I think we’re overcooking both the overhang and Labour’s supposed failure to anticipate it.
MMP has always assumed that a party’s share of electorate seats won’t necessarily correspond perfectly with its share of the party vote. The system can accommodate some discrepancy between the two, provided it doesn’t become so large that it undermines proportionality.
Clearly, this election has challenged that assumption.
But I think we’re being far too quick to attribute the outcome to deliberate electoral manipulation, or to conclude that Labour somehow failed by not anticipating and countering it.
We’ve seen significant minor-party surges before, notably in 2002 and 2014. But those elections generally involved the collapse or significant weakening of one major party while the other remained relatively strong. What we haven’t really had to contend with is both major parties simultaneously falling to around 30% of the party vote while continuing to win the overwhelming majority of general electorates.
That’s a fundamentally different electoral environment, and I’m not convinced anyone had a particularly good model for what it would mean in practice.
Nor am I convinced that the apparent electorate strategy was nearly as deliberate or coordinated as some are suggesting. An outcome being consistent with a strategy isn’t evidence that the strategy caused it. Incumbency, local candidate recognition, split-ticket voting and the growing appeal of minor parties are all perfectly plausible explanations.
And even if Labour had recognised the risk, what exactly was it supposed to do about it?
We have very little reliable electorate-level polling. Identifying which electorates might become competitive, recruiting candidates, building local organisations and redirecting campaign resources aren’t things you can meaningfully do in the final few weeks of an election. Those decisions needed to be made 12–18 months ago, when the eventual electoral landscape was far from obvious.
Absent clairvoyance, I think Labour pursued a perfectly reasonable strategy for what most of us would have understood to be a relatively normal election.
It ran a good campaign. Not a spectacular campaign, and certainly not one beyond criticism, but a competent one that recovered substantial ground and brought Labour roughly level with National in the party vote. Under more conventional electoral circumstances, that would have left Labour at least competitive in the parliamentary arithmetic.
And let’s not pretend the overhang is the only thing separating the two blocs. The underlying party vote, particularly when Opportunity is included, leaves competing government arrangements at least arithmetically plausible. The overhang substantially changes that calculation.
So yes, the overhang matters. But I’m not convinced it tells us much about the quality of Labour’s campaign.
What I think we should take away from this election is three things.
First, Labour needs to invest much more heavily in its local organisation, candidate recruitment and electorate campaigns. It needs to expand the electoral map for 2029, and that work needs to begin now, not six months before the next election.
Second, Labour needs a compelling vision for the country. That doesn’t necessarily mean replacing Hipkins, shifting dramatically left or right, or adopting some particular ideological programme. But it does mean articulating a sense of purpose and direction that people can recognise and get behind. Voters need to understand not simply what Labour opposes, but what it wants New Zealand to become.
Third, there is no magic policy, message or tactical manoeuvre that substitutes for those first two things. Political support is built over time.
And this is where I fundamentally disagree with the suggestion that the Greens should have stood aside in marginal electorates to help Labour.
The Greens’ job is not to elect Labour MPs. Their job is to elect Green MPs, represent Green voters and advance their own political programme. They’re an independent political party, not Labour’s electoral support organisation.
Of course parties can cooperate, and of course strategic voting is a legitimate consideration under our electoral system. But if the answer to every difficult electorate contest is to negotiate beforehand who should and shouldn’t stand, then what exactly are we asking voters to decide?
More importantly, if Labour can’t win an electorate because the Greens have put up a candidate, perhaps Labour needs to ask itself why it couldn’t persuade enough voters to support its own candidate.
Green votes do not belong to Labour. They aren’t votes that Labour has somehow been deprived of. They’re votes Labour hasn’t earned.
If Labour needs other parties to withdraw from contests to win marginal seats, that points to a more fundamental organisational or political challenge. And that is where its attention should be directed.
Finally, if this election does represent a new political reality in which both major parties command substantially smaller shares of the party vote while retaining most electorate seats, then we absolutely need to revisit MMP.
Not because the wrong people won, or because we need to stop one particular electoral strategy, but because the assumptions underpinning the system may no longer hold.
Any review should be about ensuring the electoral system can accommodate a more fragmented political landscape while preserving meaningful voter choice and proportional representation.
We should be careful not to redesign our electoral system around the frustrations of a single election. Equally, we shouldn’t pretend that an electoral system designed for one political environment will necessarily continue to function as intended in another.
Ultimately, I think we’re spending too much time looking for someone to blame for an unusual electoral outcome, and not enough time understanding what actually happened.
Labour has some important lessons to learn from this election. But I’m not convinced that “the Greens should have helped us more” is one of them.