Henry Cooke’s frontpage article in the Post yesterday opened with a striking sentence: “There is an attempt – a very nascent one – from a very rich right-wing man to fundamentally skew the New Zealand election.” The man is Harry Mowbray, father of the siblings behind the Zuru toy company, and Cooke reports that he “has been calling around looking to get a campaign going that exploits the ‘overhang’ in MMP to get the current parties of the coalition an advantage.” Mowbray apparently believes “anywhere from 10 extra MPs to 30 is possible.”
A month ago I wrote about how both sides could game MMP – see: Democracy Briefing: How both sides could game MMP. At that stage Te Pāti Māori had built its campaign around the candidate vote, and people on the right were mostly just discussing whether National voters could do the same on a bigger scale. That talk has since turned into something closer to a campaign, and a steady stream of broadcasters and bloggers repeating one instruction: “electorate vote National, party vote Act or New Zealand First”.
None of the three coalition parties will put its name to the strategy, and National is openly hostile to it. The advocacy is coming from donors, commentators and some candidates, while the parties themselves resist the proposal. If it develops into paid campaigning, the organisers will face requirements that ordinary political commentary does not.
I’ve criticised Te Pāti Māori’s version too, but at least it is owned by a party that voters can punish on 7 November. In this case, however, a campaign organised outside the parties raises an additional question: who takes responsibility for its funding and methods?
More seats without more support
Here’s why this overhang strategy is very clever, but not very ethical.
Normally, the party vote determines each party’s total entitlement to MPs. Electorate winners fill part of that entitlement, and list MPs make up the balance. If a party wins more electorates than its party vote entitles it to, however, it keeps those electorate MPs and Parliament expands. That is an overhang.
The broader strategy promoted by individuals like Don Brash exploits that exception. National supporters would keep electing National’s local candidates while transferring party votes to Act or NZ First. If National retained enough electorates, reducing its party-vote entitlement would enlarge its overhang while the transferred votes helped elect more of its partners’ MPs.
Consider a hypothetical result in which the governing parties’ combined party votes would ordinarily produce 58 seats against the opposition’s 62. If transfers within the governing bloc generated a six-seat National overhang, the result could become 64 against 62. Parliament would grow to 126 MPs, with 64 needed for a majority. The coalition would have crossed that line without increasing its combined party vote.
Of course there is nothing inherently wrong with splitting your votes. Someone can prefer a National electorate candidate and Act’s policies. The objection is to deliberately coordinating votes to produce a Parliament less representative of the party vote, potentially allowing a bloc with less support to remain in government.
From talkback to a campaign
Anyone who listens to rightwing talkback will have heard the pitch by now. Don Brash brought the idea to wide attention in August, telling The Platform that “The right would be unstoppable.” Michael Laws, a New Zealand First candidate who also hosts a daily show on The Platform, says he has been “hammering” the case for the “overhang ruse or rort” since February. Peter Williams conceded on his Substack that the tactic was “not absolutely ethical or in the spirit of the electoral system but needs must.” Ashley Church has pushed it on his blog and on Leighton Smith’s podcast, and Act candidate Paul Henry has hinted at it on his roadshow.
Muriel Newman’s New Zealand Centre for Political Research has since published detailed advice on vote-splitting, identifying electorates where Act and NZ First supporters could help National. She argues that National party votes may produce no additional MPs, while acknowledging that a recovery in its support could change the calculation.
Cameron Slater has been pushing the same split at the Good Oil. A website called “Two Votes, Two MPs” already advocates an electorate vote for National, except in Epsom and Tāmaki, and a party vote for Act or NZ First. The site names Dieuwe de Boer in its authorisation statement and says it is unaffiliated with any party or third-party promoter.
And at the start of September Nick Mowbray, who has given $250,000 to National and $200,000 to Act this year, set out the strategy on X: “The objective is simple: maximise the chances of the current coalition continuing to govern.”
Much of the arithmetic comes from Oliver Hartwich of the New Zealand Initiative, whose modelling found that “If one National party vote in nine moved to a coalition partner, the Government would gain a parliamentary majority even if the opposition wins more votes in total.”
Writing about Te Pāti Māori’s tactic, Hartwich warned: “This tactical manoeuvre makes political sense, it is legal, and that is exactly the problem.” As Toby Manhire observed at the Spinoff, “All of this might be dismissed as fanciful were it not for the fact that it has been championed by a group of intelligent and influential figures on the right.” Newman and others have since treated Hartwich’s paper as a how-to guide.
The Mowbray plan
Cooke describes Harry Mowbray wanting Act and New Zealand First voters to pledge their electorate votes to National, while some National voters give their party votes to Act. Cooke is blunt about what that would mean: “Mathematically, this could give the right a large number of extra seats – without having to win over actual new voters.” It would also “make it entirely possible for a Government to be elected that had far fewer votes than the Opposition, but were simply better organised.”
This is reminiscent of the first past the post electoral era, such as in the 1978 and 1981 elections, in which the party with the most votes lost. Mowbray’s proposal could produce a comparable mismatch between votes and power.
Cooke found Mowbray “refreshingly open about his goal”, and reports that he “thinks MMP is a dog of a system for allowing such a move.” Hartwich, for his part, told the Taxpayers’ Union’s podcast that he would prefer first past the post, although he argues MMP should be repaired before voters are asked whether to keep it. I suspect some on the right wouldn’t mind much if MMP were discredited along the way.
What remains unclear is who would finance such a campaign and how much voters would learn about its spending.
The paywall now starts partway through all Democracy Project newsletters. Please take out a paid sub if you want to support this service and access the full content, including the following sections:
“The obstacle to an advertising campaign”
“The prospect of paid influencers”
“Doing what the parties can’t”
“Changing the rules”
The obstacle to an advertising campaign
Mowbray has run into two obstacles. The first, as Cooke tells it, is that “the parties he wants to involve in this are completely aghast at the idea.” National doesn’t want to become an electorate-only party, and Act and New Zealand First know that chasing two ticks keeps their volunteers working.
The second is electoral law. “Instructing someone on how to vote, especially in a paid pamphlet as Mowbray was mulling, would likely be seen as an election advertisement under the Electoral Act,” Cooke writes. An outside campaigner who wants to run advertising promoting a party or candidate needs that party’s or candidate’s written permission, and Cooke’s reporting suggests National would be unlikely to welcome such a request.
Advertising against a party is a different matter, and Cooke notes “There is space to encourage people to vote against another party, but there are still rules and limits around that spending.” A campaign confined to opposing National’s party vote would raise different authorisation questions. But material that also promotes Act, NZ First or electorate candidates would still need to satisfy the relevant rules.
Cooke also reports that Mowbray “was now looking to see if he could spend $17,000 promoting a website that pushed the plan – but this was not yet final.” The figure matches the unregistered third-party advertising limit. Staying within it would avoid compulsory registration, but election advertisements would still need to identify their promoter and obtain any required authorisations. Identifying the promoter, however, does not necessarily tell voters who supplied the money.
The prospect of paid influencers
Separately, I am told that paid promotion through social media influencers is being considered by some on the right, in lieu of an official campaign. But paying influencers would not automatically avoid the advertising rules. The Electoral Commission’s exemption for online political content covers “individuals publishing their personal political views online without making or receiving payment”.
Paying someone to promote particular parties would not qualify for the unpaid personal-views exemption. Whether the content constituted election advertising would depend on its substance and any other applicable exemption, including for editorial content. If it did, promoter identification and the relevant written authorisations would be required.
There is a problem of enforcement though. Undisclosed paid content could be difficult to identify and investigate before election day. Therefore the Electoral Commission would do everyone a favour by spelling out now how the rules apply.
Doing what the parties can’t
Michael Laws has been admirably frank about why the parties must be kept at arm’s length from such a campaign. He told his listeners that the parties “cannot admit this particular strategy”, going on to say: “But the rest of us aren’t bound.” His justification is retaliation against Te Pāti Māori: “We’re going to screw the scrum as well.”
According to a Herald report, Paul Henry told a Lower Hutt audience that people who had “worked it out” would talk to others, “and maybe that’s the best way this news should filter around”, then remarked that “there are members of the media here”.
Chris Bishop’s response to Brash was that “voters would punish that kind of game-playing”. But that deterrent works best when a party is doing the playing. Hartwich argues that “A National voter who understands this needs no instruction from anyone.” Those voters are now receiving a great deal of instruction, and some of it may soon be paid for.
Changing the rules
New Zealand’s rules on third-party campaigning were largely designed before paying social media influencers became a campaign tool. The question is whether existing disclosure and enforcement arrangements are adequate for paid political promotion through social media, particularly when audiences cannot see who is financing it. Once the votes are counted, the next government might want to look at the rules again, alongside the overhang itself, which has survived several reviews recommending change. As I argued last month, that review should be independent and cross-party, rather than run by whichever side happened to benefit in 2026.
Hartwich put the broader danger well: “An electoral system that punishes sincere voting and rewards clever voting will not stay legitimate for long.” I’d say the same about campaign rules that let a wealthy backer spend right up to the registration limit while the public learns almost nothing about the money.
As Manhire has pointed out, the Royal Commission that recommended MMP forty years ago trusted that “any attempt to deliberately manipulate the system would be both difficult to implement and likely to attract an electoral backlash”. Harry Mowbray will not be on the ballot. Any electoral backlash would fall on the parties his campaign sought to help.
In a further Democracy Briefing I’ll look at who on the right stands to gain from all this, and why National itself may be one of the campaign’s targets. Until then, Michael Swanson’s advice on his Substack is the best available. He says the overhang strategy is “a corruption of what the system was designed to do” and concludes: “The honest advice is the boring advice: vote for the person you want in your electorate, and give your party vote to the party you actually want in Parliament.”
Dr Bryce Edwards
Director of the Democracy Project
Further Reading:
Henry Cooke (Post): Why the Mowbray plot to skew the election probably won’t work (paywalled)
Toby Manhire (Spinoff): The calls on the right to ‘rort’ MMP by engineering a National Party overhang
Muriel Newman (NZCPR): Strategic voting to win
Oliver Hartwich (New Zealand Initiative): Tactical voting could sink MMP
Oliver Hartwich (NZCPR): Unravelling MMP
Taxpayer Talk: Jordan Williams and Oliver Hartwich on MMP gaming and overhang chaos
Ashley Church: Could an MMP loophole return a centre-right government?
Peter Williams: Should Nats follow the TPM Method?
Michael Laws (The Platform): MMP overhang is the only effective answer to Te Pāti Māori’s tactics
Cameron Slater (Good Oil): Still no list MPs. Still no answer.
Michael Swanson: Gaming the House: overhang seats and the 2026 election
Nik Dirga (RNZ): Explainer: What is an overhang and how could it change NZ’s election result?
Electoral Commission: About election advertising
Electoral Commission: For third party promoters
I moved from Tasmania over 30 years ago and still hear about 'the under arm incident' and even get goaded ocassionally for my Aussie connection and how you can't trust Aussies. Of course, we all know under arm bowling was allowed within the rules but was unethical as it was not in the spirit of the game of cricket. This gaming of the MMP electoral system is akin to under arm bowling in that it is not illegal but it is certainly not ethical or in the spirit of MMP as it was envisioned. If it was, it would be explicitly recognised in the related legislation. If NZ had a written constitution, like Australia, then I would be sure that such gaming would be challenged as being unconstitutional based on the values and principles set down in the constitution.
Tasmania has a proportional representation process: (https://www.tec.tas.gov.au/info/Publications/HareClark.html)
There are no members of parliament that have not been on an electoral ballot paper, there is no such thing as an overhang and parties cannot decide for themselves who sits in the parliament, they must stand for election. It is wholly undemocratic ti have unelected members of parliament as ministers in government and is a serious corruption of democracy too, I believe. It makes it possible (and it has happened) to buy a seat in the parliament and the cabinet for a person who has not stood for election. Even a member of the Chinese Communist Party has sat in the parliament this way, I understand.
I certainly won't be voting for any party promoting split voting as a strategy to increase its coalition no.s, as it is a vote for 'dirty politics' and we end up with even more unrepresentative, coalition governments than we have now under MMP. I would happily support changes to MMP that maintained proportional representation with a fixed no. of seats in the house. How about a house of review above the house of reps too, again like Tasmania, to 'keep the bastards honest'.
PS I am a citizen of NZ and have spent more than half my life here; it's a neat place but its political system could be better governed with a few more checks and balances, I think.
I don't agree that this kind of manipulation is contrary to the spirit or the intention of the Mixed Member Proportional system. The system was intended to allow maximum scope for the existing party machines (and the colonialist political establishment that they represent) to maintain their grip on power, while mollifying those among the voting class who felt that they were not represented, indeed were disenfranchised, by the First Past the Post system. There was an element of political cynicism in the MMP project from the start.
The lesson to be drawn from all the MMP shenanigans of the past three decades, of which this is but the last, is that we need fundamental and radical constitutional reform led by the people, not by colonialist politicians.