Will the Labour/National duopoly ever end?

And why did the Greens do a double flip?

A political party is an organisation that puts forward candidates for elections. What keeps it together could be little more than hatred of a common enemy, or it could be ideas about a better society. Concrete and achievable policies are normally expected of a party, but aren’t essential to being one.

Any organisation has aims and activities that bring its members together as a coalition of individuals, sub-groups and factions. No organisation is homogeneous, and so any political party will encompass rivalries and hierarchies.

Sometimes two or more parties collaborate before elections – even to the extent of forming pre-electoral coalitions in which they present themselves as one entity, as the Alliance did – but mostly they compete for votes.

Once the votes are counted, the next challenge is: “Who governs?” To solve that problem, parties that were competing before the election may find it necessary or convenient to negotiate, compromise and sign a coalition agreement.

Many competitive representative systems have been dominated by two main parties: one traditionally representing labour, the other representing property. There would normally be some smaller hangers-on representing specialised interests or maybe alternative ideas about money such as social credit.

In systems with proportional representation, the smaller parties stand a better chance of having some time in office along with one of the major parties. In recent years, however, things have become more complicated. Major parties are getting smaller shares of votes, to an extent that the party that leads the formation of government may have won much less than a third of votes. For example, the “winning” party in the last German federal election (Social Democrats) got only 25.7%. And sometimes grand coalitions “reaching across the aisle” are needed. Angela Merkel stayed in office for 16 years by forming coalitions between her own Christian Democracts and the Social Democrats.

Smaller parties sometimes grow by catering to discontent with the system itself, adopting such radical propositions that the “mainstream” parties don’t want to work with them at all. These system-disruptors (such as Alternative for Germany, AfD) behave like a proverbial dog in a manger, pushing the others into awkward multi-party compromises to stitch up governing coalitions.

In New Zealand’s ten MMP elections, the lowest vote received by a party that led the subsequent government was 33.8% (National in 1996). As that was the first government under MMP, there were some “teething problems” and the coalition broke up in 1998, leading to a mid-term recomposition of the government.

In basic electoral terms (leaving aside personal preferences) the most successful government since 1996 was Key’s National-led government of 2008–2017. They did three terms with party votes in the mid-40s (44.93, 47.31 and 47.04%).

Clark’s Labour-led government comes next: three terms with party votes in the high 30s and low 40s (38.74, 41.26 and 41.1%).

Labour formed a government in 2017 with 36.9%, having come second to National’s 44.4%. Labour’s 2020 result of 50% was, like everything else that year, unprecedented – and unlikely to be repeated in the foreseeable.

National’s formation of a government in 2023 from a relatively low result of 38.06% was not unprecedented, however. Naturally, they’d prefer to be in the 40s, but current opinion polling indicates they’d struggle to reach 38% again, if an election were to be called tomorrow.

The New Zealand system may follow the example of other proportional systems: the major parties that lead governments receive smaller shares of the votes, even going below 25%, making post-election negotiations more and more protracted, complicated and compromising. In 2023, Kiwis complained that it took a whole six weeks after the election to form a new government. They should take a look at the world champions for time spent in Limboland, the Belgians.

Can the major parties restore that “broad church” coalition of voters that kept the leading the party (be it National or Labour) above 38%, if not well into the 40s? (Some readers might wonder if it even matters, but bear with me, as I could return to this another time: Wasn’t MMP meant to be multi-party?)

Any organisation seeking to improve its share of an electorate – or a market – has to overcome a standard problem of all organisations: they get so accustomed to their internal culture and so engrossed by internecine contests for status that they no longer serve their voters/consumers effectively. They get “out of touch” and people get disillusioned with them. Party policy-making and messaging are set to please the loudest voices in the party itself, rather than the voters. They forget about those voters who are foolish enough not to be party members, and who may be dismissed as “ignorant” or “deplorable” – but (look out!) who are liable to switch parties between elections.

The decisive voters in any election are those who are the most indecisive in that they’re not loyal to any party. A party’s own committed supporters are “in the bag”, on the other hand, and hence are less important.

Political parties often forget that basic fact (shall I call it “iron law”?) of politics. To their detriment, political parties’ communications may get crafted by party members whose thinking is conditioned by internal debates and wish-lists, not by what voters are most concerned about. Both Labour and National show symptoms of such myopia.

A smaller niche party can survive well by being the radical voice in the room. The Greens are a good example. But not all of the minor parties are like that. The peculiar political genius of Winston Peters is his ability to sniff out disgruntled minorities (beginning with Māori in 1996, then the pensioners, the xenophobes and lately the conspiracy theorists) in large enough numbers to bring his party back from the dead.

Getting back to the two large middle-of-the-road parties, their most important voter is the undecided or wavering median voter. This person may not know much about public policy, but does have opinions about political leaders. They will be vitally concerned about their own physical safety, job security, healthcare, grocery bills, paycheck, etc. Given differing personal and household circumstances, will the bulk of persuadable mid-field voters be more attracted by talk of higher wages or of lower taxes? Better-paid secondary teachers or lower university fees? And so on.

Activists and leaders within parties need to find out what shifts the dial in other people’s minds, not their own.

A failure of the two major parties to embrace wider coalitions of voters could mean that New Zealand may go down the path of party fragmentation seen in other proportional-representation systems, rather than remain as it is: primarily a two-party contest. Under MMP, the National+Labour party-vote total was lowest in 1996 (62.03%), and highest in 2017 (81.3%). It dropped to 64.97% in 2023.

As seen on TV, however, an election still looks to most Kiwis like a contest between the leaders of the National and Labour parties.

Will it stay that way? In the past (from 1912–1935) New Zealand had what historians call “three-party politics”. The Labour v National match kicked off in 1936. How things work out in future depends a lot on the parties’ strategic thinking, as well as on media presentation – or misrepresentation.

Green Party co-leader Chloe Swarbrick has boldly suggested they could supplant Labour as leading party of the left.

That’s unlikely to happen. Going by other countries, more likely is a weaker left, both Labour and Green, undermined by other radical left and right parties. For the Greens to overtake Labour (assuming they’d really want to) a major rebrand and policy shift would be required in order to capture the centre-left.

In the meanwhile, there’s been more scandal to keep the Greens occupied.

The Green Party has decided to notify the Speaker of the House that the independent (formerly Green) MP Darleen Tana has acted in a way that distorts their party’s proportionality, the consequence of which is that her seat would become vacant. Tana had left the party following investigations into alleged exploitation of migrant workers at the e-bike business that she and her husband operated. The so-called “waka-jumping” law effects the removal of a member from the House if they leave their party, on the grounds that it distorts the party’s proportion of seats won in the election.

The Greens had opposed that law in principle (as explained below), but have found themselves voting for it, and now actually using it, nevertheless. The law requires the party leader to advise the Speaker in writing. If the Speaker is satisfied that the party’s rules have been followed, Tana’s seat becomes vacant and is filled by the next person on the party list.

This has become more complicated, as Tana has argued in court that her “departure” (was she pushed or did she jump?) from the Green Party was unlawful. She’s lodged an appeal against a High Court judgement that didn’t uphold her case. But, while it’s before the courts, her lawyer argues, the process of removing her from parliament should be put on hold.

Given the complex circumstances, then, are the Greens justified in applying a law that they’d never wanted in the first place? What’s your opinion?

The waka-jumping law was never supported by the Greens in principle, but they voted for it in 2018 as a condition of supporting the Labour/NZ First coalition.

The downside of this law is that an MP who has sound reasons to question or oppose their party’s policy could lose their seat. This could suppress a whistleblower or silence genuine concerns, and hence have an undemocratic effect. As ACT’s David Seymour put it: “Once you allow one group of members of Parliament to strip the rights of another member of Parliament then you remove the conscience of MPs speaking on behalf of New Zealanders”.

On the other hand, a party leader such as Winston Peters can argue that the election has delivered their party a result, with a proportion of seats, which is unduly compromised if a member defects to become an independent or to join another party.

By the way, despite scandals this year involving three of their members, or former members, the Greens are holding up well in opinion polls, above their solid 11.6% in last year’s election.

Screenshot from Newshub’s 2023 leaders’ debate.