The moral mandate has instead become more of a man date between Winston Peters and Bill English.
National believes it should be the first cab off the New Zealand First rank, even though it's lost two seats, one to Labour and the other to The Greens, in the special vote count. They still believe because they've got the most votes they should be forming the Government with Peters on Thursday.
Beating Labour at four successive elections, the first time it's been done since 1969, has been declared as an historic achievement by Bill English who in his statement reacting to the seat loss never even acknowledged their diminished numbers.
Voters clearly want National to form the next Government, English crowed.
Peters isn't so sure. The moral mandate, he rightly says, doesn't exist under MMP. The mandate is 50 percent of the vote, plus one and the truth of the matter is that National now has no mates and has to convince Peters to become one even though just over a fortnight ago it was trying to destroy him.