Utopia, you are standing in it!

A constant source of speculation prior to the 2014 general election in New Zealand was whether the Labour Party would win enough of the party vote to have any list MPs at all.

Will the Labour Party have any list MPs in the 2017 election if the Conservative party were to get into Parliament under the MMP system? The following tables are scenarios using the 2014 general election results as the base.

Table 1: status quo – 2014 New Zealand general election actual results

Table 2: Conservative Party wins electorate seat at expense of National Party

If the Conservative Party were to win an electorate seat at the expense of the National Party, three of their five seats will come off the column of the National Party, one from the Greens, and one from Labour.

The Conservative party would have held the balance of power in the New Zealand Parliament, mostly the expense of the National Party.

Table 3: Conservative Party wins electorate seat at expense of Labour Party

If the Conservative party were to win an electoral seat at the expense of the Labour Party, the National party does no better. It still loses three MPs. The Greens lose one MP; the Labour Party also loses a list MP.

Table 4: Conservative party reaches 5% threshold expense of the party vote of New Zealand First

The Conservative party getting to 5% does a little better for the National Party. The National Party loses two list MPs, with the Greens losing one list MP as does the Labour Party.

Bumping up the party vote of the Conservative party by 1.03% wins two list MPs at the expense of New Zealand First! Such are the comings and goings of MMP.

Table 5: the Conservative Party reaches 5% threshold at the expense of the National Party

If the Conservative party reaches the 5% threshold to qualify for list MPs at the next election at the expense of the party vote of the National Party, the National Party is now four MPs short of what it won in the 2014 general election in order to elect six Conservative MPs.

It seems the National Party was right in not easing the path of the Conservative Party into Parliament at the last election. Most of the Conservative Party MPs would come at the expense of the National Party and would have delivered a more complicated post-election coalition scenario.

The Conservative Party is next to no threat to the size of the Labour Party caucus, and the number of list MPs it might win at the next election.

Table 6: the Conservative party reaches 5% at the expense of the National Party and the National Party vote drops by a further 1% in favour of the Labour Party

Only when the National Party’s vote drops towards 45% does the Conservative Party become its knight in shining armour, delivering an absolute majority in Parliament.

One reason that the National Party did not endorse the Conservative Party is such an endorsement would have put off socially liberal National Party voters. Letting that Conservative Party get into Parliament under its own steam does not risk that stigma.

When the Conservative Party is elected into Parliament under its own steam because of disenchantment with the National Party, as happens with all third term governments, the Conservative Party will deliver a fourth term to the National Party, as shown in Table 6.

The National Party have nothing to gain and something to lose in terms of party votes by endorsing the Conservative Party, and a lot to gain by letting it win seats in Parliament on its own merits.

Table 7: National Party’s party vote drops to 44%

Table 7 puts forward one scenario where the National party’s party vote drops 44%. In this scenario, the National Party will need both the Conservative Party and another party, such as ACT to pass legislation.