Election 2020: Greens make history at MMP

The Green Party is the first minority party in the MMP to survive the government and win 5% of the vote again. Thomas Coughlan was at the celebrations.

ANALYSIS: It’s a coming-of-age time for the Greens and even (in a stretch) a significant coming-of-age time for the MMP system. No minority party has survived a term in government and has lived to cross the 5% threshold.

With the party holding 7.6 percent of the vote at midnight, it seems certain that it will reenter Parliament, possibly bringing with it as many as 10 MPs.

Excited fans gathered on the Auckland Viaduct to celebrate the victory, although it can be bittersweet. With Labor poised to win an outright majority, the Greens may find they have missed an opportunity to spend another term in government.

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Co-leader Marama Davidson said she was “beyond thrilled” with the result.

‘We did it!’ He yelled to the packed crowd.

The parties have survived in Parliament after the government: NZ First, the Maori Party, United Future and ACT continued to limp in maintaining individual constituencies, but the Greens are the first minority party to survive a stint in government with most of their national vote intact.

What percentage of the votes is uncertain. The party generally performs quite well in special voting thanks to strong support among foreign voters, so its count on election night is likely to go up, although there is always the slim chance that it will decline.

That the Greens managed to climb this mountain is historic for MMP. After 24 years with the voting system, it appears that a minority party has established a permanent presence for itself on the electoral landscape. The revival of the ACT party to something more than a one-man gang bodes well for this as well.

It’s an impressive feat given where the party started just a few months ago.

The decision by Greens co-leader James Shaw to invest $ 11.7 million in a private school in Taranaki, contrary to Green Party policy, caused the three parts of the Government to inform each other publicly and privately, in to the detriment of the Greens.

The saga didn’t ruin the party’s voting, but it didn’t help. A corporate poll in early September showed the Greens heading into oblivion at 3.2 percent. The party knew it would be difficult and had one of its star MPs, Chlöe Swarbick, fight a brutal campaign for the Auckland Central electorate as an insurance policy.

Despite two polls showing Swarbrick behind the seat, she won that night.

The Greens realized early on that one of the strongest assets on the record they were campaigning on didn’t even belong to their party. That was, of course, Labor leader Jacinda Ardern.

Former Green staff member David Cormack said the strategy had worked.

“Historically we have seen in the MMP the smaller parties try to distance themselves from the larger parties and everyone brings up the cliché that no party has obtained a 5% vote after the government, perhaps congratulations to the Greens for realize that. Particularly when people are so in love with (Ardern) and Covid’s response, it makes sense to embrace that. ”

Shaw and Davidson raved about Ardern and sold themselves as the party that would make Ardern more of the leader than New Zealand’s left wanted him to be.

But that proximity worsened last week when national leader Judith Collins made the Greens’ wealth tax the centerpiece of her final campaign.

As Collins pointed out, if the Greens made the tax a negative, no buts, to form a government, it would put Ardern in an impossible position: implement the tax or go back to the polls.

It also drove a wedge between the Greens and Labor. The Greens, seeking to absorb as many votes as possible from the Labor left, suddenly looked more powerful than they had throughout the entire period, emboldened that at least some people believed the junior government partner was credible. establish the income policy.

It was all very different from the cozy relationship that existed between the two opposition parties, when they campaigned together under a memorandum of understanding.

However it worked; the Greens found their 5%, and something else.

The real challenge begins with the formation of the government. If the Greens are part of a coalition, feelings are likely to get hurt. It is not clear where the balance of power will be.

With Winston Peters gone, the Greens have a certain license to pull out the “tail wagging” card that is the privilege of minor MMP parties. But it is uncertain how much the party wants to do. Being a left-wing party, it does not have the influence of Peters’s center and it is not his style.

Cormack said both Labor and the Greens might miss having NZ First as a scapegoat.

“Both parties have lost their easy excuse, both will have to justify why they are not going to the left.”