The hopeful politician is using bikini selfies and buff bros to encourage young Māori to enrol to vote. It’s turning heads and dividing opinion, but will it actually work?

Who is Tania Waikato?

If you put Tania Waikato  into the Google search bar, the first suggestion that comes up is “Tania Waikato bikini”. This is followed by “Tania Waikato husband” and “Tania Waikato partner”. For health and safety reasons, I didn’t check whether this happens for any other politicians, but I’m quite confident no one’s looking for pictures of Shane Jones in swimwear.

Waikato is the Green Party candidate for the Waiariki electorate. Before deciding to run, Waikato was a prominent social rights activist and lawyer. As an outspoken advocate for Māori rights and interests, she quickly amassed followers across social media platforms and began making regular appearances on news and current affairs shows, on the back of the Toitū Te Tiriti movement that railed against the controversial Principles of the Treaty of Waitangi Bill.

So, what’s this ‘political baddies’ campaign she’s running?

Waikato has a reputation for taking an unorthodox approach to her work. She’s previously been unapologetic in her campaign methods and partial to taking a selfie or two, particularly in active wear. Now she’s stepped it up a level. With voting enrolment numbers historically low amongst young people, Waikato figured the best way to direct their attention to enrolment links was by posting thirst traps.

“A wee intrusive thought popped into my head: How can we get people’s attention in the never-ending slop of the algorithm without any billionaire backers who pay to saturate your feeds with right-wing AI slop? And the answer that came was ‘use what the good Lord (and decades of training) gave you’,” Waikato said in an Instagram post.

She put the call out to fellow baddies to support the kaupapa and quickly received an influx of provocative posts.

It’s all about getting people to enrol, then?

That and encouraging them to decide which electoral roll they want to be on (general or Māori). Enrolment numbers for young people are historically low, and even worse among Māori. Past campaigns to encourage this group to enrol have failed to make any notable difference too.

So has posting thirst traps with links to the Electoral Commission worked?

Well, the monthly statistics for Māori enrolment are due at the end of the week, so, who knows, maybe we’ll see an impact then. Hard to imagine the Electoral Commission has tagged up their data into thirsty and non-thirsty categories, though. Still, Waikato has shared some impressive statistics on her social media. She claimed in a recent Instagram post that the political baddies campaign has amassed over 500,000 views in just eight days, with one post attracting 1800 link clicks.

“This part of the campaign has been more effective than the last nine months combined – and the only part subject to criticism,” she said.

Criticism, you say?

Māori women + bikinis = criticism? Get outta here. Some have labelled the campaign a hypersexualisation of wāhine Māori, claiming it reinforces the dusky maiden trope – a colonial-era stereotype of sun-kissed, exotic Polynesian women adorned with flowers, and dressed provocatively to entice the European male gaze.

Some Māori women have spoken out against the campaign on social media, claiming they have unfollowed Waikato because of it. In response to the criticism, Waikato has said: “Bikini baddies and buff bros are not for everyone”, but reinforced the campaign was targeted at the 19-24-year-old demographic, in which only 54% of eligible voters are currently enrolled to vote.

Hold on, did you say buff bros?

While a bikini-clad baddie might stop most people from scrolling, a good looking Māori man with a strong jawline and chiseled set of abs will probably catch the attention of the rest. After posting a few bikini baddies, Waikato decided to cater to multiple requests for some pics of Māori men who are easy on the eye. Let’s just say the shots she posted were enough to make even the most self-assured man question the effectiveness of his gym routine.

So what happens next?

There are 87 days left to enrol to vote and one week for eligible voters to switch between the Māori roll and general roll. That’s enough time for plenty more thirst traps.