Heather Roy

18 August 2020

The big news this week is the General Election has now been moved to Saturday 17 October 2020. This is to accommodate the safety of voters at polling stations on election day and to ensure a fair election for all parties. Obviously a level three lockdown in Auckland makes some of the traditional campaigning techniques such as meetings and doorknocking impossible at present. In our earlier podcasts the old election date of 19 September is no longer correct so we want to alert listeners to that. The other important new date is Saturday 3 October which is when early voting commences. Given the uncertainty surrounding moving freely in the community we anticipate a large number of people are likely to vote early. Even more reason to move on with VoterTorque podcasts!

The first VoterTorque podcast on the political parties covered the five parties currently in partliament and the micro-parties. These Part 2 podcasts cover the Maori Party, TOP (The Opportunities Party) and the New Conservative Party. We’ve looked at these separately as each of these parties makes it into the polls. Although our MMP 5 percent threshold makes it near impossible for any of these parties to win enough party votes to have a presence in parliament, they do still register. It is also possible the Maori Party could win one or more Maori electorate seat. Some commentators are speculating they could win 2 seats.

So, we took a look at the history, policies and prospects of the Maori Party:

 

And here is what you need to know about TOP and the New Conservatives:

 

So, that’s it for the 18 parties contesting the 2020 NZ General Election. In our next round of podcasts we’ll be focussing on the two refereda. Stay tuned!