Richard Shaw: Winston Peters back in the driver’s seat for coalition negotiations

Here go again. The final results of this year’s election have delivered two more seats to te Pati Māori, thereby increasing the size of New Zealand’s 54th Parliament to 123 seats (once the Port Waikato by-election has taken place).

The double effect of this “overhang” is to erase the narrow election night majority held by National (who have lost seats via special votes for the seventh election on the trot) and ACT, and to hand the balance of power to NZ First.

The irony that te Pati Māori’s performance forces three parties who are, at best, lukewarm on the idea of Māori seats into formal negotiations won’t be lost on anyone. The larger point, however, is that the results fundamentally change the dynamics of the process required to form the next government.