Saving the face of Nicola Willis and Chris Bishop
The overhang that could keep the coalition in power would cost National the two people who built it. Saving them would cost more.
Turn on the television and Nicola Willis is selling National’s plan. She voices most of its ads and fronts most of its billboards. This campaign is as much about her as it is about Christopher Luxon.
Chris Bishop chaired National’s 2023 campaign and helped negotiate the coalition. Now he is a nodding head at media stand-ups, handling a rush of fast-track applications.
On current polling, both will lose their jobs on 7 November.
In April, I was the first commentator to suggest National would generate an overhang. Now it is mainstream. Don Brash and Harry Mowbray, father of Zuru co-founder Nick, want it made a strategy. John Key told National’s campaign launch it would be “the opposite of clever”, costing senior ministers their seats.
The latest RNZ–Reid Research poll has National on 25.9 per cent, worth 32 seats. NZ First gets 13, ACT 11. National won 43 electorates in 2023. It could lose seven and still hold four more than its party vote allows.
Add Te Pati Maori, whose party list carries one name, and Parliament could beat its record of 123 MPs, set in 2023.
Vote-splitting will feed it. In 2023, six in ten ACT voters and nearly three in ten NZ First voters gave National’s candidate their electorate vote. Expect more this time.
An overhang leaves National with no list MPs. Willis is second on the list and standing in no seat. Bishop is third, but a poll has Labour’s Ginny Andersen ahead in Hutt South. Paul Goldsmith (sixth) and Gerry Brownlee (ninth) need the list too.
So what can National do?
One thing is off the table. A list MP who leaves is replaced from the list. An electorate MP who leaves triggers a by-election. A safe-seat MP cannot resign and hand Willis the seat; she would have to win it herself. The Constitution Act gives a defeated candidate just 40 days as a minister without one.
The other option is to throw electorates. That works in Epsom, where National voters have taken the hint since 2008, and perhaps Tamaki, which ACT won in 2023. Elsewhere it could backfire and undermine the party-vote campaign.
The arithmetic is brutal. With an overhang of four, National must throw five seats before Willis returns. Six brings back Bishop, seven Goldsmith, eight Brownlee. The first four are pure loss — four fewer government MPs.
So which seats? Look for a lowly ranked National candidate facing a coalition partner who gets in on the list regardless.
Kaipara ki Mahurangi is the template. When Chris Penk knocked himself out, Goldsmith weighed a switch. The seat went instead to a Wellington ministerial adviser, ranked 68th. ACT’s Simon Court (eighth) and NZ First’s Jenny Marcroft (10th) are standing. If either won, their party’s line-up would not change. National’s overhang would shrink by one.
Tukituki is the same. Catherine Wedd is ranked 36th, NZ First’s Taine Randell ninth. If Wedd holds the seat, Randell becomes an MP anyway.
The pattern repeats with NZ First’s Shane Jones (second) in Northland, Casey Costello (third) in Port Waikato and Michael Laws (sixth) in Waitaki, and ACT’s Todd Stephenson (sixth) in Southland and Andrew Hoggard (third) in Rangitikei. All five National candidates rank 31st or lower.
Seven seats. Enough to rescue Willis, Bishop and Goldsmith. Not Brownlee.
Now look at the majorities. In 2023, National won those seven seats by 6,087 to 19,459 votes. Their candidates rank low because the seats are safe. The seats National can most afford to lose are the hardest to lose.
Losing them deliberately means telling loyal voters to back someone else. Bishop himself has warned that voters “would punish that kind of game-playing”.
On these numbers, an overhang is as good as it gets for National. Surrendering it to rescue a few list MPs is nonsensical.
But it would be embarrassing. Two of this coalition’s negotiators may not be in Parliament for the next one.
National can keep its overhang or save face. On these polls, it cannot do both.
