The battle on the political right over strategic voting is heating up. Harry Mowbray has turned the right’s overhang argument into a public campaign. His new Split Your Vote website tells National supporters to give their party votes to Act or NZ First while continuing to elect National’s local candidates. Mowbray, father of the billionaire Zuru siblings, has backed it up with a series of short whiteboard videos on YouTube, and a busy presence on his own social media, where the campaign posts sit alongside others such as “Trump is the best president in my lifetime”.
Mowbray argues that if enough rightwing voters follow his instructions, the quirks of MMP could produce an “overhang” of up to 40 additional MPs for the coalition parties. The proportionality of Parliament would be severely skewed, allowing the right to win this election, and future ones, even if more New Zealanders voted for the opposition parties. His website says so plainly: “If we can learn to strategically split our votes like this in future elections a centre-right coalition will retain the Treasury Benches for the foreseeable future.”
National’s leadership wants supporters to reject the advice. Some rightwing advocates, however, regard weakening National and removing its senior MPs as part of the attraction.
Labour leader Chris Hipkins has condemned the campaign today as a “rort” by “entrenched interests”. He told the Post’s Henry Cooke: “Billionaires shouldn’t be spending their money to try and rort the electoral system.”
I have previously examined how both sides could game MMP and the campaign to engineer a National overhang. The launch now makes it possible to examine who is organising it and what they want voters to do.
Who’s behind the campaign
Mowbray appeared on The Platform with Sean Plunket this morning and explained that he had initially planned to organise the campaign with others. Plunket referred to a meeting at Mowbray’s Coatesville home three weeks ago and a fundraising target of $400,000–$500,000.
Mowbray confirmed that the group had employed and paid rightwing writer Ani O’Brien to help organise the original project. O’Brien has previously worked for Judith Collins and Jordan Williams’ Campaign Company, and serves on the Free Speech Union’s Council. Mowbray said lawyer Stephen Franks, the Council’s chair, had also advised them.
Mowbray denied that the Taxpayers’ Union was involved. He acknowledged talking with Jordan Williams, having him to lunch and attending the political debate with him the previous evening.
Then the organisers encountered the Electoral Act. According to Mowbray, O’Brien and Franks explained that the proposed campaign would have to comply with electoral rules. He says the collective project was abandoned, O’Brien’s paid organising role ended, and he started again on his own, saying he would spend no more than $17,000.
Plunket was sceptical that this was really a one-man operation, pointing out that the campaign’s Facebook page described it as a political organisation, and that the website invited people to subscribe to “our” newsletter. Mowbray said he would check the wording, and acknowledged that he had “mates that are helping me do bits and pieces”. The website now invites readers to subscribe to “my newsletter”.
Calling it an individual campaign does not, by itself, remove the advertising rules. Anyone promoting an election advertisement for a party or candidate is required to have that party’s or candidate’s written authorisation. Staying under the spending threshold does not remove that requirement.
Mowbray told Plunket he has no third-party promoter approval from National, Act or New Zealand First, and Seymour confirmed that Act hadn’t been approached. Paid promotion of a website telling people to party vote Act or New Zealand First would appear to need exactly that permission. Seymour’s view was blunt: “if they want to become a promoter in the election, I think they got to register and get the permission of the person. If they’re breaking the rules, then I’m sure someone will dob them in and they’ll be in big trouble.”
However, individuals publishing personal political views online without making or receiving payment are exempt. Whether Mowbray’s campaign qualifies depends on how it is run and what paid work went into it. Paying O’Brien does not, on its own, establish a breach.
What the campaign promises
Mowbray’s argument is that on current polling National will win about 40 electorates but won’t get enough party votes to bring in any list MPs, so every National party vote is effectively lost. On Facebook he put the upside in sweeping terms: “If everyone was to split the approx 870,000 votes you would get 36 extra seats plus 4 national overhang seats, if 240,000 people split you would get 10 extra seats plus the 4 Nats seat overhang. Zero risk only upside”. Elaborating on The Platform, he again described a 40-seat overhang under which “the centre right would govern New Zealand for the foreseeable future”, and explained why he thinks this is necessary: “The present situation is MMP will continue to drive this country to the left.”
The 40-seat overhang only arrives if virtually every National party voter abandons the party, leaving National with almost no party vote at all. The claim that a National party vote achieves nothing is also overstated. Seats are shared out across all parties according to their share of the party vote, so every National party vote still reduces the entitlement of the other parties, including those on the left, so the “wasted vote” line doesn’t stand up.
The campaign’s stated goal is to keep the centre-right in power for the foreseeable future, using a feature of MMP that was intended to protect local representation. As Cooke points out, the mechanism would let the coalition parties “enjoy a majority in the House without necessarily winning more votes than the Opposition”.
Responding to the “rort” accusation, Mowbray told Cooke: “In terms of rorting it - the rules are there. We are only just using the rules that are there.” But it is clear that his campaign asks voters to make Parliament less proportional on purpose.
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“Act and NZ First keep their options open”
“National has good reasons to object”
“Some advocates want to punish National”
“Making Parliament less proportional”