Who would survive?

On the Fairfax poll, Labour would lose 11 seats in Parliament. But when a party drops this low, it is getting very difficult to work out who they would be. Why? It depends on the electorates.

Labour are predicted to get 32 MPs on this poll. Now if no electorates change hands (except Labour take Wigram), they have 22 electorates, so get 10 List MPs.

That means Andrew Little, Shane Jones, Darien Fenton, Moama Mackey and Rajen Prasad would survive. However Raymond Huo, Carol Beaumont, Kelvin Davis, Carmel Sepuloni, Rick Barker, Stuart Nash and Steve Chadwick would be gone.

However Labour believe they can win Te Tai Tonga and West Coast-Tasman. If they did, then Mackey and Prasad would both miss out also. And if Labour dropped another 1.6% then Shane Jones would also be out of Parliament. And another 0.8% below that and Andrew Little won’t make it in.

However there is a silver lining for the List MPs. If Labour’s party vote is as low as under 26%, then they may start losing electorates. Normally safe electorates such as Te Atatu and Mana could go, along with marginal Rimutaka, Palmerston North and Waimakariri. Even New Lynn could come into play.

Hipkins, Twyford, Lees-Galloway,and Faafoi are ranked low on the list and Cosgrove is not on it. So if those five lost their seats, they would be goneburger, meaning MPs such as Mackey, Prasad, Huo and Beaumont would survive.

This is one of the tensions of MMP. List candidates do better, when their party loses electorate seats!