Driving along a New Zealand country road lined with vineyards, Sam Atamatea explained his switch of political allegiance. “My family has always voted Labour,” the 56-year-old Maori bus driver said. “I feel like a traitor, but this time I’m going to vote National.”

Later, pointing at the 47-year-old leader of the opposition party as he chatted to supporters in a noodle bar, he added: “That John Key, he’s one of us. He’s been poor like me, now he’s rich because he’s clever, eh? He’ll look after the country.”

A hundred miles away in Rotorua, in the Maori heartland, Wiremu Kingi stood outside the Bainbridge community centre where Helen Clark, the Prime Minister for a record nine years, rallied her Labour supporters in her attempt to win an unprecedented fourth term. “I suppose I’ll vote for her,” sighed the 37-year-old factory worker. “That other fella, I don’t trust him. Labour has always looked after the Maori.”

The views of the Maori population of New Zealand have never been as important as they are now. Today, the country goes to the polls, with neither Labour nor the National Party expected to gain an outright victory under the proportional voting system. It is likely that the Maori Party will hold the balance of power.

“Our time has come,” Whatarangi Winiata, the president of the Maori Party told The Times yesterday.

New Zealand’s election is being fought against a backdrop of global economic meltdown and, at home, a deepening recession, rocketing crime and a record exodus of skilled workers.

If Mr Key should win, the former investment banker who entered parliament only six years ago would become the country’s least experienced leader in a century. Although final opinion polls gave Mr Key a lead of more than 12 points, analysts say the election is too close to call, meaning that the small, underfunded and, crucially, unaligned Maori Party is a key player.

The four-year-old party holds four of the seven seats reserved for Maori voters in the 120-seat Parliament and is expected to win at least two more, offering the minority indigenous people hitherto unknown power within government.

Dr Winiata, a respected academic, told an election rally in Wellington, the capital, this week: “There won’t be a piece of legislation that can be passed without a Maori signatory.” Chris Trotter, a political analyst, agreed: “They will be the kingmakers.” He raised fears, however, that the party’s hotheaded nationalist leaders could stymie New Zealand’s political business in favour of its own narrow interests.

Whichever party finds itself working with the Maori Party will have to tread carefully to avoid exacerbating racial tension. Many whites are alarmed by the rise of Maori influence. Many believe the Treaty Claims and Settlements Act under which the Maori have claimed back land they say was stolen from them has gone far enough, and will resist any more concessions. “This is our land too, they should remember that,” said Jordan Ainsley, a white Auckland businessman.

“We will have to come to an agreement about how we treat each other,” said a conciliatory Dr Winiata.

A final decision about who the Maori Party will support will be made after leaders visit the “maraes” – traditional meeting places – to consult constituents, which could take up to seven weeks.

Whatever they decide, the Maoris know that for the first time in New Zealand’s modern history they have a real potency. During an ebullient Maori Party motorcade in Wellington this week Hone Harawira, a Maori MP, was cheered as he bellowed through his megaphone: “[This election] is not about National, it’s not about Labour, it’s about Maori.”

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