Analysis: Could extra seats in Parliament decide the election?

Spoiler alert: This election is going to be really close, writes 1News Politics Producer Tom Day.

Tonight, the latest 1News Verian poll will reveal where the parties are sitting just 17 days out from election day and with less than a week until voting begins.

So far, National and Labour have failed to move the dial this election. Both have been sitting around the 28% mark in the poll since the campaign began.

It'll therefore be up to the minor parties to dictate who will form the next government, with Opportunity expected to hold the Kingmaker role.

But there's two factors this election that polling can't capture.

The first is the government’s enrolment voting changes, which mean that those not enrolled by Sunday at midnight won't be able to vote. This is likely to have some form of impact on the left's numbers, as past elections have shown special votes lead to, on average, an extra couple of seats going their way.

The second factor is the potential “overhang strategy” coming from the right – and also Te Pāti Māori on the left.

An overhang, for those wondering, is when extra seats are created in Parliament because a party wins more MPs from electorates than it would gain from its party vote.

On last week's 1News Verian poll results, National currently stands to get 34 seats – a reduction of 15 on its current 49 MPs.

This is where the tension between electorate seats (from your electorate tick) and list seats (from your party tick) adds complexity.

National currently has 43 electorate seats (44 if you include Papakura, which was left vacant by Judith Collins and which National is almost certain to regain). It would therefore need to lose 11 of those electorates in order to bring in just one list MP via the party vote. (44 MPs minus 11 electorates being 33 seats, and its party vote currently indicating 34 seats – still with me?)

That one list MP would be Nicola Willis, the party's deputy leader.

The chances of this occurring appear to be unlikely for a number of reasons.

These are National's most vulnerable electorates, all of which would need to go to Labour for Willis to survive: Banks Peninsula, Waitākere (formerly New Lynn), West Coast Tasman, Hutt South (which would potentially knock Chris Bishop out of Parliament), Mount Roskill, Wairarapa, East Cape (formerly East Coast), Maungakiekie, Hamilton East, Whanganui and Northland.

That's a long list.

And to provide further context on those latter ones, Northland was held by Grant McCallum with a 6087 majority at the last election; and Hamilton East and Whanganui were both won by Labour in 2020, but that was in the wave of Dame Jacinda Ardern at the peak of her popularity, where the party got over 50% of the vote, not the 28% it is polling now.

And that's before you even get to National’s outside chances of picking up seats in Mount Albert or Tāmaki.

All of this will give optimism to National that while it may have a difficult election night as a party, in the electorates it could hold on to support.

Even if the party were to lose seven of those 11 seats, that would lead still lead to a three-seat overhang, which would be a challenge for the left to overcome.

It's no wonder that influencers on the right, such as Zuru co-founder Harry Mowbray, have promoted the strategy of party voting for ACT or New Zealand First and electorate voting for a National candidate. In other words, asking those on either side of that equation to swallow something of their pride in favour of strategy.

The strategy is effectively gaming the MMP electoral system, raising the question of whether it should fairly represent how the votes are cast.

It's the reason why you've seen Sir John Key and others come out so against it. Because even if the coalition is re-elected, it faces the prospect of doing so without much of its talent.

Willis, Bishop, Paul Goldsmith and Gerry Brownlee could all be gone.

Luxon would not only have a difficult challenge of dealing with strengthened ACT and NZ First in coalition talks but would also be battling the prospect of finding between 10 and 14 capable MPs who could hold top level Cabinet positions.

Bear in mind Goldsmith currently holds 11 portfolios, Bishop has six and, potentially even more crucially, Luxon could be without a Minister of Finance in Willis.

Now let’s look to the other side.

Te Pāti Māori are unapologetically campaigning for the candidate vote while actively encouraging their voters to party vote for either Labour or the Greens.

Unlike National, their potential to create a large overhang is capped, due to them only running in the seven Māori seats. However, that could be all it needs to create a left-wing government.

Te Pāti Māori's strategy, just like that of their opponents on the right, is asking people to manipulate the system for their side.

1News Verian polling has continued to maintain the assumption that Te Pāti Māori holds on to the four electorate seats that it has, while Mariameno Kapa-Kingi holds on to the seat of Te Tai Tokerau.

Questions have been asked about this assumption in various political circles, and the answer is very simple – it is too difficult to predict individual electoral contests on a nationwide poll, and even electorate-level polling has previously been somewhat unreliable.

However, Whaakata Māori and Curia have been polling the Māori electorates, and their results show Te Pāti Māori pretty comprehensively in the lead in the four electorates they hold, with Labour leading in Te Tai Tonga and Ikaroa-Rāwhiti.

Replicated on election night, this could see a four or five seat overhang based on their party vote percentage.

An overhang doesn't mean that other parties get extra seats to compensate for the overall size of the Parliament. Instead, the right bloc would have to find an extra five seats to counter it.

But Te Pāti Māori's strategy also has potential implications for the left.

Labour’s campaign chairman Kieran McAnulty has indicated over the past week that Labour would prefer to go into coalition with the Greens and Opportunity rather than Te Pāti Māori.

On last week’s poll, Labour, the Greens and Opportunity would have 62 seats combined. In the scenario above, that would leave them two seats short of an overall majority.

Tonight's poll will show the state of the race and whether there has been any movement from voters since last week. But whether or not the overhang has tipped the balance of power for either side will only become apparent on November 7.

See the latest 1News Verian poll on 1News at 6 and 1News.co.nz at 6pm tonight.