OPINION: Rodney Hide.
Rodney Hide
That’s how many National party votes there will be once the specials are counted. Every one of them went down the toilet.
On that projection National has 41 electorates. Those party votes entitle it to 34 seats. The extra seven come from the electorates, not from the party vote. Christopher Luxon could have stacked another hundred thousand party votes on the pile and he would not have gained a single MP.
He wrote the suicide note himself. Split voting, he said, was “an insanely stupid idea.” There was “no value giving it to ACT, no value giving it to New Zealand First, you’re not helping me.” In Havelock North, four days out: “Do not do any of this split voting or strategic voting malarkey.” Just a straight party vote for National. Two ticks blue.
He could not have been more wrong.
Here is what that advice cost.
The ordinary count already has the centre-right over the line. Specials are still to come — about a fifth of the final vote — and they usually lean left. Allow for them and the centre-right is short of a majority. National sits on 41 seats, all of them electorates, with ACT on 12 and NZ First on 11. That is 64 in a House of 131. They need 66.
About 82,000 to 91,000 of those National party votes, given instead to ACT or NZ First, would have done it. National would still have its 41 electorates. The allies would have picked up the extra seats. The centre-right would have 68 in a House of 135 — a majority.
Nine hundred thousand wasted party votes. One in ten of them shifting, exactly as Don Brash and RCR were explaining, and Christopher Luxon would be forming a government.
He told them not to. They listened. And now he gets to explain why two ticks blue was the clever thing to do.
Postscript
I got the specials wrong.
I wrote that specials would be about a fifth of the final vote, and that National would finish with nine hundred thousand party votes. That was last election’s pattern. The reason it does not hold this time is that enrolment closed three weeks before election day. In 2023 you could still enrol on the day, and those late enrolments were counted as specials. That pile is gone.
I never factored that change in.
The Electoral Commission now says there are 399,365 specials still to count, including 96,947 overseas and dictation votes. That is closer to a seventh than a fifth.
Allow for those specials, and the leftward lean they usually show, and National comes out with about 806,000 party votes, not 900,000. The centre-right is no longer on 64 seats in a House of 131. It is on 65 in a House of 130: National 41, ACT 13 and NZ First 11. They still need 66. If Opportunity will not go with National, it is a hung parliament.
Wairarapa decides whether they need Opportunity at all. On the ordinary count, National’s Mike Butterick leads Labour’s Kieran McAnulty by 139 votes. If that lead holds, National has 42 electorates, the House is 131, and the centre-right has 66 — a majority, without Opportunity. A lead of 139 can disappear once the specials are in.
Into that race walked Ron Mark. He had been mayor of Carterton. He stood for New Zealand First and took 3,555 votes — more than twenty-five times the margin — and he did not even get in. He did not win the seat, and he was 16th on the party list. New Zealand First is looking at about 11 seats. The former mayor will not be back in Parliament. And yet his candidacy may prove the most pivotal of all.
Rodney is a former Minister and ACT Party leader
