October 13, 2023
The Battle for the Māori Seats
While the nation focuses on the Election 2023 struggle between National-Act and Labour-Greens, another battle is playing out in the Māori seats.
Candidate Vote
In 2020, the MāoriTV-Curia candidate polls in the Māori seats over eight weeks before the election gave Labour candidates an average 22% lead over Te Pāti Māori.
The margins are much closer in Election 2023. Labour is polling 9% less than in 2020 and Te Pāti Māori 11% higher. Labour’s lead has dropped from 22% to 2%. This is partly inflated by Te Pāti Māori co-leader, Rawiri Waititi’s 28% lead in Waiāriki. However, even setting aside Waiāriki, Labour’s average lead is only 7.3% across the other six electorates, two-thirds lower than in 2020.
Party Vote
Similar numbers are playing out in party vote polling. In 2020, Labour held an average 46% advantage over Te Pāti Māori. This election, Labour has dropped 22% and Te Pāti Māori risen 13% cutting the lead to 9%.
Te Pāti Māori and the Greens
There is also a partial trend toward the Green Party. The shift to Te Pāti Māori and the Greens is a consequence of Prime Minister Chris Hipkins’s veto of a wealth tax, opting to take GST off fruit and vegetables and Labour’s failure to read the public support for modest tax cuts via lifting tax thresholds funded at least in part by a wealth tax. Labour’s tax policy has fractured the left, leaving the policies of Te Pāti Māori and the Greens closer to National’s tax policy.
Labour has done excellent work on poverty providing income support, raising the minimum wage, and supplying ‘free nutritious lunches’. However, in the mind of voters if the government can afford these measures, then it can also introduce wealth tax funding low- and middle-income tax breaks. In that regard, Labour comes across as preferring welfare tinkering. Poorer people prefer more money in their back pocket over 50 cents off a cabbage.
The trend to Te Pāti Māori and the Greens has cause in Labour sometimes hesitating on Kaupapa Māori. The decision not to release He Puapua and its subsequent release by National exposed Labour’s Māori MPs to significant vitriol and racism. Te Pāti Māori and the Greens in this regard have been more forthright.
Māori Voice and Rangatahi Māori
Te Pāti Māori is winning support through a smart and effective strategy of being a voice for Māori rather than tying themselves to Labour or National. Te Pāti Māori Co-leader, Rawiri Waititi, has been brilliant in articulating this position. When asked by Jack Tame what Te Pāti Māori was doing in Parliament if it would not discuss coalitions, Waititi replied “We have been in opposition since 1840 after that first coalition fell apart”.
Te Pāti Māori is also winning young Māori voters. This is important. While 900,000 Pākehā people aged 50 and over make up the largest voting cohort in te ao Pākehā, Māori voters aged 18 to 34 have been the largest voting cohort in te ao Māori in the last two elections. In 2020, 136,500 rangatahi cast 35% of all Māori votes.
The numbers tell the story. For example, 39% of those aged 18–39 support Te Pāti Māori in Ikaroa-Rāwhiti compared to Labour on 24%. In Te Tai Tonga, incumbent Labour MP Te Rino Tirikātene rated highest with older people and Te Pāti Māori candidate Takuta Ferris higher among younger people. In Hauraki-Waikato, younger voters favour Maipi-Clarke and older voters Foreign Minister Nanaia Māhuta.
Māori youth want dynamism. They prefer direct By Māori For Māori advocacy over compromise. They seek a new Aotearoa. In that context, the Labour strategy to nullify Te Pāti Māori in Election 2017 and Election 2020 has been a backfire. Leaders like Waititi, Co-leader Debs Ngārewa Paker, and the forthright and brave Hannah Rāwhiti Maipi-Clarke inspire new pathways.
A Shift to the Right
Labour is also losing support to National, New Zealand First and Act. In 2020, these three made up only 8% of party vote polling in the Māori electorates. This election, they sit on a combined 24%. National has replaced the Greens as the third preferred party vote. Harete Hīpango sits on 12% in the candidate preference for Te Tai Hauāuru.
Mistrust
The shift to the right is perplexing because Labour’s Māori caucus has been effective. Over the last four years, they secured an average $960 million Māori budget vote totalling $3.84 billion. This is 3.5 times higher than the average $279 million vote for Māori over the last four years total of the last National – Te Pāti Māori government.
They have advanced co-governance through He Puapua, Three Waters (now Affordable Water), and progressed groundbreaking policies like Paiheretia Te Muka Tāngata in Corrections and Ka Hikitia – The Māori Education Strategy, the best Māori education strategy in 20 years.
However, racism, misinformation, and the rise of conspiracy paranoiacs has created increasing mistrust of the main parties. Voters are drifting to other parties. Mistrust is so high, the combined Labour-National vote on election day will come in at an all-time low.
Racism
The mistrust is such that the nascent trend to National, New Zealand First and Act in the Māori seats occurs despite the racism of their policies.
National Party Leader Chris Luxon’s preference for ‘a national level one system for all’ as a solution for Māori poverty, crime and unemployment ignores that the structural racism of the White dominated single system is what created the terrible historical statistics that plague our communities.
Similarly, Act Leader David Seymour’s aim to replace ‘race-based policies’ with ‘needs-based policies ‘ is racist. We have policies catering to the specific needs of retirees, women, men, young people, and people with disabilities. Colonisation, marginalisation, and racism have created specific needs for Māori, Pasifika, and ethnic communities. Setting those needs aside based on race is itself racist.
For instance, Māori are more vulnerable to Covid-19. During the pandemic, Māori vaccinations were lagging all other cultural groups. Māori health providers released a code via an app to advance Māori inoculations. Seymour released the code publicly on the basis it was race not needs-based. The reality today is that Māori, who are 18.7% of the under-70 population, are 28% of under-70 Covid-19 deaths because their vaccination rates remain significantly lower.
New Zealand First Leader Winston Peters has not been any better. Saying Māori are not Indigenous to Aotearoa was stupefyingly inane. The international literature defines Indigeneity as the descendants of the original earliest peoples and culture. The ancestors of the Māori came from Polynesia, Austronesia, and Southeast Asia. They became Indigenous Māori upon landing on our shores. And yes, we can be Indigenous in two places. Polynesians and Māori are Indigenous in the Pacific and Māori Indigenous to Aotearoa.
Others have criticised the anti-Māori rhetoric from Seymour and Peters, but few have questioned why this emanates from politicians of Māori descent. Both suffer what the literature terms assimilated or internalised racism, the inculcation of dominant negative stereotypic views of people with whom they share common cultural descent. Last year, in Parliament, Deputy Leader of the Labour Party Kelvin Davis described this as ‘vanilla’. He later apologised. There was no need to recant. In the conjuncture of culture and colour, vanilla racism is an apt term. And Peters is less racist than most believe; he is just willing to say anything to get back to Parliament and enjoy the ‘Baubles of Power’ he so decries.
Thankfully, the right will not win any of the Māori seats, but they have undermined Labour. Whether their chunk of the votes helps or hinders Te Pāti Māori, we will find out tomorrow.
A Further Swing to Te Pāti Māori
In 2020, most commentators thought Labour would win all seven Māori electorates because of the very wide lead Labour was carrying. They missed a trend to Te Pāti Māori. Labour commanded an average 31% lead in the first three polls. In the last four polls, Te Pāti Māori cut that lead to an average 16%. And on election day, there was a further 6.7% swing to Te Pāti Māori in six of the seven seats. Ngārewa Packer and Waititi achieved 14% and 15% respectively. Hence, Waititi won Waiāriki by 3% and Ngārewa-Packer closed an 18% poll disadvantage to 4%.
If the 2020 swing repeats tomorrow then any Labour seats with an 8% lead or less in the polls (Te Tai Hauāuru 5%, Te Tai Tokerau 6%, Hauraki-Waikato (4%) and Ikaroa-Rāwhiti (8%) are at risk.
A swing might be smaller than in 2020 because of the drift to the Greens, National, New Zealand First and Act. The number of undecided voters this election is also down from 25% in 2020 to 18%.
Predictions
This portends some close results with both Labour and Te Pāti Māori winning or losing by very narrow margins. A best estimate is that they will share a four-three split although who gets which is indeterminable.
Waititi, with a commanding 28% lead with or without a swing will win Waiāriki.
With the polls in Te Tai Hauāuru being the earliest and factoring the swing and absence of Speaker of the House Adrian Rurawhe, one of Labour’s best campaigners in 2020, Ngārewa-Packer is likely to take Te Tai Hauāuru.
Davis, who achieved the only swing (13%) to Labour between the poll and result in 2020 to win Te Tai Tokerau by 31%, remains the favourite but faces a formidable opponent in experienced Te Pāti Māori candidate Mariameno Kapa-Kingi. The presence of Green candidate and respected community stalwart Hūhana Lyndon may also influence the result.
In the absence of the mercurial Green Party Co-leader Marama Davidson, Peeni Henare, who played a key role in advocating for Māori at Cabinet during Covid-19, is the favourite to retain Tāmaki Makaurau.
Ferris has been inspirational in Te Tai Tonga but faces an uphill battle against Tirikātene in the most conservative and tribally loyal of our Māori electorates.
Voters will decide Ikaroa-Rāwhiti between those inspired by former Labour MP Meka Whaitiri’s defection to Te Pāti Māori and those who feel betrayed. A possible tribal split north and south of Gisborne brokers the result.
Hauraki-Waikato pits doyenne Māhuta, one of our best and most dignified Foreign Ministers and second longest serving Māori MP, against charismatic newcomer Maipi-Clarke. Both have experienced racism, more so Māhuta. Māhuta holds a slim 4% lead. One thinks Māhuta’s tribal connections will hold but with Maipi-Clarke epitomising the youth vote flocking around Te Pāti Māori, the unthinkable could eventuate.
Māori MPs
In the broader election, a swing to the right, New Zealand First potentially carrying the balance of power and Te Pāti Māori through a possible overhang may decide who commands government.
The only certainty in the Maori electorates is that there will be seven Māori MPs. Māori MPs who stand for Kaupapa Māori Advancement face increasing rates of racism, harassment, and threats. Standing against racism takes immense courage and comes with a significant cost. E tika, ka whakamihi i a rātou e tū ana hei māngai mō tātou te iwi Māori.
Pai marire, Dr Rawiri Taonui