Why Te Pāti Māori's Vote-Splitting Plan Is Making Waves

Te Pāti Māori has been warned that its election plan could put the Māori seats at risk, RNZ reported on 18 August.

In New Zealand elections, everyone gets two votes. One is a party vote, which decides how many seats each party gets in Parliament. The other is an electorate vote, which picks the local MP for your area. Te Pāti Māori's idea is to win the local MP seats in the Māori electorates, but tell its supporters to give their party vote to Labour or the Greens.

Labour's Māori campaign chair Willie Jackson said the plan could make the Māori seats look unfair to the public and trigger a backlash that might lead to them being scrapped. He said Labour would not tell its own voters to support Te Pāti Māori candidates, though he thanked the party for sending party votes Labour's way.

Jackson pointed to a by-election in Tāmaki Makaurau, where Oriini Kaipara beat Peeni Henare on the local vote. Henare stayed in Parliament anyway because he was on Labour's list. Jackson said that result showed how splitting votes at the electorate level could make people lose confidence in the Māori seat system.

New Zealand First leader Winston Peters called the strategy a "disgrace" and said it twisted the democratic system. Peters pointed to the Electoral Commission's earlier view that the Māori seats would eventually be shown to be unnecessary.

The plan could create what is called an overhang. Think of Parliament as a 120-seat room. If a party wins more local seats than its party vote would normally give it, those extra seats get added on top, making the room bigger than 120. That is because a party that wins electorate seats can keep them even if it does not reach the 5% party vote threshold.

Te Pāti Māori co-leader Debbie Ngarewa-Packer said Jackson's comments were a "real shame" and accused him of bringing up past pains for his own campaigning. "We needed to be smarter if we're really intentional of getting this government out," she said. She described Labour and Te Pāti Māori as "different movements" and said the party was using the Māori roll and MMP rules that other parties had used.

Greens co-leader Marama Davidson said there had never been an agreement between the Greens and Te Pāti Māori. The Greens would back their own candidates in the Māori electorates, she said, adding that all parties should put their ideas before voters to decide.

The strategy builds on work Te Pāti Māori has been doing for some time. At its campaign launch in Gisborne on 16 August, Ngarewa-Packer pointed to the growing number of Māori on the Māori electoral roll as the force to roll the government. In June, she said the strategy was "to get as many Māori on the Māori roll." The party has also flagged running candidates in general seats, which is a shift from its usual focus on Māori electorates.

Following the 2023 election, the party won four Māori electorates. In late 2025, co-leaders Ngarewa-Packer and Rawiri Waititi said the next year would be "tough" but insisted "there is no left bloc without Te Pāti Māori."

The party has also had a strained relationship with parts of the broader Māori political movement. It cut ties with Toitū Te Tiriti in October 2025 before reassuring members it still supported the movement. Leaders also abruptly ended a media stand-up that month, with Ngarewa-Packer saying, "We're here to talk to you about everything, but... we're not getting that respect back."

The core tension is that the strategy sets two goals against each other. On one side, Te Pāti Māori wants to mobilise Māori-roll voters and coordinate with left-bloc parties. On the other, there is the question of whether the Māori seats themselves will look legitimate. Jackson's argument is that a deliberately created overhang invites a political reaction that could target the seats' existence. Ngarewa-Packer's counter is that the MMP rules are available to any party and that the Māori roll is a legitimate base of political power.

The practical upshot is that Te Pāti Māori is asking supporters to split their votes without any partner returning the favour. Labour will not direct its voters toward Te Pāti Māori candidates, the Greens are running their own candidates in the Māori electorates, and New Zealand First is calling the overhang anti-democratic.