How New Zealand split its vote in the 2020 election

Most people in New Zealand are two-tick voters.

That is, they vote for the same party in their electorate and in their party vote. Fully 68.14 per cent of voters decided not to split their votes this year, a drop from 72.67 per cent last election.

But newly released figures from the Electoral Commission show that people who did split their vote were hugely important to two of the biggest and most consequential results from the 2020 election: The Ma¯ ori Party’s return to Parliament via a win in Waiariki and the Green Party’s win in Auckland Central, an insurance policy that means they are unlikely to leave Parliament any election soon.

How the split went across the country

Labour voters were far more likely to split their votes than National voters: 22 per cent voted for someone else in a seat, compared with 12.41 per cent of National’s party voters.

Partially this will reflect the fact that there were simply far more Labour voters than National voters this year – the party won more than half of the total vote, and a plurality of the party-vote in every electorate other than Epsom. The National voters who remained with the party are likely to be very partisan.

The largest chunk of those split voters from Labour backed a National candidate: 116,000 voters from Labour’s 1.38 million party vote supporters. Many of those Labour party-voters live in areas with fairly well-established local National MPs, which could mean they have a personal connection with a local MP or see a win by them as inevitable.

Auckland University political science lecturer Dr Lara Greaves said many people who voted twoticks – even knowing their candi

date had no chance – reflected ‘‘genuine partisan attachment’’.

‘‘These are people with strong party identifiers – they identify as a Green voter through and through, even if that does not strategically maximise the influence of their vote.’’

A sizeable chunk of Labour voters backed the Green Party in a seat – about 77,000 voters – despite the fact the Green Party really had a shot in only one seat.

National party-voters almost all backed National Party candidates: about 647,000 of the party’s 718,000 total party-voters, about 90 per cent. A handful of votes went to Labour seat candidates or ACT candidates – about 20,000 each.

Minor party voters are much more likely to split their votes, as minor parties do not stand much of a chance in most electorates.

A huge chunk of Green partyvote voters backed Labour candidates: 130,000 of the 221,000 party-voters, almost 60 per cent of all Green party-voters. Similarly, a lot of ACT party-voters backed National candidates: 143,000 of 213,000 or about two-thirds.

Greaves said it was much easier for split voters to not cross the partisan divide, splitting their votes within the Left wing or Right wing. ‘‘If you are on the Left and you are strategically voting for another candidate for the Left that is not as much of a jump.

‘‘It does not create that sense of unease and dissonance.’’

Greaves said there was also some generational difference, with people who grew up under the MMP system much more comfortable with splitting their vote.

It was Labour voters giving their vote to someone else on the Left which created two of the election’s biggest upset wins.

How Labour voters won two seats for other parties

In both Waiariki and Auckland Central, a huge number of Labour party-vote voters voted for a candidate outside of that party.

In Waiariki, more than a third of Labour party-voters backed the Ma¯ori Party’s Rawiri Waititi – about 5650 votes, enough to vault Waititi over the line to beat Labour’s Tamati Coffey, who lost by 415 votes. Greaves said the split showed the Ma¯ ori Party’s strategy – asking for seat votes but not party votes – was successful.

In Auckland Central, a third of Labour party-voters backed the Green Party’s Chloe Swarbrick – about 5750 voters – a huge amount when you consider Swarbrick won by only 1068 votes.