Opinion: Michael Swanson.
I’ve now covered four of the six parties (National still to come) in the New Zealand Parliament, plus TOP (and a piece on the micro-parties), as part of taking a look at the position of each party approximately five-six months out from the election. In this piece, I’m going to take a look at Te Pāti Māori. Now, I’m usually pretty cagey around Māori politics more generally because, to put it frankly, I don’t feel I’m best placed to give the view from the point of someone with deep understanding in this space. But, in the interest of giving a fulsome view of the parties, I’m going to give my perspective on where Te Pāti Māori sit as we head towards the election.
Not so long ago, Te Pāti Māori looked like the political story of a generation. Coming out of the 2023 election with six of the seven Māori seats, a surging party vote, and a hīkoi to Parliament that drew unprecedented crowds, the party appeared to have tapped into something deep and durable in the Māori electorate. At their peak, they were polling at 7%, just one point behind the ACT Party. The energy was real. The momentum seemed unstoppable.
Then things fell apart.
Te Pāti Māori enters the 2026 election year with its caucus fractured, two electorate committees resigned, and the party still scrambling to confirm candidates with six months until polling day. What had looked like a rising tide has, for the moment, receded dramatically. The party has polled as low as 1% (although, polling for TPM is a funny beast that is not entirely representative of their support in electorates). The contrast with 2024’s high-water mark is stark, and the road to November is steep.
The Fractures Within
The most damaging blow came from inside. Te Pāti Māori expelled MPs Mariameno Kapa-Kingi and Tākuta Ferris following several turbulent months that split the party in two. The expulsions were messy and poorly handled. Co-leaders Rawiri Waititi and Debbie Ngarewa-Packer were murky on the specific offences during a press conference at Parliament, which fed a damaging narrative that the party operated on punishment and personal loyalty rather than due process. That perception hardened when Kapa-Kingi challenged her expulsion in court, and won. The Court ruled that the suspension and removal had been carried out in breach of the party’s own kawa and were therefore unlawful.
Rather than returning to the fold, Kapa-Kingi announced she would campaign in November under a new party name, Te Tai Tokerau Party, referencing the Northland Māori electorate seat she currently holds. Ferris, meanwhile, took a different path: he did not challenge his expulsion in court and has confirmed he will run again in Te Tai Tonga as an independent. In short, two sitting MPs elected under the Te Pāti Māori banner will now actively compete against the party that gave them their seats.
Co-leader Ngarewa-Packer has conceded that internal rifts went too wide. “The minute it’s gone too wide and you can’t contain it, then it’s gone beyond us scrapping behind closed doors. It’s gone to the electorates, it’s gone to executives, it’s gone to public opinion,” she said. That admission is honest, but honesty doesn’t automatically translate into votes.
The Competition for the Māori Vote
If the internal drama weren’t enough, Te Pāti Māori now faces probably the most crowded and competitive Māori seats landscape it has ever encountered. Labour, humiliated in 2023 when it lost five of its seven Māori seats, is coming back hard. Labour leader Chris Hipkins has announced a fresh panel of Māori candidates for all seven seats, declaring he expects a different result from 2023. Labour’s candidate choices are deliberate and strong, people with genuine community roots rather than safe-list retreads.
The Greens are also well positioned to capitalise on any disaffection with Te Pāti Māori’s leadership, fielding candidates with unapologetically Māori kaupapa who can credibly appeal to voters who want authentic representation but are put off by claims of a “dictatorship model” inside the party.
And then there’s the splintered vote problem. If Kapa-Kingi holds her Te Tai Tokerau seat under the new party banner, she would sit as a one-MP party in Parliament, but the more immediate damage is the fragmentation she introduces to the northern electorate. Both Labour and the Greens are openly positioning to pick up disaffected Te Pāti Māori voters before November, and a credible regional vehicle in the north could split that vote further.
Even in seats Te Pāti Māori feels secure in, the margins are tighter than they look on the surface. In Te Tai Hauāuru, while Ngarewa-Packer won the electorate decisively in 2023 with a majority of 9,200 votes, Labour actually led the party vote in that electorate, 40.9% to 35% for Te Pāti Māori. The electorate vote holds, but the party vote tells a different story about the tactical voting carried out in Māori electorates.
What the Party Still Has Going For It
It would be wrong to write Te Pāti Māori off. The party retains several genuine advantages heading into the campaign.
First, it has incumbency in six seats (even if those MPs aren’t on their team any longer), allowing them to be in a structural position to compete strongly. In the Tāmaki Makaurau byelection last September, Te Pāti Māori capitalised on disdain for the major parties by driving home an “unapologetically Māori” message, with Oriini Kaipara defeating Labour’s Peeni Henare by over 3,500 votes. That win showed the core vote is still there when the party campaigns effectively.
Second, the backdrop of this election is a National-led government that has been deeply unpopular with Māori communities. Te Pāti Māori has condemned Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith’s announcement to strip or weaken Te Tiriti o Waitangi references across 19 pieces of legislation, the kind of Treaty issue that historically galvanises Māori voters and drives turnout. A government seen as hostile to Māori rights is, paradoxically, one of Te Pāti Māori’s better recruitment tools.
Third, the party has bold, distinctive policy. Te Pāti Māori says it will abolish prisons by 2040 in favour of community-led solutions, pointing to the fact that Māori make up around 52% of all prisoners and 66% of female prisoners, despite being only 17.5% of the population. Whether or not voters accept the full vision, it marks Te Pāti Māori as a party unafraid to challenge the system fundamentally, which has appeal in an electorate that has often felt abandoned by incremental politics.
What Lies Ahead
The party’s immediate to-do list is formidable. It needs to finalise its full candidate slate, rebuild credibility in electorates where resignations have hollowed out local infrastructure, and repair its public image without appearing to paper over real governance failures.
One issue I haven’t even mentioned is the position of party President, John Tamihere. I’m not deep enough into the details to offer judgement, but his time as leader has seen both electoral growth combined with internal division. How he acts in the coming months could also have a significant impact on the fortunes of Te Pāti Māori.
With polls showing a tight race between a National-ACT-New Zealand First coalition on the right and a Labour-Greens (and possibly Te Pāti Māori) coalition on the left, every vote will count. That gives Te Pāti Māori leverage, but only if it can survive the campaign intact, present a credible and unified front, and convince voters that the party they’re voting for is capable of governing alongside others, not just opposing from the margins.
Both Waititi and Ngarewa-Packer insist that “there is no left bloc without Te Pāti Māori.” They’re probably right…mathematically. But maths alone won’t save them. The months between now and November 7 will test whether a party that nearly tore itself apart can stitch itself back together in time to make that argument convincing.
