KEY POINTS:
Despite the spin from party spokespersons, it is a great truism that you can normally predict an election a year out. Consistent polls over the past year have shown that National holds a healthy lead over Labour. You can be pretty sure that National, unless they muck up, can sustain its lead.
Under the old First Past the Post (FPP) system, you wouldn't need to know much about politics to know that National would head the government in 2008. But, under MMP, the party with the most votes doesn't necessarily get to govern. Right from the introduction of MMP, the two major parties tend to get 80 per cent of the vote and the third parties fight for the remaining 20 per cent. Even when polls have National surpassing the 50 per cent mark, the combined vote of the two big parties doesn't change much.
National has had a great year under John Key's leadership. His positioning of National as a centrist party has consolidated his support. Unlike Don Brash, Key understands that the right wing will vote for him anyway. What is needed for him to win is to pull enough of the centre ground from Labour and keep it. Despite the polls, no strategist believes that National can win a majority of votes in its own right at the next election. Third parties always rise at the expense of the big ones during the campaign proper. The biggest challenge for 2008 is not beating Labour, but having enough potential coalition partners to get a majority of seats after the general election. Both main parties will have to rely on at least one coalition partner and possibly up to three to govern.
While Labour constantly trails National in support, it has a wider choice of coalition partners. In spite of recent polls, the Greens should easily pass the five per cent threshold and are part of Labour's core vote. Further, nobody can write off Winston Peters and political pundits often overlook the fact that he constantly rates well as preferred Prime Minister, despite his shenanigans. Logically, he will run in Tauranga, and, given the weak performance of the current National MP, he can win his old seat back. If Peters and NZ First are returned to Parliament, then it is likely that he would sit more comfortably with Labour. If that happened, even on current polls National and Labour would be neck and neck.
This wouldn't change, even if we assumed the likelihood that Jim Anderton, Rodney Hide and Peter Dunne won their seats. Anderton is unlikely to bring any fellow party members in with him, and for all statistical purposes is a Labour MP. The United Future and Act parties are likely to go with National. Dunne's lucky break in 2002, when he had several MPs elected, isn't going to happen again. The difference then was that National's vote crashed and Dunne became the recipient of many of these National voters.
Act is in a similar position: they do best when National is on the ropes. Although Dunne will coast home in his electorate, Hide will need to focus his entire party apparatus on his own seat to keep it. It's unlikely that either of these two men is going to bring in many, if any, other MPs on their party list. Key has ensured that the soft National vote has well and truly returned home and will stay with him for this election.
As I have consistently said all year, the key party in all of this is the Maori Party. Essentially, they are an electorate party and their nationwide party list polling is irrelevant. They currently hold four seats and, quite likely, will win five if not all seven Maori seats at the next election. All of their seats come from the Labour Party, but, under MMP, it makes no difference to Labour's nationwide list vote that determines the number of MPs they get overall. This means, oddly enough, that the more electoral seats that the Maori Party wins off Labour, the better chance Labour has of governing. This is, of course, assuming the Maori Party agrees to support Labour for a further term in office. The strategists in both Labour and National understand this, and that is why you see a very careful tone towards the Maori Party.
We can safely predict that neither Gordon Copeland nor Taito Phillip Field will be returned after the next election. Copeland does not have his own seat and Field has no organisation and is so tainted that it would be a miracle for him to win his seat back.
So while the polls have put National at a comfortable lead, both leaders know that if they are to lead the next government, they will still need coalition partners to get them over the line. Even though Clark is behind, she knows that with her current allies, she still has enough to hang on as boss.
Despite public posturing, both of our major parties are led by centrists, who are genuinely popular and competent. Look forward, therefore, to a New Year where policy differences are minimised and where there is endless suck-up by Clark and Key to the leaders of the minor parties. The most emotional and heated argument between our political parties in 2008 will be about who will give us the biggest tax cut to pay off our Christmas credit card spending.
Happy New Year.
