New Zealand Election 2017

[IceAgeComing]

lets be honest; it'd be Labour, the Nats and the one ACT person who always seems to win

The future that we deserve

[IceAgeComing]

TOP give me the Lib Dem sort of vibes - as in the sort of party that tries to be everything to everyone.

I got:

77% Greens
71% Labour
71% TOP
64% Maori Party
58% NZ First ()
53% Legalise Cannabis Party
51% Mana Party
49% United Future
47% National Party
43% ACT
34% Conservative Party
31% Ban 1080 Party

NZ First seem to stick out a bit but I think that I mentally link them with the likes of UKIP when they are a very different party.  Other than that, not overly surprising...

[IceAgeComing]

Both polls strongly suggest to me that Labour+Greens might just be enough to have a majority; on one they were 51% combined and the other has them 48.5%.  It would depend on whether there's any overhang (on those numbers I don't know whether ACT would cause an overhang if they won a constituency seat; if the Maori/Mana party pact works then that may well force an overhang as well) but usually a set of parties getting that close to 50% in an MMP election usually guarantees that they'll get a majority.

The other big thing for the National Party in this election is that they haven't really got any natural coalition partners that get a significant amount of support in the way that Labour has with the Greens - the small centre and right wing parties have vanished into irrelevance bar in their small electorate fiefdoms with the exception of NZ First, who aren't really the typical populist right party and seem to rather work with Labour than the Nationals.  That's not an issue when you're two or three short of an absolute majority as the National Party was in the last few elections, but when its a close race its a huge mountain that they have to climb.

I'm pretty sure that no polls have NZ First and only one poll all campaign have had the Greens missing 5%.  If the latter did then it basically makes Peters the kingmaker able to go whichever way we wanted, if NZ First miss then it basically guarantees a Labour government unless the Nationals get very close to an overall majority.  I think that both will get in though, although both will lose seats - plus Peters has the outside chance of holding Northland which would be very handy for them if they are flirting with missing the threshold.

[IceAgeComing]

I'm a strong believer in a form of the way that Ireland does things - the election of an impartial Speaker who is automatically elected without needing to contest a seat.  Ideally this would lead to the seat that they were elected to becoming vacant and there being a by-election in the constituency or the next person filling any list seat - would make sure that there were was no partisan change in the composition of parliament based on whoever is chosen as speaker.

[IceAgeComing]

I've looked this up because I thought that would be a sensible thing to do rather than just make wild assumptions based on British Columbia (which is never a good idea).

New Zealand has three ways on voting on legislation in parliament - the voice vote (done in the way that you expect; if any member objects to this though they either hold a Party Vote (where the parties usually vote as blocs with occasional individual members specifying differently, or party leaders telling the Speaker how their party has voted if there's a deeper split) or a Personal Vote (normally used more for matters of conscience rather than anything, this is a Westminster-style vote with people going into one of two lobbies to vote for or against a motion).  The Speaker has been included in the Party Vote numbers since the adoption of MMP in 1996, and the trend has been for the Speaker to vote in Personal Votes as well.  If there's a tie on a motion, the motion is defeated.  So the partisan composition of the House does not change when a Speaker is elected, so its not worth worrying about.

[IceAgeComing]

I mean the idea that Corbyn didn't get "normally apathetic youth" excited is a very silly one, that any look at the election results or any of the post-election "how did the country vote?" polls would disprove.  The New Zealand Election thread isn't the place to be talking about it though!

My very soft prediction is that Labour get the most seats, and that the Greens get over the 5%.  Very RADICAL prediction, but I don't feel that I know enough about New Zealand specifically to go into more depth than that.

[IceAgeComing]

I mean "clintonite" is an entirely meaningless and stupid term to be using outside the American context; its a bit like me going around moaning at random yank politicians being Blairites...

I mean its also nonsense in another way; all of the "hardcore liberals" will probably be either the Nationals or ACT .

Also interesting both NZF and Green still flirting with 5%. While majority of polling evidence has both at 5% or over, still puts their place in Parliament in play.

Interesting thought, does Labour want NZF in Parliament?

If we take the CB as the current state of play, if NZF are knocked out, it turns Parliament into a straight National-ACT vs Labour-Greens-Maori two horse race.

If NZF are knocked out then Nationals could win outright or with ACT which is more or less the same...

I think that they'd rather that NZ First weren't in Parliament, but that they'd rather have them in if it avoided the Nationals either being able to form a single party majority government, or some kind of deal with ACT.  That's a bit of a wishy washy way of looking at it but it is a bit of a nuanced thing.

I'd always be skeptical of leaked private polls - its not like the actual data is publicly available and usually parties have reasons to be leaking private polling data - and its not like you can verify that the numbers are definately 100% accurate.  Any Labour victory depends on how strong the turnout of young people is in my eyes - in some respects there being a week of early voting might help them since it makes voting a lot easier but I'm far from an expert.  That's one other thing that they have going for them as well actually; even if Jacindamania is no longer running wild then it matters less because a large chunk of people already have voted at the start of the week.  We'll see at the weekend though!

[IceAgeComing]

I don't think that really works as a comparison - the SPD polls now are basically the same as they were right before Schultz took over as Chancellor candidate while Ahern has clearly boosted the Labour numbers by at least 10 points from what it was under Little.  I mean before she became leader it looked like this would be an incredibly boring election with the question being whether the Nationals could get a majority this time; with no real prospect of Labour winning; while now even with these polls you have an opportunity that Labour could put something together; may it be something that needs New Zealand First or not.

[IceAgeComing]

Your links are broken, pal - might help to upload them somewhere where people don't need to login somewhere else to see them.

[IceAgeComing]

A couple of things to consider - the vast, vast majority of the vote that we have in at the moment is advanced polls which might not be entirely representative (the trend in the past always was for the Nationals to start high and drop off through the night, but that didn't happen last time and you'd think that the spike in the number of advanced votes ought to make the results from it more representative) and a chunk of that early vote (TVNZ are saying 6%) is special votes mostly from people registering to vote and voting at the same time and that won't be counted until next week.  That's unlikely to dramatically swing the overall result from tonight but - last time on election night it looked like the National Party had an overall majority; but then they dropped a seat after the special vote was counted.  That usually favours Labour and the Greens and might be important - especially if the Maori Party manage to win an electorate and possibly also even a list seat if their percentage ticks up ever so slightly and the results tonight end up suggesting that the Nationals+ACT+Maori barely got 61 seats.

I'm pretty sure that the Maori Party won't get in though so that's not entirely worth thinking about; the result won't be clear tonight other than the National Party clearly being the biggest single party.

[IceAgeComing]

I'm pretty sure that ACT won't be in government at all this time - they sounded like they were thinking of going into opposition when their leader was interviewed because of the... distaste that they have with Peters and vice versa.  Don't know how that bodes for their future since at every election since 2005 the Nationals have effectively gifted them an electorate seat in Epsom to get them in (although I'm pretty sure their majority was cut and the National vote was up this time) and if they aren't working together the Nationals might not do that next time.

[IceAgeComing]

The only likely difference between these results and the final results are that the special votes will take one, possibly two, seats from the Nats and give them to Labour and/or the Greens.  That won't affect the mathematical situation though; any Labour-led government would need to include both NZ First and the Greens to get a majority.

[IceAgeComing]

I'm pretty sure that the only reason why there's significant grumbling about this is that its really the first time in nine years that government formation has been vaguely challenging.  In 2008 National+ACT had a majority by themselves anyway (they brought Dunne in anyway because why not) and in 2011 and 2014 the government was clearly re-elected, the only addition needed being agreeing confidence and supply with the Maori Party in 2011.  That effectively made the post-election period a lot less important than it is in post countries with PR, since there wasn't these long periods of lengthy negotiations to put something together nor was there really a viable alternative government.  Its also the first time that there's been a true kingmaker since... 1996 and NZ First?  Its not exactly a problem that people didn't know about, its just that the political situation in New Zealand in recent years has basically hidden it, plus the lingering culture of majoritarian FPTP.

The only changes that I'd support to the system would be some way of moving away from closed lists - I don't think that Open Lists with up to 120 candidates in an MMP election would be entirely viable though so there'd have to be another way of doing it - maybe best losers?  Overhangs aren't a huge issue when you're talking like one or two seats which is all that you're ever likely to get in New Zealand (the 100+ seat overhang + balancing seats mess of the Bundestag elections are a different story) and really the best way to get rid of them would just be to chop off whoever the last one or two list members elected were rather than move to the way that we do things which would lead to slightly different results.

[IceAgeComing]

This was hardly that surprising - from all accounts Peters worked better in government with Labour in the past than he did with the Nationals and the relationship was a lot more positive with them, so it makes sense.  Also consider that he is getting old and the talk was that this would possibly be his last election and the party would go to hell without him anyway, so may as well go for the people who would think that you'd work better with since its lot like you'll be the one cleaning up the mess afterwards.

This is arguably the biggest test of public reaction to PR in New Zealand: in that its the first election where the clear "winner" in a FPTP context won't be forming government.  I don't think that there'll be any real demand to move away from MMP but it might annoy a few people...