Because nothing concentrates the mind quite like the sight of your career evaporating.
The week began badly for Christopher Luxon, with a nightmarish effort to articulate New Zealand’s position on the Iran bombardment. And it ends burrowed somewhere deep beneath the Earth’s crust. I don’t know how to be any clearer, guys.
A new poll by Curia – National’s own trusted pollster – for the Taxpayers’ Union puts National down to 28.4%, its worst result since Judith Collins was leader.
It makes grim reading for everyone in the National Party orbit. In the day before its release, waves of fresh speculation about Luxon’s leadership were crashing. “It is not good, is it?” said one commentator, who happens also to be the leader of the coalition partner New Zealand First.
It conjures scenarios of the Luxon government going down as National’s first-ever one-term government. Which is bad enough. But there is one small group of people for whom the poll has an extra meaning. On these numbers, National’s caucus would fall by a quarter, from 49 to 36. Nothing concentrates the mind and flushes the sinuses quite like the sight of your career evaporating before your eyes.
If it were simply backbench MPs affected, that would be one thing (and it’s worth noting that Labour’s 2023 cataclysm saw 31 seats lost, albeit from an anomalously high baseline). But a number of senior, high-profile government members are also blinking into the void.
In the 2023 election, the National party vote was 38.1%. Today’s poll – a snapshot in time, let’s remember – puts them on 28.4%, and would return 36 blue MPs. But who would miss out?
The pollsters are interested, of course, in the party vote. But our system is mixed – the clue is in the name – between party list members and electorate members. Can we extrapolate the party number in a poll to the impact on constituency contests? Sure we can, if we’re happy to do it in a generalistic and crude way.
Today’s poll result, if it were to play out on election day, would represent a 8.6% swing from National to Labour on the party vote. We can apply that two-party swing across electorate battles. It’s very much an inexact exercise – each constituency has its own issues, its own relationship with candidate personalities, and its further complicated by the fact there are a whole load of boundary changes. But let’s plough on all the same; it sends a resounding message.
The electorate bit
It would mean the following MPs losing their constituencies:
Vanessa Weenink has the slimmest majority of any National electorate MP, having won Banks Peninsula by just 396.
Carlos Cheung’s defeat of Michael Wood in Mt Roskill was an upset for the ages. But the backbench newcomer, with a majority of around 1,500, is almost certainly gone if this poll were mapped on to an election, despite boundary changes helping him a little.
Maureen Pugh would be out, if she weren’t already, with a majority of just over 1,000 in West Coast-Tasman. But after three full terms in parliament she’s clearly decided lightning doesn’t strike four times and will resign at this election. Nominations are now open to succeed her as candidate.
Paulo Garcia would not make it back but it’s all academic given (a) he’s retiring from politics and (b) his electorate, New Lynn, is being retired, too, as part of a rejig of a bunch of west Auckland boundaries.
Chris Bishop’s majority is just 1,332 votes. Is it possible that his high profile, work ethic and government workload could see him saved by Hutt South voters splitting their votes? Yes, but it would need plenty of them – and a tweak in the boundary isn’t helpful. Could he get back in via the list? Read on!
Anything over a 5.2% two-party swing would mean curtains for Dana Kirkpatrick in East Cape (it’s being renamed from the previous East Coast). It would be farewell also to Mike Butterick in Wairarapa.
On an 8.6% swing Carl Bates would hang on, just, in Whanganui (current majority 5,512), but Ryan Hamilton would lose by a whisker in his seat (majority 5,060), sending Hamilton south in Hamilton East. Also losing by just a few hundred votes would be Greg Fleming in Maungakiekie.
Other than Bishop, the highest-profile electorate MP at risk if the swing went a big bigger is Tama Potaka, though it would need to surpass 11% to remove him from Hamilton West.
In summary, that’s nine constituency seats lost, according to this back of the envelope. Thirty-five would be won again. And here’s where it gets really sticky.
To the list
Remember, this poll would deliver, under the MMP system, National a caucus of 36 MPs. All but one of those seats is filled by members elected in their constituencies. There would be a total of one MP clocking in via the list.
Assuming the National Party was consistent with the 2023 edition (and cabinet rankings), Christopher Luxon is first, but he would expect to return via Botany. Second on the list, and the only MP entering parliament that way on these numbers, is Nicola Willis, the finance minister and party deputy leader. She has already announced that she will be list-only. Missing out: Chris Bishop, who is third on the list – and who was at the centre of chatter at the end of last year about a potential challenge to Luxon’s leadership. (Unless he can pull off a big swim against a tide in Hutt South.)
There are other big-beast list MPs who would be heading into their political sunsets. Paul Goldsmith, one of the busiest and most senior ministers in this government. Gerry Brownlee, the speaker of the house. Melissa Lee would also be packing her bags, even if she managed as high a list spot as last time.
If one of Ryan Hamilton or Greg Fleming, say, were to run a stellar campaign and win re-election in their electorates, there would be no party list MPs at all. For all these reasons, the other big beast whose job security is being tested is Christopher Luxon.
