I was interviewed recently by John Tamihere about political opinion polls. As well as winning the seat of Waiariki, te Pāti Māori got 1.2% in the last election, but they’re polling higher than that lately. In 2020, the pre-election opinion polls under-estimated their election result. Unless the pollsters have gotten much better at including Māori sub-samples, that could still be the case. But we’ll have to wait for the next election results to see. This conversation led me to look at Māori voter turnout and vote-splitting in the Māori electorates.
In September 2022 the Electoral Commission reported that 88.73% of the total estimated eligible population was enrolled. There were 265,630 on the Māori roll, and 253,924 Māori voters were on the general roll. That means 51.1% of registered people of Māori descent chose to enrol on the Māori roll.
Turnout in the 2020 election was high overall. Across all electorates, 18.5% of those registered didn’t vote; but in the Māori electorates, about 31% didn’t vote.
Age is the strongest predictor of voter turnout among Māori and non-Māori. The older we get the more likely we are to vote. Māori have lower turnout rates across all age-groups, though, and it’s reasonable to say that a general sense of disenfranchisement and distrust in government would be stronger among Māori, and hence they’d be less interested in voting.
We shouldn’t assume that non-voters are politically inactive or ‘apathetic’, however. In surveys, people offer many different reasons for not voting. Many non-voters think carefully about it, but make a considered choice not to. Māori non-voters may find more meaningful forms of political engagement in their communities and in social movements, rather than elections.
It would be in the interests of te Pāti Māori if Māori voters on the general roll would exercise their option of moving over to the Māori roll. Following a law change, those registered as Māori will be able to switch between rolls at any time (other than three months before an election) rather than have to wait to be asked after each Census. That could eventually boost the number of Māori seats, if it leads to a significant boost in the Māori rolls overall. (Of course, the opposite could happen too.)
Between elections, Māori will be able to switch between rolls for reasons of identity and belonging, or strategically, if they want. If the coming electoral contest looks more important or more closely fought in the General or the Māori electorate that they live in, they may choose one or the other accordingly. Or they may choose one electorate because of a candidate whom they especially like, or any other reason. I should add that everyone’s vote still has the same ‘weight’ overall. It’s just that not every voter can switch electorates without changing address.
In 2020, all but one of the Māori seats was won by the Labour candidate. In the party vote, though, those electorates were even more strongly pro-Labour. The Labour Party generally got many more ticks than the Labour candidate, and Labour won the party vote in Māori electorates on percentages from 58 to 66%, way ahead of Labour’s overall 50%. A lot of voters who ticked the Māori Party candidate were splitting their votes, giving their party vote to Labour.
This year, the Māori Party could convince voters that they’ll be back in parliament, with at least one electorate, and hence campaign for more voters to give them their party vote as well, rather than tick Labour or some other party. As the Māori party is doing better in opinion polls this time around, we could anticipate that they’ll win more seats than the two they have now. But it’s still early days!