Every election, tens of thousands of people cast a vote that doesn’t make any difference to the outcome. Haimona Gray ponders the ‘wasted vote’.

“Voting matters” is a quote that could be attributed to virtually every political and media leader. It’s a truism spoken by people with either skin in the game or ones living among such comfortable rarified air that the outcome of any vote rarely matters to them. 

It’s also bullshit. 

The reality is thousands of votes every election don’t matter. There is such a thing as a wrong vote. If you choose to make the wrong vote, one whose intention will be stripped from it, your vote was a pointless futile gesture.

Under MMP and our five percent threshold, if the party you gave your party vote to received less than five percent of the party vote and did not win an electorate, your vote would be a “wasted vote” because the party you voted for failed to reach the reasonably low-tide marker of five percent. 

Your vote is then set aside and the Sainte-Laguë apportionment method is used to calculate final seats in the House. This process means spoiling your ballot with creative genital art would have been just as impactful, and more cathartic, than voting for TOP in 2020. 

So why do some people vote for so-called fringe parties, ones unlikely to ever reach the five percent? 

Sometimes the fringe, underdog candidate is a wily greyhound willing to do or say whatever it takes to be a contender. NZ First is currently polling roughly around the magic five percent party vote threshold, after polling closer to two percent between elections. 

Hitting the magic “relevance” number makes them a serious option for people tempted by their chameleon-like leader, who will evolve into whatever shape or values he needs to outwardly convey today in order to gain political power for himself. 

This was well put by Luke Malpass of The Post, who wrote of Winston Peters: “Just because he’s now courting the anti-vax vote and seeking to capitalise on the trans issue, rather than claiming that hundreds of thousands of third world immigrants are coming in, doesn’t make him any better or worse than previously.” 

No one should be surprised by the rejuvenation of NZ First, but there is still a chance a vote for Peters may be a wasted one. NZ First has failed to reach the five percent threshold twice – in 2008 and 2020 after being pivotal to the election of the current coalition government and supporting them on many issues this 2023 version of Winston now finds himself voraciously campaigning against. 

So people are willing to risk wasted votes on a party with a “puncher’s chance” and name leader (see also: 2002 United Future Party under Peter Dunne) but where does that leave parties with set principles who could only dream of emulating Winitana Pita’s Big Band era charisma? 

A wise friend explained to me that sometimes voting for an unlikely winner can feel better than the alternative: “Voting for the ‘viable’ option can feel dirty-in-a-bad-way.” 

It is indeed possible to be a perfectly rational and thoughtful person while also holding values and beliefs not articulated by any of the parties currently in parliament and not wanting to compromise. This is especially true for single issue voters. 

But most people don’t have the time or energy to become rational voters on all issues, even the ones who purport to care about them. It will win you no praise, particularly as a lot of irrational political positions have proven to be real vote-winners.  

For years, the Green Party campaigned against genetically modified organisms (GMOs). These same GMOs have since been proven to be not only safe but have also been successfully used in the battle against Ebola in Africa, and have saved millions of lives around the globe by making vital crops more resistant to diseases. 

Does this make any vote for the Green Party an irrational vote? No, but it shows that even people who think of themselves as rational voters may be voting for bad policy, even if their vote counts.

In his book The Myth Of The Rational Voter, Economics Professor Bryan Caplan points to the example that while many voters believe free trade is bad for economies, economic outcomes demonstrably prove the opposite is true. And the reason free trade agreements are still contentious is not because the evidence doesn’t support it, it’s because it is much easier for people to assume something that feels right is right rather than undertake the effort to challenge their own bias. 

To put it more simply, democracies choose bad policies because voters don’t know what they don’t know.  

That’s okay, voting is more about how it makes you feel than changing the world, as it’s highly unlikely your vote will be the one that tips an election in any direction.

Every election, people choose who to vote for on uninformed feelings like whether they would feel comfortable having a beer, or sausage roll, with a potential leader. 

Voting on anything more sound than that, like whether your vote might be a wasted gesture, is maybe overthinking it.