MMP lulz

[Ab]

Spotted at No Right Turn:

ACT New Zealand: 3.72% of the vote, 5 MPs
NZ First: 4.21% of the vote, no MPs

I can has reprezentation?

I guess we can also have metalulz at the fact that, now NZ looks like having a centre-right government elected under MMP, left-leaning commentators are decrying MMP as being TEH EVIL!!1.

[cEvin]

happyish with the result, but it needs to be fixed for sure

[funnel web]

So working on No Right Turns logic Bill & Ben should have a seat in Parliament? I'm in agreement that MMP needs to change. STV or a derivative of that should be looked at.

[Evoke]

don't forget maori party - 2.2% with 5 MPs

[The Edge]

Don't ACT get in only because they won an electorate?

[Evoke]

yes, as do maori party

[BathTub]

Of course it's a lie of omission to just say it that way, or just simple trolling. We all know how it works.

[Mickey]

I don't think its broken. You get in with either winning your electorate or if your party gets 5%. Winston got in last time because his party reached the 5% thredhold, not because he was voted in.

[Dalcon]

And time before that he only got in cause he won his electorate by 68 votes. His luck finally ran out.

MMP isn't perfect, its just one of the least imperfect systems out there, a lot better than FPP.

[CCS]

I want to vote FPP on a binding referendum. I say this because it is my hope that most Green supporters will instead support Labour and thus marginalise the Greens.

[Ab]

MMP is great where the Greens are concerned. Because their supporters are so fucking retarded, they don't know the difference between electorate and party votes.

[Omegakai]

Can some of you intellectual types please explain to me why a party has to be left/ right wing and why they automatically have to reject the “opposite” .
Being of the lowest common demonstrator I can’t understand why I have to pick a party that polarizes the other. (all thou I have to admit this year everyone’s going “centralist” )
Often I find my self leaning heavily towards one or the other, depending on the subject matter.
For example I would gladly vote for a party that was pro capital punishment, yet I would not sport one that was pro life.

Is it possible for such a part to exist or by this definition (I.e. extreme left + extreme right) dose it make it center?

Why cant say the Labor party and the National party decide to enter a coalition together?
Is that even possible, or am I dreaming the impossible.

[CCS]

Originally Posted by Ab

MMP is great where the Greens are concerned. Because their supporters are so fucking retarded, they don't know the difference between electorate and party votes.

[CCS]

Originally Posted by Omegakai

Can some of you intellectual types please explain to me why a party has to be left/ right wing and why they automatically have to reject the “opposite” .

They don't have to be, they just are.

Being of the lowest common demonstrator I can’t understand why I have to pick a party that polarizes the other.

You don't.

Is it possible for such a part to exist or by this definition (I.e. extreme left + extreme right) dose it make it center?

Possibly not. A party always wants to pander to whichever group they think will give it the most votes.

Why cant say the Labor party and the National party decide to enter a coalition together?

They both crave power and do not want to share it with anybody in a position to usurp them.

Is that even possible, or am I dreaming the impossible.

YES.


Not an intellectual explanation, but I need an excuse for not going to bed now despite having to be up a 6.30 tomorrow. La lala lalala laaaa.

[Bent]

Originally Posted by Ab

MMP is great where the Greens are concerned. Because their supporters are so fucking retarded, they don't know the difference between electorate and party votes.

Heh, beggers can't be choosers.

It's great for me as I don't like my vote being thrown away in a futile effort to get rid of Peter Dunne.

(voted green)

[TB]

It was unlikly NZF would make it in before the election, but it was likly that the leaders of Act, UF and possibly a few others would. This left the greens, Labour and National as the key partys to deal with. So where some would normaly vote for NZF for example, it was infact better to place the vote with Labour instead to limit Nationals power to try and force them into a minority position which would help keep them in check.

Unfortunately the old folks didnt figure that out and voted for NZF wasting a good chunk of votes which could have been well used in Labour instead.

MMP is a fantastic system, pitty most poeple dont know how to use it...despite voting for it. Im guessing national will try and get rid of it, along with many state assests.

[Hory]

Originally Posted by Ab

I guess we can also have metalulz at the fact that, now NZ looks like having a centre-right government elected under MMP, left-leaning commentators are decrying MMP as being TEH EVIL!!1.

NRT was complaining about the 5% threshold long before this election and he is not advocating the abolishment of MMP, just the removal of the threshold.

[SpaceCowboy]

Originally Posted by Ab

MMP is great where the Greens are concerned. Because their supporters are so fucking retarded, they don't know the difference between electorate and party votes.

the 20% on your forum that voted green thank you for your kind words sir.

[JP]

Meh, gotta get used to fucktards like him that try to calm their own guilt by hating on the only non selfish party out there. While they return Roger Douglas to power. Nice.

Anyone that thinks FPP is better than MMP shouldn't even be allowed to vote because they certainly don't want any kind of real representation. AB proves his denseness by trying to point out a tiny blur in representation in MMP, while in FPP that vote change would be so much larger. Any kind of ranking system is just terrible and leads to far less representation. Anyone that whinges about too many parties almost always votes National, simply because they have an almost monopoly of the right. If a couple large parties turned up on the right it'd be no different. And it's just more representative of the population.

[Evoke]

under FPP, people would vote who they really want to govern the country, not play the political games of "we need a couple of those to keep them honest", etc. If FPP was in place, the results would be vastly different.

[sidbo]

Originally Posted by JP

the only non selfish party out there

Wait, are you talking about the Greens here?

[crocos]

Originally Posted by Hory

NRT was complaining about the 5% threshold long before this election and he is not advocating the abolishment of MMP, just the removal of the threshold.

So he's advocating MORE MPs in Parliament then?

[Saladin]

Originally Posted by crocos

So he's advocating MORE MPs in Parliament then?

Err what? How would removing/reducing the threshold affect the number of MPs? Any MPs allocated to the 3-5% parties would proportionally reduce the MPs of the 40% parties.

You just have to look at the current results.

Labour got 33.8% of the party vote, they should have got 41 seats after rounding, instead they get 43 because of the votes that "don't count" under the threshold. If the threshold was reduced, those 2 extra seats instead go to one of the minor parties, which in this case would have been NZF (ugh).

[Ab]

Originally Posted by Hory

NRT was complaining about the 5% threshold long before this election and he is not advocating the abolishment of MMP, just the removal of the threshold.

And what a great idea that would be...

Graeme Edgeler has calculated what Parliament would look like if there was no 5% threshold. It would be:

New Zealand National Party - 55 seats
New Zealand Labour Party - 41 seats
The Greens - 8 seats
New Zealand First Party - 5 seats
Māori Party - 5 seats
Act New Zealand - 4 seats
Jim Anderton’s Progressive - 1 seat
United Future New Zealand - 1 seat
The Kiwi Party - 1 seat
The Bill and Ben Party - 1 seat

Now you need 62 seats to be Government. So a centre-right group would be:

National 55 + ACT 4 + United Future 1 + Kiwi Party 1 = 61/122 - not quite there

And centre-left could be:

Labour 41 + Greens 8 + NZ First 5 + Progressive 1 + Maori 5 = 60/122

So the Government would be decided by the Bill and Ben Party.

[Trigger]

LOL at above

that would be awesome!

[Redneck]

YES! Kill the threshold!

[CCS]

That's it. I'm running for the Bill & Ben Party in my electorate - Helensville. That's right, FUCK YOU JOHN KEY!

[p-b]

I wonder who they would decide between them as to who gets the seat... Bill or Ben?

Or maybe they could jobshare?

[doppelgänger of someone]

That kind of counterfactual analysis is pretty unrealistic, mainly because if there were no 5% threshold, the campaign strategy would have been very different, and that would probably mean completely different outcome. If there were no threshold, Winston Peters probably wouldn't bother with his electorate and just campaign nationally, it is possible he could get more party vote that way.

It is like the American election, people ask what would happen if US president is not decided by electoral college but popular vote? They say Gore would have won in 2000 if it is decided by popular vote. (As a matter of fact Gore won the popular vote but lost the electoral vote.) I say there is simple no fact of matter to answer that question, because if there were no electoral college, the campaign strategy would have been very different, they wouldn't 'give up' on any state (e.g. Republicans gave up on California, Democrats gave up on Texas). The outcome, therefore, would have been very different and would be quite different from the actual results.

In fact, I think 2008 election is overwhelmingly Obama, even though the popular vote is reasonably tight (I think it is 52:47 to Obama). Obama won the electoral vote by a country mile and a half, and because each campaign was DESIGNED to win electoral vote and not popular vote, therefore the electoral vote majority really shows how far Obama is ahead.

[Farmer Joe]

Originally Posted by Ab

MMP is great where the Greens are concerned. Because their supporters are so fucking retarded, they don't know the difference between electorate and party votes.

Hey fuck you buddy I party voted Green and gave my electoral vote to Labour.

[Crankshaw]

I don't have a problem with MMP other than maybe the threshold is too high (or should be removed, shrug).

While I don't like Winston it seems a bit unfair that NZF got the 4th largest number of votes but didn't get a seat.


Also, removing the threshold would change the way people vote and thus wouldn't give ben and bill a seat (well maybe) because people would know that they wouldn't need as big a percentage to get in.

While this election didn't turn out they way I would prefer, MMP is still vastly superior to FPP. While it would be quite nice to have a purely "party vote" system I do like having a local mp as your channel into government (keeps em honest when they've been voted in by the locals) and so MMP is a good meet in the middle for me.

I also have no trouble with electorate mp's getting in when they didn't receive the equiv in party vote. If they're an individual that a region wants to represent them then sweet as, the current problem is that they might bring others in which would be moot if the threshhold was removed/lowered.

[Ab]

...unlike a couple of thousand Green supporters in Ohariu :/

[Farmer Joe]

Originally Posted by Ab

...unlike a couple of thousand Green supporters in Ohariu :/

Yeah, that is fairly unfortunate. At least there were enough onto it Green voters in Welly Central to push Labour over the limit. I wonder if this is something the Greens should be pushing more.

[Lightspeed]

Originally Posted by Ab

...unlike a couple of thousand Green supporters in Ohariu :/

What happened here?

[Farmer Joe]

Ōhariu Candidates
CHAUVEL, Charles LAB 10080
DUNNE, Peter Francis UFNZ 11250
HUGHES, Gareth GP 2229

[Lightspeed]

I thought it might be something like that. That is weak. Why did the Greens run an against Labour there for? Surely they had poll data suggesting it might turn out like that.

[buckies]

Originally Posted by Farmer Joe

Yeah, that is fairly unfortunate. At least there were enough onto it Green voters in Welly Central to push Labour over the limit. I wonder if this is something the Greens should be pushing more.

[Baal]

I wanted Nats to win and I still think MMP sucks balls.

[A Corpse]

Originally Posted by Baal

I wanted Nats to win and I still think MMP sucks balls.

That's 'cos under FPP National would no doubt have a clear majority.

[Farmer Joe]

I quite like STV but I'm not sure the average voter would get it.

Also I think as long as NZ has one 'house' of representatives MMP is a good option. Under FPP the leading party could do wtf they wanted for then entire period.