And the new kingmaker is...

The election is over, woohoo.

National Party 59
Labour Party 43
Green Party 8
ACT 5
Mäori Party 5
Progressive 1
United Future 1
NZ First 0

The result isn't final yet but nothing seems to hang on the special votes so it may as well be. Well, unless New Zealand First pick up another 20,000 votes that is.

Just how decisive is National's victory? Not as decisive as it looks as it turns out.

It may look like they won by a few seats but if you change the result of just one electorate seat the story is very different.

If National hadn't lost Epsom. The Act party wouldn't have a single seat. They, like United Future, Progressive, Maori party and New Zealand First didn't break the 5% threshold for party seats.

NZ First got more party votes than Act but as NZ First didn't win an electorate seat ... bye bye.

United Future and Progressive didn't win enough party votes to gain an extra seat over their one electorate seat. The Maori party created an over hang by winning 2 more electorate seats than their party vote would have given them. Act was the only one that manage to get a few (in this case 4) more MPs with their party vote after winning one electorate seat - Epsom.


The result if National won in Epsom could have looked like this:

The Greens
6.43% = 9 seats (9 party, 0 electorate)
Jim Anderton's Progressive
0.93% = 1 seat (0 party, 1 electorate)
Māori Party
2.24% = 5* seats (5 electorate * overhang by 2 seats)
New Zealand Labour Party
33.77% =45 seats (21 electorate, 24 party)
New Zealand National Party
45.45%= 61 seats (42 electorate, 19 party)
United Future New Zealand
0.89%= 1 seat (1 electorate, 0 party)
New Zealand First Party
4.21%= 0 seat (0 electorate, and under the threshold)

National could form a government if backed by United Future but if United Future jumped the other way, and they have in the past, and the Maori Party backed Labour (likely) parliament would have been hung.

So our new kingmaker can only be Rodney Hide (Act) or Peter Dunne (United Future).

All hail Rodney Hide - our new kingmaker!

Isn't MMP fun.