On Saturday the National party released its list for the forthcoming General Election. This led to the immediate, and for me rather sad, end of the political career of Michael Woodhouse (I did warn him, did urge him to be the candidate in the Taieri electorate). A good man who would have provided – again – a lot of gravitas to the Cabinet after October.
The National party seems incapable of getting through an election season without ejecting good men from Parliament in a fairly grubby fashion; Todd Barclay, Tau Henare and Phil Quinn are others who spring to mind. But before some people get their wives to start measuring up new curtains in ministerial houses or Beehive offices, all is not what it seems with the party list; in many ways, list placings are all a bit academic and irrelevant for the simple fact that National isn’t certain to have any list MPs.
One of the curious aspects of this election, and further evidence the Labour Party is now completely discredited, is the very weak numbers incumbent Labour MPs are getting in their electorates. The longstanding con game was always about Labour members trying to pretend they were ‘partisan’ figures, and managing to get just enough National voters to cross over and re-elect them. Someone had to keep a check on “unbridled Tories”; someone had to fight for hungry children and workers.
Six years in government has shown that twaddle up as the con-game it always was, and the level of crossover is likely to be so low that National could end up winning so many electorate seats they, as I say, don’t actually get any list MPs.
As things stand, Labour is so toxic – and MPs are being personally blamed – National could very well end up with 45 electorate seats. Not necessarily a bad thing; MPs who can talk properly, don’t have genetic defects, and don’t eat with their fingers are probably better than the alternatives as the last six years have shown. But it also means it is currently even money for the National list MPs.
Let me explain…
45 seats in Parliament, assuming there is a 3% wasted vote (Democracy NZ, Vision NZ, the Fishing Party etc) means you require around 37% of the votes to obtain this number of seats (37% divided by 0.97 = 38.1; multiply that by 1.2 and you get 45). So anything less than 37% of the party vote and National not only won’t have any list MPs but, curiously, could see an “overhang”; a truly bizarre situation.
So National requires 37.5% of the party vote for 1 list MP; assuming Nicola Willis wins Ohariu this will be Paul Goldsmith. At 38% they get Melissa Lee. But then things get a bit tricky; National needs to get another full percentage point – 39% – before Brownlee can get re-elected. At 39.5% they get this Nancy Lu woman (whoever she is!). In recent times polling for National makes Melissa no better than even money, and Brownlee and Lu a vague possibility.
But wait – there’s more…
Let’s say National does receive support around the level of 39% of the party vote, but there is a 2014-style collapse for Labour into the mid-20s; then something curious begins to happen. Labour starts to lose seats like Te Atatu, Wigram, New Lynn, Christchurch Central, Takanini, and Banks Peninsula to National candidates. What this means is National starts to require somewhere in the order of 42% (rather than 37%) for even Paul Goldsmith to get back. We could well be in for a truly bizarre election result.
