National Party election strategists have made a fateful call against an accommodation with the Conservative Party of Colin Craig. On current polling, the Conservatives have about 2 per cent of the vote nationwide, enough to bring possibly three members into Parliament if one of them was to win an electorate. Now National's decision not to hand them an electorate means they could win up to 4.9 per cent and all of those votes would not count towards returning National to office.
John Key and his team would have weighed up the fact that even one seat won by a potential ally can make all the difference to an MMP election result. If Act had not won Epsom at the last election, the government would have been chosen by New Zealand First, the Maori Party and Peter Dunne, who could all have gone with Labour. The Conservatives, like Act, have nowhere else to go.
Spurned by National yesterday, Mr Craig raised the possibility of a post-election deal with Labour but it is not credible. His social conservatism is the polar opposite of Labour's beliefs on just about every issue. Clearly it is too much for National too, or at least for the middle ground of public opinion where Mr Key wants National to be.
National must have calculated, probably rightly, that to make room for Mr Craig in East Coast Bays would have cost National more votes than his support might be worth. The Government will have done intensive polling on the public view of a deal with Mr Craig, who has been advertising heavily for several weeks.
His pitch was one of independent populism rather than a declared preference for a National-led government, which may have been a strategic mistake. If he expected Government supporters in East Coast Bays to entrust him with their electorate vote he needed to make his intentions explicit. Instead, he has made binding referendums his defining issue and his fervour for holding the country to some of those referendum results makes him seem naive and reckless.
