Editorial: Red, Green or Orange?
OPINION: As election day looms, rural NZ seems to have pressed the pause button – held somewhat in limbo on an orange light.
Urbanisation has stolen parliamentary seats. In 1923 farmers held 30% of the seats in the house. That political influence from the rural heartland has weakened; still strong, but not what it was decades ago.
However, 2026 promises a potential revival of rural leadership. At least, in part.
Rural voters who split their vote could dictate the shape of the next government. And the next one again too, such is the potential size of the majority created by vote splitting and overhang.
This election offers rural voters the opportunity to vote for a “coalition” rather than a “party”.
It means using your electorate vote for the local National Party MP and voting either ACT or NZ First with your party list vote. Difficult for some dyed-in-the-wool voters, maybe, but the stakes for rural New Zealand have never been higher. Forward with sensible reform, reducing debt, eliminating unnecessary regulation, keeping interest rates down or a repeat of the irresponsible spending, excessive debt and stifling rules of the Ardern/Robertson era.
It is about wielding double the influence. Splitting one’s vote hugely increases the chances of getting the coalition of your choice. Conversely, using both your votes for the same party restricts potential leverage. It can almost certainly lead to one vote – the Party or List vote – being “wasted” or “lost” or “having zero effect”.
Te Pati Māori have worked out that systematic vote splitting increases leverage. It is a quirk of MMP. It always has been there. The Electoral Commission stated that 35% of all voters split their vote in the 2020 election. There were no cries of anguish, no claims of manipulation, no calls of a lack of ethics.
This election more than all previous ones presents a stark choice between left and right. Not only because the parties have lined up logically and have already ruled out who they will not join up with but because of something that happened in 2023 and is showing more clearly in the run up to this election.
The two mainstream parties hold most of the 72 available electorate seats. Voters prefer stability and will support an electorate MP who does the hard yards locally. However, National and Labour have seen their popular support slump markedly. Both are down in the mid and high 20s, which means that if current popular support translates into list seats won, there will be an overhang caused by National having more electorate seats than it is entitled to from its party list vote. Remember, it is the list vote that determines the share of seats.
It means hundreds of thousands of National’s party list votes delivering no extra MPs.
The astonishing thing is that National’s hierarchy do not seem to either understand MMP or are just blocking their ears. With a potential 28 or 29% party list vote and the likelihood of holding 38-40 electorates, they are already in overhang and any party list votes they receive will be of zero benefit. All those votes will be wasted.
The same votes split and supporting National’s coalition partners creates real value for the voter and greatly increases the likelihood of a centre right government.
The trend of National’s popular support falling is very apparent and does not look like changing.
Remember with MMP you get two votes.
- Vote 1: Choose your local Electorate MP.
- Vote 2: Choose the party you want governing New Zealand.
- The party vote is the most important because it determines how many seats each party gets in Parliament.
- Overhang can occur if a party wins more Electorate seats than its party vote entitlement, it keeps those extra seats, so Parliament gets temporarily larger.
So, when the possibility of “overhang” or “split voting” comes up and can be shown to improve the chances of getting the coalition of your choice, it will be rural seats that bring home the bacon.
Don’t expect National or Labour to trumpet vote splitting. That defies logic. However, they could be a little less strident on the matter. For their own good.
Conclusion – return your National Party Electorate MP and use your Party List vote for the coalition of parties of your choice doubling your impact. Split your vote.
- Owen Jennings is a former national president of Federated Farmers and former ACT MP.
