Keith Melville

In Mawera Karetai’s opinion piece on the preliminary election outcome in Wednesday’s Beacon, she claims Te Pāti Māori’s vote-splitting strategy saved the party from elimination.

That is a glaring error. Te Pāti Māori would have been eliminated only if it had not won an electorate while failing to reach the 5 percent threshold for total votes cast.

In fact, it won five electorates and in doing so under the MMP rules, it was not required to meet the 5 percent threshold.

Te Pāti Māori’s tiny percentage of the overall party vote (0.57 percent) entitles it to one MP proportionately, with the other four representing the party on the overhang as extra MPs – a hugely successful strategy.

Similarly, National won more electorate seats than it was entitled to proportionately for a 120-member Parliament.

Seven of those 42 National MPs therefore go on the overhang.

The big loser from vote-splitting seems to be the Labour Party.

Labour won 36 seats. Of those, 21 were electorate seats and 15 list seats.

Labour won 29.3 percent of all votes cast, 3650 votes ahead of National with 29.21 percent of total votes.

The other big winner from vote-splitting was the Green Party, thanks to Te Pāti Māori advising its supporters to give their party votes either to the Greens or Labour.

National also experienced election pain, but the pain was self-inflicted when vote-splitting supporters voted for National electorate candidates while giving their party votes either to ACT or New Zealand First to boost the influence of the centre-right in the next Parliament.

None of National’s list MPs including Finance Minister Nicola Willis, Parliament Speaker, Gerry Brownlee, and senior Cabinet ministers Chris Bishop and Paul Goldsmith, survived vote-splitting, not at this stage, having decided not to stand as electorate candidates.

If the preliminary election results are confirmed, Parliament will have 131 MPs including 11 on the overhang.