\u0101ti M\u0101ori\u2019s strategy to ask only for the candidate vote in the M\u0101ori seats.<\/p>\n
That strategy could create an overhang in Parliament \u2013 meaning there are more than 120 MPs in the House \u2013 because it could result in Te P\u0101ti M\u0101ori winning more seats than its share of the party vote would entitle the party to. <\/p>\n
In 2023, Te P\u0101ti M\u0101ori received only 3% of the party vote but won six seats, creating a two-seat overhang, increasing the number of MPs in Parliament to 122. <\/p>\n
The attendee suggested it would be foolish not to vote for National candidates as it was the only party on the right able to produce an overhang.<\/p>\n
Act candidate Paul Henry signs a book after his public meeting. Photo \/ Adam Pearse<\/p>\n
Henry, appearing reluctant to discuss the topic, referred to current polling and claimed there could be an overhang \u201cby as much as 10 Members of Parliament\u201d. <\/p>\n
He acknowledged an overhang would give a \u201cmuch better chance of securing a right government win\u201d before explaining why he didn\u2019t often discuss it. <\/p>\n
\u201cThere are a lot of people who don\u2019t like to be told what to do and because I think there are more and more people who are wise to the way MMP works, people like yourself and you\u2019ve worked it out and you\u2019ll talk to other people and maybe that\u2019s the best way this news should filter around.<\/p>\n
Henry said the man was \u201ctechnically\u201d correct, before referencing the Herald\u2019s presence in the room. <\/p>\n
\u201cBut technically what you\u2019re saying is correct \u2026 but you got to be so careful saying these things and there are members of the media here, but there is a school of thought that says actually, party voting National is actually a wasted vote because they will get so many constituency votes that they require many, many, many more party votes to … get an extra Member of Parliament as opposed to Act, but we\u2019re starting to talk about the nuances of MMP.\u201d<\/p>\n
Speaking to the Herald after he\u2019d made it through a long line of people wanting selfies, Henry said the MMP system \u201clends itself to strategic voting\u201d and believed people were understanding that more. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve got a situation now where very clearly Te P\u0101ti M\u0101ori is training people to do a particular thing that up until now, no party has in its entirety.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe had the situation obviously in Epsom where there was a bit of talk around it, but it\u2019s quite a different thing when a party has an entire strategy such as Te P\u0101ti M\u0101ori.\u201d<\/p>\n
Asked about his claim of a possible 10-MP overhang, Henry said the analysis hadn\u2019t come from the Act Party but from \u201csomeone else who is doing a lot of political analysis\u201d. <\/p>\n
Henry refused to name the person, referring to them as \u201csomeone who does a lot of political analysis and bailed me up at a meeting the other day\u201d.<\/p>\n
Adam Pearse is the Deputy Political Editor and part of the NZ Herald\u2019s Press Gallery team based at Parliament in Wellington. He has worked for NZME since 2018, reporting for the Northern Advocate in Whang\u0101rei and the Herald in Auckland.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"With National polling below 30%, lower than the 38% it received in 2023, some projections suggest Bishop entering…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":591268,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[9331,1443,197924,4619,665,9442,19956,21323,7230,124,75225,75,14154,6209,78,99307,5969,3556,111,43,139,69,291156,24637,4762,17357,17146,56639,3271,27557,165,61,5905,24687,24688,25592],"class_list":["post-591267","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-chance","tag-about","tag-accepts","tag-act","tag-around","tag-better","tag-candidate","tag-candidates","tag-coalition","tag-could","tag-dances","tag-engineering","tag-give","tag-henry","tag-in","tag-intentionally","tag-much","tag-national","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-overhang","tag-parliament","tag-party","tag-paul","tag-questions","tag-reelection","tag-should","tag-supporting","tag-their","tag-to","tag-vote","tag-voters","tag-voting","tag-weighs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/591267","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=591267"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/591267\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/591268"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=591267"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=591267"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=591267"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}