Two overhangs, but for different reasons

Te Pāti Māori announced in August that they did not want party votes. They explicitly said they want to create overhang. Their MPs did not even party vote for TPM. And their strategy worked.

In 2023 they got 3.1%. In 2026 they got 0.6%. That is an 80% reduction in their party vote, or a 2.5 percentage point drop. In July they were polling around 3% in the polls.

If National had not also ended up with overhang, the TPM strategy would have succeeded, Their four seat overhang would have meant the left could easily govern with Opportunity.

Now National did also get an overhang, but this is more due to overperformance on winning electorates, rather than their party vote going to NZ First and ACT during the campaign. The promoters of the overhang strategy were explicitly calling for National voters to abandon National to boost the number of ACT and NZ First seats, while not decreasing the National seats.

National got 29%. Most polls in August and early September had National at 29%. There was no big exodus from National due to the overhang campaign. The exodus occurred a year earlier, due to dissatisfaction.

ACT and NZ First both did better than 2023. They got 11% and 10% respectively. But back in August and early September they were only slightly below that. There may have been some movement due to the overhang campaign, but it was extremely modest, if at all.

What really created the overhang was National over performing in electorates. Some of this will be ACT and NZ First party voters giving National the candidate vote, but this is very normal behaviour (just as Labour asked Green voters to vote for Labour candidates). The overhang campaign succeeded in terms of having people be more tactical with their electorate votes, but did not succeed in terms of driving significant party vote change. Also National candidate quality played a significant role. Blair Cameron was amazing to win Nelson. Dana Kirkpatrick stormed home in East Cape which on paper should have flipped. Greg Fleming kept Maungakiekie, reflecting what a great electorate MP he has been.

So overhang did impact the election outcome, but in very different ways. TPM started the overhang wars, and they succeeded. The counter campaign did not succeed in driving party vote changes, but did have an impact in terms of tactical voting in electorates.

I still favour legislating to get rid of overhang, but that is an issue for another day.