More young people want to vote in New Zealand’s Māori electorates. What are they and how do they work? | New Zealand politics

As New Zealand gears up for an election this year, new figures from the electoral commission show more young people are registering to vote in Maori electorates.

The rise follows years of tense relations between Indigenous New Zealand and the centre-right coalition government. Latest figures show 58% of eligible 18-24 year olds have signed up to the Māori list, up from 50% in 2023.

What are Maori voters? How do they work and how certain is their future in the New Zealand political landscape?

What are Maori voters?

There are seven Maori electorates, or seats, in New Zealand’s 120-seat parliament. You have to be Maori to vote in these constituencies, but anyone can sit in these seats.

Electorates tend to be very large geographically, covering multiple tribes and regions. For example, the center of Te Tai Tonga covers the entire South Island, Rakiura/Stewart Island and most of the city of Wellington – approximately 151,723 square kilometers (58,580 square miles).

When anyone of Maori descent registers to vote, they choose whether to be on the Maori list or the general list.

The electoral commission said 54 per cent of eligible voters had registered for the Māori list as of March; This rate was 51 percent in 2023, when the last election was held.

Like everyone else, Maori registered people receive only two votes: one for their preferred political party and the other for the MP in their constituency. General voters cannot vote for their MP.

Since when have there been Maori voters?

When the first election was held in New Zealand in 1853, only landowning men could vote. However, the Maori’s ownership of land in common made them ineligible.

As a temporary solution, four special Maori seats, divided into geographical areas, were introduced in 1867. The number remained stable until the mid-1990s, then increased to five, then increased to the current seven in 2002.

A royal commission in the 1980s recommended that the seats be abolished if New Zealand moved to an electoral system based on proportional representation, as it did in the 1990s. He suggested that an influx of new parties under a proportional system would increase Maori representation.

But after a strong campaign by many Maori organisations, the seats were retained when New Zealand adopted the new system – mixed-member proportional representation (MMP) – established to stop horse racing between the two major parties and distribute seats more fairly to smaller parties based on their share of the vote.

However, while small populist party New Zealand First advocates abolishing the seats, it says Māori representation has reached record levels with the MMP: there are 33 Māori MPs in the current parliament.

How do Maori chairs swing?

Māori voters tended to gravitate towards left-wing parties, but they were not a very safe haven for Labour.

When the Labor government passed controversial land legislation in the early 2000s, Māori anger saw the birth of the Māori party Te Pāti Māori in 2005. Te Pāti Māori continued to support the National government after 2008.

Its support waned until it was expelled from parliament altogether in 2017, when all seats were claimed by Labor. Since then the seats have largely been a contest between Te Pāti Māori and Labor.

The other major party, centre-right National, tended to struggle in the seats by refusing to field candidates at all between 2002 and 2023, but has said it plans to field candidates in the seats again this year.

Why are Māori voters divided?

The debate over the existence of Maori seats has been around for as long as the seats themselves, and it is a question that flares up in most elections.

But with Maori making up less than 20% of New Zealand’s population, putting them to a referendum would mean their future would be largely determined by non-Maori.

This raised questions similar to those heard in Australia’s Voice referendum about whether minority rights should be put to a vote by the majority.

When asked by the New Zealand Herald in 2014 whether he would abolish the seats, former Nationals prime minister John Key said it was an issue he would not approach. “Do you really want to tear a country apart?” he said.

NZ First leader and foreign minister Winston Peters first campaigned for the Māori seat in 1975. After the 1996 election NZ First represented all Māori seats. But in recent years Peters has called for their removal.

Peters said in February: “If there are enough people in Maori seats supporting them then those seats can stay. But the reality is that we have a record number of Maori in parliament and cabinet at the moment.”

Act, another partner in the ruling coalition, also supports removing Maori seats. However, Prime Minister Christopher Luxon said this was not discussed at his congress.

Opposition parties condemned the proposal; Labor MP Kieran McAnulty called it a “cheap and cynical attempt to get cheap votes” and added that it should be Māori who decide the future of the seats.