Caucus

Overhangs, gangs, rogue-ish polls, & the most unpredictable electorate

2026-10-29

How can you make sense of competing polls and will overhang seats win the election? How did gangs become a liability for National as well as Labour? And we tour of the Māori electorates with Julian Wilcox.

In a campaign where electorate seats and overhangs may play an unusually significant part in who gets to form the next government, the seven Māori electorates have taken on special importance. They’ve got it all – strategic voting calculations, rebel MPs, a Labour MP standing as an independent, and what RNZ’s deputy political editor Craig McCulloch calls “the least predictable electorate in the whole country”.

Te Pati Māori is doing better than expected across the seats, Māpuna host and political commentator Julian Wilcox says on this week’s episode of RNZ’s politics podcast, Caucus. While the party started this term with six of the seven electorates, its high-profile internal ructions meant two of its MPs walked away and are standing as incumbents under different banners. It’s now actively campaigning for the electorate vote alone, telling its supporters to vote for the Greens or Labour.

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It’s arguably a way of making reality look like strategy, given how much support TPM lost through its civil wars. But it seems to be paying off, Wilcox says. It’s allowed TPM to push the line that most of the leading candidates from other parties will likely get in on the list. According to the Whakaata Māori polls over recent weeks, Te Pati Māori candidates are leading in four seats, Labour in two, and the Greens in one.

In Hauraki-Waikato, TPM’s Hana Maipi-Clarke looks to be well ahead with 45 percent of the candidate vote. When pushed in the Whakaata Māori electorate debate as to how close she came to leaving the party, she was evasive. “Her lack of an answer gives you an answer,” says Wilcox. “But she's with the party now. A lot of us thought that electorate would be quite tight. Kingi Kiriona is a fantastic, strong candidate. Really, really well known in the community. Got a good ground campaign. But it's not close”.

That’s not to say the in-fighting has been without consequence. The ex-Te Pati Māori MPs in Te Tai Tokerau and Te Tai Tonga – Mariameno Kapa-Kingi and Tākuta Ferris respectively, are both a distant last in in the polls. And in both seats the TPM candidates are also being well beaten. “So it's almost as if voters were punishing both of those candidates for the turmoil that we've seen this term,” says McCulloch…

Go to this episode on rnz.co.nz for more details

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2026-10-29

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Top political commentators unpick and make sense of New Zealand's election campaigns with frank and forthright discussion.