Nigel
Nigel is the founder and editor-in-chief of Pavlova Post, an independent New Zealand publication launched in November 2025.
Dave’s attempt to explain MMP to his daughter ended with 123 folding chairs on the front lawn, an angry community hall caretaker and a lawnmower trapped behind the opposition benches. All Ella had asked was what an election overhang meant. She hadn’t requested a full-scale reconstruction of parliament, especially one that blocked the letterbox.
The question wasn’t entirely unreasonable. On Sunday 1 November, 1News reported a disagreement over a third-party vote-splitting advertisement intended to help produce a parliamentary overhang. ACT and NZ First had approved the campaign advertising, while National opposed the strategy. With the general election on 7 November, the mathematics had become part of the campaign conversation, although voters had yet to deliver a result.
Under MMP, a party’s share of the party vote largely determines how many seats it receives. If it wins more electorates than that allocation allows, its winning electorate MPs keep their seats and parliament grows beyond the usual 120. The parliament elected in 2023 had 123 MPs because of an overhang. Dave discovered this halfway through a diagram on the back of an electricity bill.
A minor seating problem
He drew 12 chairs on paper, each representing 10 MPs. That worked until Ella pointed out that 123 MPs required 12 full chairs and three-tenths of another. Dave found a camping stool in the shed, declared it the overhang and placed it beside the drawing.
“But that’s a whole stool,” Ella said.
“It’s smaller than a chair. That’s the principle.”
“What happens if there are five extra MPs?”
Dave stared at the stool. He had been hoping for questions about the weather.
He decided the problem was scale. If one chair represented one MP, everybody would immediately see how simple the system was. As a volunteer with a key to the local community hall, Dave had access to enough folding chairs for a demonstration nobody had requested. He borrowed 123, left a note promising to return them by four and spent an hour carrying democracy across the driveway.
Karen came home to find 120 chairs in rows and three more parked beside the lemon tree. A masking-tape sign read OVERHANG – DO NOT REMOVE.
“Why have we got the community hall on our lawn?”
“I’m explaining how parliament can have more than 120 seats.”
“Couldn’t you have explained it with three biscuits?”
“I tried a camping stool. It confused the issue.”
Nobody is surrendering a chair
Dave walked Ella through a made-up example: a party entitled to three seats on its party vote wins four electorates, so it keeps all four electorate MPs and creates one extra seat. Other parties don’t lose a seat to make room. Ella understood immediately.
“So we only needed four chairs to show that?”
Dave looked at the remaining 119. “Not if you want people to appreciate the scale.”
He’d also labelled one section “GOVERNMENT” and another “OPPOSITION”, despite the election not having happened yet. Ella made him peel off the labels. The only place facing an actual chair shortage was the community hall.
The caretaker arrived at four, followed by two volunteers and a trailer. They needed the chairs for a family function and were unimpressed to discover their furniture had been reorganised into parliament. One volunteer asked which chairs could be loaded first.
“You can’t take those three,” Dave said, pointing at the overhang. “They’ve won their electorates.”
“They belong to the hall.”
“Yes, but under MMP–”
“Under the hall rules, you had them back by four.”
That was the first parliamentary argument Dave had encountered all afternoon with a clear majority. Within 15 minutes, the entire House had been folded flat and loaded onto a trailer, including the overhang and the opposition benches that had prevented him from mowing the lawn.
At dinner, Dave found his usual chair missing. Karen had moved it into the shed and left a note on his place mat: ELECTORATE LOST.
“I can still get in on the party list,” he said.
Karen handed him the camping stool. “You’re not on the list.”
Grown-Up Links
- 1News, 1 November 2026 – National, ACT and NZ First at odds over vote-splitting campaign
- Electoral Commission – How are MPs elected?
- Electoral Commission – Key dates for the 2026 general election
This article was originally published by Pavlova Post.
