Final Election results
Will the three amigos last three years?
Last week started out badly: the ABs were defeated by TMOs (does that stand for Too Many Officials?) and another damaging storm hit. What’s more, the wait for the final election results was proving too much for some. Friday 2pm couldn’t come soon enough!
In case you needed to catch up, some main points are:
Special votes – 20.9% of the total – followed the pattern of past elections and were weighted leftwards, shifting the final result in favour of the Greens (up 0.83 in percentage of party vote, meaning one more Green list MP) and Te Pāti Māori (up 0.47 and taking two more Māori electorates for a total of 6 seats).
National lost two seats, but they’ll probably pick one up in the Port Waikato by-election on 25 November.
Christopher Luxon is still forming the next government, but National and ACT don’t have enough seats for a two-party coalition. New Zealand First is the obvious third party. Those three will, between them, hold 68 out of 123 seats, assuming that National wins Port Waikato.
A National/Green coalition (64 seats out of 123) is numerically possible, and cuts out Peters, but it’s unlikely, as they’re too far apart on ideology and policy. The Greens had aimed to be in cabinet with Labour, not National.
Leaders of TPM have said they’d pick up the phone if Luxon called, but that too seems unlikely.
Two electorates flipped back from National to Labour, and two were taken by TPM from Labour. But there’ll be a few recounts.
While there were very large swings from Labour to National in most electorates, special votes boosted the margins held by National and Labour candidates who’d won on preliminary votes.
For example, Chris Hipkins’s margin in Remutaka was a healthy 20,497 in 2020, and this was slashed to 7,631 on election night 2023, reflecting the widespread swing against Labour. But, on final results, it rebounded a bit to 8,859.
Christopher Luxon’s margin Botany was 3,999 in 2020, and this rose to 13,656 on election night. But special votes have boosted his margin even more to 16,337. That’s hardly a leftward swing on special votes, in this instance.
There were underlying left and right currents within those 600,000 special votes. Overall, though, special votes leaned more to the left on the party-vote spectrum, as in past MMP elections. It’s normal for the Greens to pick up one seat on specials – although that didn’t happen in 2020. In this election, special votes have made a difference to the government-formation prospects, bringing NZ First clearly into the frame – but this wasn’t unexpected.
Special votes are becoming an increasingly large proportion of the total. In 2011, the specials were 10.7% , and this has steadily risen to 20.9%. This increases the time it takes to process specials and to do the checking and recounting before arriving at the the final result. Some electorate candidates will apply for recounts where there are very slim margins. For instance TPM’s Takutai Tarsh Kemp won by a margin of 4 over Labour’s Peeni Henare in Tāmaki Makaurau.
The Three Amigos
News media highlighted rivalry between ACT’s David Seymour and NZ First’s Winston Peters: two big egos competing for similar segments of the voting population.
Peters is still being referred to as ‘kingmaker’, which is silly because everyone knows who’ll be prime minister. Peters isn’t choosing between two contenders – as he appeared to do in 2017. (He now denies that he’d had a choice.) The old saw about the kingmaker suits Peters as it exaggerates his actual bargaining power. As Thomas Hobbes once said, reputation of power is power.
The facts, however, are that ACT had an openly stated pre-electoral rapport with National and it now holds 11 seats, as compared with late-comer NZ First’s eight. Peters’ options are limited: support Luxon’s government or not. And the consequence of not doing so is a life on leaner rations.
Peters and Seymour are united only by their contempt for ‘wokeness’. Each will need to impress voters with his own party’s achievements in office – and to discount the other’s.
Journalists were fishing for any sign of discord between the two. For instance, a report that a call from Seymour to Peters wasn’t picked up turned into an assertion that Peters ‘refused to engage with ACT’ (Sunday Start-Times).
It made sense anyway for Peters to wait for the final vote count. Each party adopts a negotiating strategy, but they’d be foolish to reveal it publicly. The negotiations require time to explore options, which can’t be reported piecemeal to the media. They have to be confidential for reasons of good faith.
That’s not to say that there won’t be tensions. Minor parties in (or supporting) governing coalitions tend to suffer at subsequent elections, as erstwhile supporters abandon them once the sordid compromises of real-world government become plain. The Peters–Seymour contest could get intense as they both struggle to be heard above the din, especially when their polling declines.
We know that Winston Peters is not above breaching cabinet conventions and differing from the PM. The Cabinet Manual allows for this on an ‘agree to disagree’ basis, as a kind of pressure-valve for when things boil over, but Peter knows how to turn up the heat when he sees an opportunity.
He’ll be the most experienced individual in this new government, which he’s already rubbed in with his tongue-in-cheek election slogan: ‘not our first rodeo’. Was he also warning us of a rough ride?
You can already hear Luxon playing the statesman with frequent uses of the phrase ‘strong and stable government’ – words that were often used by John Key and sometimes also by Jacinda Ardern. Successful government does require good working relationships. Personalities do matter – and some will clash from time to time.
So, good luck in your new job, Mr Luxon! I hope you’re reading the Cabinet Manual, because you’ll be referring to it often.
National and ACT’s shortage of experience in office (aside from a few old hands in National) can always be made up for by sound advice from officials. But didn’t both parties complain that there were Too Many Officials?
Now, I admit that my own commentary had primed it, but our last week’s (totally unscientific) poll was overwhelmingly negative on Peters’ suitability for ministerial office. Readers may be wondering if his influence in a Luxon-led government will be disruptive. Let me take a more optimistic line this week, then, and suggest reasons why the three amigos can at least last the three-year term.
We’ve come a long way since the heady days of Jacindamania in 2017. And the unlikely trio that she brought together for her first term (Labour, the Greens and NZ First) did last the full term. It took a large amount of public money (the Provincial Growth Fund). And Peters did stymie Labour by blocking a proposed capital gains tax – a matter that was still sensitive for Labour this year, causing a loss of voters to the Greens and TPM.
Peters’ coalition with Ardern was costly for NZ First, however, as half of his support-base were angry that he hadn’t gone with National. They dumped Peters in 2020 and gave him three years in the wilderness, but at least the coalition with Ardern had lasted.
The incentives that keep New Zealand’s unwritten constitution working are nakedly political. If you’re a small party in government, then don’t rock the boat too much or voters will punish you for it. But don’t be timid: rock the boat enough to make sure they don’t forget about you. Even a seasoned boat-rocker like Peters doesn’t get it right all the time. But, to really labour that metaphor, he won’t sink the boat: he just wants a turn holding the tiller.
If Luxon offers Peters the foreign affairs portfolio it means he spends plenty of time abroad. Then a spell as NZ’s ambassador in Washington DC, to stop him from contesting another election, would make about 94% of the country cheer.
Theme music as Winston rides off into the distance: ‘The Lonely Bull’ by Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass, 1962. It’s on Spotify.
Conclusion: The three amigos will get along together as well as they need to for the next three years. The imperatives of government – and the next election – should persuade them not to behave too badly.
I’m planning to do a special podcast: a historical background explainer to the conflict in Israel/Palestine.
My poll this week gives you the chance to influence what I write about next week.
Hi Grant, I see my choice in your poll is only 4%, but it would make a good post anyway, either to combat libertarian thought or to support it, whichever side you plump for :)