Since my last engagement with the issue of the Māori seats, National has again attempted to depict the racial divide as something we all need to be concerned about. The good news for everyone is that it just didn't really fly this time. Even attempts to dogwhistle this one on a centre-right blog only garnered about seven comments.
The mention of the matter piqued my interest though, so I took the time to track down Prof. Jack Vowles of Auckland University. Jack has a long track record writing and studying electoral politics, and currently heads up the New Zealand Election Study, and is a great place to start if you're interested in the actual details of how all the MMP elections have shaped up.
I'll get to the commentary, but let's start with the guts of the questions Jack answered about the nature of the Māori seats, and that pesky overhang.
Dr. Che It's common in the blogsphere for people to accuse the Māori seats of being anti-democratic for a number of reasons, and for these same commentators to claim that vote-splitting aggravates this 'gerrymandering'. While the seats do have lower turn-outs than general electorates, and slightly lower populations (and consequently return members on lower numbers), I can't see how that constitutes a gerrymander?
Prof. Vowles It's not [a gerrymander]. We don't draw electoral boundaries based on the numbers who vote, but instead on the basis of 'electoral population' that includes people who may not vote (including children!). If we allocated Māori seats on the basis of voters only, but drew general electorate boundaries on the basis of electoral population, that would be racial discrimination.
Dr. Che More what I'm trying to drive at is the 'ethnic gerrymander' argument floated by opponents of the Māori seats. If the seats are an inappropriate aggregation of a 'natural political community' of some sort, then there is the chance that it is a gerrymander, despite being procedurally fair.
Prof. Vowles The concept of an 'ethnic gerrymander' doesn't stand up. The overhang is an artefact of MMP and keeping the Māori seats under that system - which the Royal Commission recommended abandoning. It's a problem for both MMP and Māori politics - the overhang does raise legitimacy issues that Māori should be careful about but no one planned it as such. [Consequently, t]he Māori Party needs to be careful that it is not seen as seeking to exploit the overhang excessively.
Dr. Che Obviously it was split voting that caused the current overhang, and in another blog I tried to argue that vote splitting is not characteristic of the Māori seats. Put very simply, enough citizens voted for Māori Party candidates to ensure that, in proportion to the nationwide vote, they were due four seats had they not split their votes.
Prof. Vowles Well, it's simply not the case. The Māori Party would have only got three seats on the basis of the party vote alone, which is calculated as close to proportionality as is possible in the circumstances. The extra seat is an overhang, and if this goes further - as it could - proportionality will suffer even more from high split voting in Māori seats.
Split voting, as you say, happens in general electorates too for similar reasons - but not so far to the extent of an overhang [this is because a party like ACT may win one seat, but have enough Party votes to ensure they have their share, two seats. Had ACT won three electorates on the same Party vote, the last seat would have been an overhang].
Dr. Che Your reply suggests that the Māori seats do incline voters towards voting for a particular party.
Is there any indication that Māori voting is effected by the (relative) ethnic homogeneity of the seats? Or do you think that recent split voting is a reaction to the somewhat 'anti-Māori' campaign conducted by National et al?
Prof. Vowles Voting among Māori in the Māori seats is different than that among Māori on the general roll. But this is a selection effect. By and large, Māori on the Māori roll identify more strongly as Māori and with a specifically Māori politics.
Dr. Che I see, so do we have any data or information about voting among Māori not on the Māori roll? Do they vote in much the same patterns as other voters?
Prof. Vowles We have data from the 1999 Māori Election Study - Māori on the general roll tend to vote more like non-Māori.
Dr. Che I realise that Māori have traditionally favoured Labour, but is there any evidence that this behaviour continues because of habit? Or are there indicators that Māori continue to vote for this party because of a lack of viable alternatives?
Prof. Vowles In the past, the main non-selection effect on Māori voting on the Māori roll has been low turnout - because the seats were safe Labour, under FPP there was less incentive to vote. Under MMP, that's changed, but the pattern of lower Māori turnout generated under FPP survives to some extent as a kind of historical 'footprint'. [FPP is the pre-MMP system]
Māori have traditionally voted Labour because Māori were working class and/or welfare beneficiaries and voted Labour for the same reasons as Pakeha in those positions. In addition, there was the Ratana effect and a lot of work put in by Labour politicians at the elite level from the 30s onward.
Māori are less likely to vote Labour now because they were really annoyed by the foreshore/seabed legislation. National['s post-Orewa policies] had an 'egging on' role in this to some extent, but National is peripheral in Māori politics.
Dr. Che Finally, what is your thought in response to the suggestion that the best solution to this issue may well be better campaigning in the Māori seats by National? At the last general election National received a paltry <1% of its party vote in the Māori seats, with numbers of ballots cast being much the same as 2002. Meanwhile, Labour received <8% of its party vote in these same electorates (with NZF receiving much the same proportion).
Perhaps the issue isn't the 'ethnic gerrymander' problem, but the lack of campaigning?
Prof. Vowles National could campaign as much as it liked in the Māori seats but I doubt it would have much success unless it developed policies and linkages with Māori that would give Māori more incentive to vote National. "One law for all" is hardly going to do that. National would have to change its policy stance, and I don't see that happening in a major way. As far as Māori are concerned, National is a minor party not much more attractive to them as Act is to New Zealanders in general!
What I gleaned from the question/answer emails is that the overhang isn't so much a direct product of the Māori seats, rather a natural feature of MMP exacerbated by tactical voting. Consequently what could be seen as alliance-building, encouraging constituents to split votes to aid potential coalition partners, ends up producing an overhang.
And interestingly the inability of one major party, National, to appeal to these constituents means that the voters are likely to always vote against them, increasing the likelihood of an overhang that favours their opponents.
So if we abolish the Māori seats voters formerly on the Māori role are likely to vote against National, because the party currently offers no appeal to this constituency. So we might not get an overhang, but National would find it harder to win a number of electorates.
At present these people are 'confined' to the Māori roll, but this seems to favour National. The impact of this 'confinement' on General Roll seats with high numbers of voters on the Māori roll should be obvious, as it was under the old FPP system. We might not have had to deal with John Banks, for starters.
What I would like to offer though is an interesting scenario. Let's pretend that National had campaigned in the Māori seats, with policies that appealed to this distinct constituency. Obviously we can't know the outcome of this, because it may not have resulted in so many votes for Māori Party, it may have resulted in dramatically fewer votes for Labour (because they didn't present the only viable coalition partner), National had a strategy of actively suppressing minor parties, there is always variation in voting patterns between seats... the permutations go on forever.
But if you bear with me, even with the traditional low turn-out the Māori seats offered over 79,000 votes for the two major parties in 2005. When the difference between Labour and National was as few as 45,000 votes, you've got to wonder what would have happened if National had campaigned with policies to win the votes on offer. As it was they won less than 6,000 votes in these seven seats. The assumption they could have won half of those 79,000 is probably too large, but even 20,000 would have made a difference to their overall vote.
In fact, using the calculator at the Electoral Commissions website and assuming all other variables to remain the same, a swing of 20,000 votes in the Māori seats would have given one further list seat to National. The less likely "half of the major party votes from the Māori electorates" would have would have given National two list seats, and taken two from Labour.
Perhaps wedge politics isn't quite the right strategy?