Wrong objection
David Farrar falsely equivocates when he asks the following: Why do so many people who complain that ACT got five seats in Parliament on only 3.65% of the vote, never complain that the Maori Party got...
View ArticleBleg: what do people want in an electoral system?
I wrote most of this before DPF’s post on the threshold, including his link to Chris Bishop’s handy paper on representation and stability went up, so read that first. In fact, you’d also do very well...
View ArticleWinner does not take all
Peter Shirtcliffe is furious (audio), and well he might be, because the government’s plans for electoral reform are eminently sensible, subject to wide bipartisan support, and most critically, not at...
View ArticleGreat prospects
Hat tipped to Paul McBeth for this one. As one side engages in some tentative but hugely premature triumphalism, and the other side points the accusatory finger, a sleeping giant awakes. This man — our...
View ArticleMMP in NZ is safe
Evidence: It has been found to work pretty well and all parliamentary parties except ACT support it. The UK election is about to remind people how perverse FPP is. Peter Shirtcliffe is spamming people...
View ArticleMMP in NZ is really safe
As I’ve said before, Peter Shirtcliffe’s campaign to scupper MMP (again) is probably a blessing in disguise for the electoral status quo in New Zealand. If any further evidence were required, the...
View ArticleDouble-tracking
Danyl Mclauchlan posits a conspiracy theory: there is a pretty great opportunity to use the Maori seats to rort the system: if you had two Maori Parties, one that ran electoral candidates in six out of...
View ArticleRotten borough
This evening Paul Goldsmith won the Epsom candidacy for the National party. Goldsmith is was until 2010 a Citizens & Ratepayers Auckland city councillor, and has a long-standing National party...
View ArticleCompeting electoral insurgencies, in Epsom and beyond
In this post I argue that ACT’s apparent willingness to undermine the MMP system that has kept them alive isn’t so much a death wish as a wish to be welcomed back into the National party as a faction,...
View ArticleConservative Party of New Zealand
I’m 8/19ths conservative, according to Colin Craig’s Conservative Test, on the website of the Conservative Party of New Zealand that was launched today. This might come as a surprise to some readers,...
View Article115-125: Who’s at risk? Who might gain?
The Sainte-Laguë formula is used to allocate the 120 proportional seats in parliament. By calculating it out we can see which parties have only just got seats, and which have nearly got another one....
View ArticleThreshold analysis of the preliminary results
One of the debates in the MMP review will be the thresholds, so here’s the effect on the preliminary results: At a 1% or 2% threshold the Conservatives would have got three seats (two from National,...
View ArticleThe hazards of MMP
David Cunliffe’s apparently-rash pledge to scrap the coat-tail rule that permits a party with less than 5% of the party vote to bring in additional MPs as long as it wins an electorate within 100 days...
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