> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://goodoil.news/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # Willis Wants You to Stop Risking Her Job - URL: https://goodoil.news/willis-wants-you-to-stop-risking-her-job/ - Published: 2026-10-11T20:00:00.000Z - Updated: 2026-10-11T19:59:59.000Z - Description: Just remember it’s her job on the line if you party vote ACT or NZ First – and how is that your problem? - Author: Guest Post - Tags: NZ Politics, National, Election 2026 **LilBaP** The poll and the interview are the same week and they do not agree with each other. The numbers say New Zealand First supplied what the coalition needed to stay ahead, had an election been held that week. Nicola Willis, on Duncan Garner’s show on Monday 5 October, as the poll was closing, told the people who had voted that way to stop. Kindly put it back. Trust is at stake, she says. From a politician, that is asking the day to be night. Curia for the Taxpayers’ Union, in the field 1–5 October, 1,000 voters, margin of error ±3.1 per cent, 2.5 per cent undecided. National 28.5 per cent, 37 seats. Labour 28.2, 36\. Greens 13.3, 17\. New Zealand First 12.0, up 3.6, 16 seats, up five. ACT 9.2, 12\. Opportunity 4.8 and no seats, with Curia itself putting a 42 per cent chance it is actually over the line. Te Pāti Māori 1.4, two seats. Coalition 65\. Opposition bloc 55\. National plus ACT is 49\. Labour plus the Greens is 53\. Neither governs without a partner. National and ACT together are on 49\. Add New Zealand First’s 16 and the same three parties are on 65, 10 clear of the other bloc. The five seats New Zealand First picked up since September are the whole of the movement. National gave two back. ACT gave two back. The coalition still went up one and it went up because of the party Willis spent Monday warning you off. She pleaded her case to viewers. A vote for anyone other than National risks handing Labour the upper hand in the talks, she told Garner. “That’s what a lot of people thought in 2017, Duncan. And then they watched Winston Peters make Jacinda Ardern prime minister. If you want to guarantee a National government, the way to do that is to party vote National.” Asked if Peters might go with Labour: “He did in 2017 and it’s hard to forget that.” Hard to forget and harder to count. She wants those five seats back in her own pile. On this poll they are the reason she might still be in government The maths of where the party vote goes is plainer than the interview. National on 28.5 per cent is worth about 37 seats. If it also wins about 37 electorates, the party vote has already been used up by the local MPs. Another party vote for National, past that line, does not hire another National MP. It sits in a pile that does not grow the caucus. The same vote given to ACT or New Zealand First does add another seat. Both are under the level where their list is full, both clear the threshold, and both sit on the same side of the House as the candidate you just elected. That is ‘better maths’. It is a seat that exists if the tick moves and does not exist if the tick stays where Willis wants it. Take those ticks back off New Zealand First and ACT and return them to National, which is what Willis’ advice amounts to. National’s caucus stays where the electorates already put it. The two partners shrink. The 65 has to be counted again, and it will not be counted up. Put the party vote with National and you are paying the woman who told you the partner was the risk. Put it with New Zealand First and you are voting the 16 seats that turned 60 into 65. Peters left a scar in 2017 and it is real. Hipkins also has a trust problem. He is a repeat offender, word salad and all, and on any other day he can cuddle up to Chlöe and Wong. Pointing your finger at Winston is a habit, not a distinction. National and Labour are close enough on the machinery that the minors, and MMP, are what now worries them. Careers that used to be settled inside the party can be settled by the party vote. That is the bit Willis would like you to forget before putting the tick on the ballot paper. This is why a party vote parked only with National, on 28.5 per cent and 37 seats, buys no extra list MP and a weaker hand for the partner she is trying to shrink. She wants a guarantee she cannot produce, and she has named the man who produces it as the risk. Give me a break. Looking back, 2017 is the wrong insurance policy. English sat down, had the numbers and did not close. Peters took Labour’s offer. The scar remains. Then in 2020 the country put Labour in on its own, near 50 per cent and New Zealand First was put out to the pasture. Blaming the partner for that landslide skips the fact that in 2020 the voters did it without him. This campaign cycle he is the one who has ruled Labour out in public and more than once. Willis is the one reviving that night, in the week his party did the heavy lifting. The list behind Peters is not the one-man show the scar remembers – it is the spine at this rodeo. The number that can still wreck the table is not 2017\. It is 4.8 per cent. Opportunity is just under the five per cent line and Curia says there is a 42 per cent chance the poll has it on the wrong side of that line. Stay under and the votes are wasted. The seats they would have won are shared out, which is part of why the coalition is on 65\. Cross the line and those votes become about six seats. The Opportunity party’s top donors have been plain that the point of the exercise is to keep New Zealand First out of government. That’s a real tell. A National-ACT-New Zealand First-Opportunity deal is not on offer. A Labour-Greens-Opportunity deal is the one those donors have already paid for. Willis wants a guarantee. The poll is already showing the way and it is not a second tick for National. National plus ACT is 49\. The coalition is 65 because New Zealand First is on 16\. On the electorate vote, tick the National candidate if that seat is still the one holding the line. On the party vote, tick ACT or New Zealand First. If Opportunity gets past the post and 4.8 per cent becomes six seats on the other side, you will forget 2017 very fast. Follow her advice and the room you get is the one already on 53 before Opportunity knocks: climate targets with a bill attached, UNDRIP as policy, the Treaty claims that do not close, and the universities and more public servants to keep nudging their way. She has asked you to protect a National government by voting against the seats that make one. Just remember it’s her job on the line if you party vote ACT or NZ First – and how is that your problem?