For the first time this year I am no longer confident that National will win the Election. Polls have them sitting inbetween 45 & 51% of the party vote. If they do get 50% or higher of the party vote and win the electorates they are expected to win, forming a government will not be a problem. They would most likely not form a government by themselves due to an overhang caused by the Maori Party, but should have the numbers by forming a coalition with either the Act Party or United Party.

If National only polls at 45% of the party vote however, then things change significantly. They would come away with 57 seats in a 123 seat parliament, and needing 62 seats to get a majority even with the 2 MP's from Act and one from the Uninted Future party National would still need to form a grand coalition as such with the Maori party to get the majority. In this situation the Maori party would be the one party that could determine who was in the next government, either (57Nat + 2Act +1Unt +4Mao) = 64  or (47Lab + 11Grn + 4Mao) =62. In any case I would still suspect that the Maori party would be more likely to side with Labour than National. Note: That the dependency on the Maori party becomes even greater the more Maori electorate seats they win as this would cause a greater overhang. For example if the Maori party wins all 7 Maori seats yet retains its 2.3% party vote the overhang will take the total parliament size up to 126 with a requirement of 64 for a majority. It gets even worse should the NZ First party get past the 5% threshold or Winston win Tauranga.

The scary thing about this is should Labour win this election it will be the amount of clout that the Greens and the Maori part will have, with potentially up to 33% of the new ruling parliament being formed by the minor parties. To put it simply if you want a change in government get out there in two weeks time and give your vote to National or Act. Voting any other party will simply bring about another 3 years of the same Nanny State.