New Zealand Politics: My opinion on why it's a bad idea for a minor political party to do an electoral deal with the National Party

Former MP and Act Party leader John Banks (left) and Prime Minster John Key having a cup of tea in Epsom

The reason why I think it's a bad idea for a minor political party to do an electoral deal with the National Party is that it makes them too reliant on effectively being given a seat, and not concentrating enough on getting over the five percent threshold (this is the minimum amount of the popular vote which a political party has to get to gain representation in parliament). An example of this is the electoral deal in Epsom that the National Party did with the Act Party in 2011, overall Act got 1.07% of the popular vote and normally would not have got back into parliament, but because of the deal it did with National shown in the picture above they managed to get one seat. Now in 2014 leading up to the General Election this year the One News Colmar Brunton Poll from the 19th to the 23rd of July  has the Act at 1% support. Another Colmar Brunton Poll this one of the Epsom electorate initially had the National candidate Paul Goldsmith at 44% of the vote and Act candidate David Seymour at 32%, it was only when they reminded people about the deal between National and Act  that David Seymour took the lead with 45% to Paul Goldsmith's 31%. My further opinion on this is that Act should concentrate on getting it's percentage of the popular vote up to what it was at the 1996, 1999 and 2002 General Elections, these were 6.1%, 7% and 7.1% respectively. These are the reasons why I think it's a bad idea for a minor political party to do a deal with the National party especially if your Act who without an electoral deal with National would be going the way of the Dodo.