Rodney Hide
Rodney Hide is a former minister and ACT Party leader.
It’s not just the party votes for National that were wasted Saturday night. So too were the electorate votes for ACT and New Zealand First.
These votes did not add one extra MP to the centre right. That was 210,914 votes wasted.
And it mattered. The fate of the election may hang on Wairarapa. The margin there is just 139 votes in National’s favour. The specials could flip it. New Zealand First’s Ron Mark got 3,555 votes in that electorate. And didn’t get in. Those votes may well have cost the centre right the election.
If Mr Hipkins emerges as prime minister he may well have Ron Mark to thank for his win.
But that’s not the only seat. There are another six seats where the electorate vote for New Zealand First and ACT cost the National candidate the seat.
They are Banks Peninsula, Epsom, Hutt South, Mt Roskill, Taieri and Wigram.
On Banks Peninsula, Vanessa Weenink was 2,261 votes behind Labour’s Tracey McLellan. ACT and New Zealand First together took 2,728 electorate votes. That would have put Weenink in by 467.
In Epsom, Paul Goldsmith lost to David Seymour by 2,044. New Zealand First’s Martin Gummer took another 359. Those votes would have put Goldsmith in. Seymour would still have entered parliament on the list. ACT’s party vote already entitles them to 13 seats.
In Hutt South, Chris Bishop lost to Ginny Andersen by 889. There was no ACT candidate. New Zealand First’s Alistair Boyce took 1,032 votes. That would have put Bishop in by 143.
In Mt Roskill, Carlos Cheung lost to Michael Wood by just 262. ACT’s Yang Qu took 763 votes. There was no New Zealand First candidate. Cheung would have won by 501.
In Taieri, Matthew French was 4,798 behind Ingrid Leary. ACT and New Zealand First together took 6,266 votes – 4,595 of them for New Zealand First’s Mark Patterson. French would have won by 1,468.
In Wigram, Tracy Summerfield lost to Dominik Yanzick by 1,935. ACT and New Zealand First together took 3,071. Summerfield would have won by 1,136.
The votes were not just wasted – they cost the centre right seats. Those extra seats would mean we would have a centre-right government. There would be a 137-seat parliament with the centre right having a majority with 73 MPs.
Both the centre-right parties and centre-right voters need to get a lot smarter about how they campaign.
This article was originally published by Brash and Mitchell.
