I think the main thing I need Keith to clarify is how he gets the Māori seats providing 150% representation? I know that with tactical voting in the Māori electorates, or what is also called 'split voting', giving your candidate vote to one party and your party vote to another, resulted in two extra MPs, but that isn't sufficient reason to assume that this is because it happened in the Māori electorates.
As his reader pointed out, the overhang can happen in any electorate, the fact that it happened in the Māori electorates just kind of shows, to my mind, that voters either listened to someone who told them how to make their vote count for both the Māori Party and it's allies, or they're just savvier that we're assuming.
After all, this is exactly what did happen in Epsom (Rodney Hide), Ohariu-Belmont (Peter Dunne), and Wigram (Jim Anderton). In every one of these electorates, the voters split their vote in favour of someone other than the candidate. Even more interestingly, the combined Labour/National party votes in these electorates exceeded the candidate vote by at least two thirds in every instance. Even in Tauranga, where Peters garnered 13,131 personal votes, the combined Labour/National party vote is 5.5 times larger than the party vote for NZ First (24,871 vs. 4,481 votes).
Now, despite having recently taken up a salary, in let's say a 'prominent financial institution', my statistics skills are at best imperfect, so Keith (or readers) feel free to correct my number crunching here. That also means you, MGTG.
You see, I'm attempting to give Keith a tap right where it hurts, in the spreadsheet.
What I'm doing is avoiding the argument that the Māori electorates are come kind of 'specially designated' area for Maori, instead illustrating that the four seats are deserved, and that the system is indeed the issue, regardless of who the seats are populated by.
For reference's sake the seven Māori electorates are: Te Tai Tonga, Waiariki, Ikaroa, Te Tai Hauauru, Tainui, Tamaki Makaurau, and Te Tai Tokerau
The assumption I made is this. If vote splitting is the issue, then what would have happened if you couldn't split your vote. If you had no choice but to cast your vote for the same party and candidate that is, but party proportionality is kept.
The next premise is that the Māori Party won all four candidate races in a stand-up fight, as did Hide in Epsom.
This would mean that every vote for the Māori Party candidates in the seven Māori electorates would have gone to the Māori Party proportionality in Parliament, and to clarify matters, the same for Labour, National and NZ First. This assumes of course that the latter two stood candidates in any of the Māori seats, which they did not.
As it is, and ignoring that there are still specials to be counted, 118,308 ballots were cast in the Māori electorates. Of the party votes:
55,137 votes Labour.
40,488 votes Māori Party.
7,051 votes NZ First.
4,234 votes National.
11,398 votes others (Destiny, Legalise Cannabis, Green etc.).
In fact, and as a point of interest, the Aotearoa Legalise Cannabis Party's nationwide party vote is 4,609. Higher than National rated in all seven Māori seats. Likewise, the NZ First Party votes in the seven Māori seats total more than Peters received in Tauranga itself.
Of those 40,488 Māori party votes, 31,657 were actually cast in the Māori electorates, leaving 8,831 elsewhere (which for the purpose of this exercise we will have to assume were cast for Māori Party candidates in non-Māori electorates).
In the Māori electorates, of the total ballots cast, 53,702 recorded votes for Māori Party candidates.
Assuming that every vote for a Māori Party candidate, in a Māori electorate, had not been split, the Party's total vote would have been 62,533 votes (8,831 plus the 53,702 now non-split candidate votes).
Interestingly, 62,533 votes out of a total of 2,052,813 ballots cast equals 3.05% of the raw total vote. Or, 3.65 seats, which rounds up to, you guessed it, 4 seats.
As it is though, vote splitting in the Māori electorates seems to have contributed to the party votes of several other parties. The Māori Party itself didn't actually benefit, unless you consider that it provided votes for it's 'allies'.
Of the total ballots cast in the seven Māori electorates, parties ended up with the following percentages of their nationwide party votes:
71.2% Māori Party.
6.6% Labour Party.
5.9% NZ First Party.
0.005% National Party.
On the other hand though, of the total ballots cast in Wigram, Ohariu-Belmont and Epsom, of their nationwide party votes the same parties secured:
5.2% National Party.
3.7% Labour Party.
2.5% NZ First Party.
0.008% Māori Party.
What this means is that seven electorates have MPs not of the Labour or National Parties. But, they contributed the following amounts to the totals of other parties:
10.3% Labour Party.
8.4% NZ First Party.
5.205% National Party.
As it is, vote splitting increased the raw totals of all three of these parties.
But just taking into account the vote splitting in the three non-Māori Party 'other' electorates, NZ First would have dropped to 5.66% of the raw total ballot were these three electorates not to split votes (the raw total is the amount before 'wasted' votes on minor parties that don't reach 5% are discarded)
Labour? Drop to 39.05% of raw total (currently at 40.74%).
National? Drop to 37.39% of raw total (currently at 39.63%).
The permutations go on, and on.
But, it's getting very late, I've had a drink or two, and math isn't my strong point.
Regardless! What these numbers seem to indicate is that race doesn't appear to have been the primary issue in the Māori electorates. Even the National Party's vote was only 300 votes less than 2002 (4,554 party votes), despite the 'mainstream' campaign. Instead, it was simple MMP cunning that influenced the way voters in the Māori electorates behaved.
In other words, playing by the rules.
So, yes, the Māori electorates allowed the Māori Party to focus their campaign in seven of the electorate seats. But, the end result is exactly the same, and it was vote splitting across the entire country that contributed to the two extra seat-warmers in Parliament.
If anything, it merely reinforces the impression that some electorates have 'natural' constituencies. This red-blue kerfuffle is just a return to normality for example. The provinces have always been National Party stalwarts, and 2002 was actually an exception.
Keith, don't you sit up too late taking this to pieces.