The National Party has released the candidate list it will carry into the general election on 7 November, and the top of it looks almost exactly like the front bench voters have watched for the past three years.
Christopher Luxon and Nicola Willis take the first two places, as the party rules require of the leader and deputy. Behind them sit Chris Bishop at three, Simeon Brown at four and Erica Stanford at five. Paul Goldsmith is sixth, Louise Upston seventh and Mark Mitchell eighth. All eight are exactly where they already sat in the caucus rankings, which is about the clearest signal a governing party can send that it does not want a public argument about seniority in the middle of a campaign.
The first genuine movement comes at nine, where Speaker Gerry Brownlee appears. RNZ reported that Brownlee had been sitting at 20th on the party’s own published order, a reflection of the fact that the Speaker is not a minister and is not ranked alongside them. He is standing as a list-only candidate this time, meaning he is not contesting an electorate and his return to Parliament depends entirely on where the party vote lands him.
The sharpest fall belongs to Melissa Lee, who drops from 13th to 30th. Luxon was asked about the demotion and, according to the New Zealand Herald, described her contribution as “incredible” and said she had “engaged with her community”. A ranking in the thirties on a list that may deliver only a handful of seats is a difficult place to be, and Lee will know it.
Nancy Lu was given 16th place, also as a list-only candidate. Further down, the party has put its new intake in the mid-twenties, with Dale Stephens at 23, Mahesh Muralidhar at 24, Katie Milne at 25 and Angee Nicholas at 26. Luxon said the list balanced “very experienced ministers, some hardworking MPs and also some exciting new talent”, and that the exercise was “about making sure we’ve got the team that can actually take New Zealand forward”. Asked about women in high, winnable positions, he accepted there was “more to do”.
Under MMP the list matters far more than most people notice on election night, because it decides who actually walks into the debating chamber once the electorate results are counted. A party’s share of the party vote sets its total number of seats. Electorate winners are seated first, and the remaining seats are filled from the top of the list downwards. That arithmetic is why the position of a list-only candidate such as Brownlee is watched so closely, and why an MP dropping seventeen places is treated as news rather than housekeeping.
It also explains why National’s list is tighter this year than it might look. Recent polling has put the party at around 31 percent, which on current numbers would translate to roughly 39 or 40 seats. National holds a large number of electorates, and every electorate it wins consumes one of those seats before the list is touched. If the party holds most of its seats and lands near that polling figure, only a small number of list places will convert into actual seats in Parliament. Everyone ranked below that cut-off is campaigning for a job that may not exist.
National is the last of the major parties to show its hand. The Green Party finalised its list on 22 April. Labour released its list on 8 June with Chris Hipkins ranked first. The Opportunity Party announced its candidates on 31 July with Qiulae Wong at the top. Voters now have a reasonable picture of who each party would send to Wellington under a range of results.
There has been movement in the National caucus in the lead-up as well. Andrew Bayly announced in June that he would not seek a place on the list and would leave Parliament at the election, one of a number of departures that open room lower down the order for the newer names the party has ranked in the twenties.
The list is not the whole story of a campaign, and it rarely wins one. It is, however, a fairly honest document. It shows which MPs a leader is prepared to protect, which ones are being quietly moved along, and how much confidence a party really has in the party vote it is chasing. National’s answer today was to leave the top of the order untouched, promote its Speaker into the group that would survive a bad night, and put its new candidates in a band that only a strong result will reach.
Election day is 7 November. If you are still working out where you sit on the policies that will decide it, our voting tool lets you compare the parties on the issues rather than the personalities.
What do you make of National’s rankings, and does a party list change how you vote at all? Leave a comment below and tell us what you think.
This article was written by AI, briefed to report the facts, hopefully without some of the bias people bring to the job 🙂
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