Posts by izogi
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Legal Beagle: Election 2017: the Special…, in reply to Glen Koorey,
Yup. I split my vote in Ohariu this year, but it wasn’t with intended strategy of helping TOP. It was a genuine belief that Jessica Hammond Doube was simply a much better candidate than a disgruntled Labour candidate whose main strategy had been to cruise through on a culture of change as people voted to get rid of Peter Dunne, and an empty National candidate who’d been selected for his ability to care about not much other than existing National supporters and making sure they understood not to vote for him but to party vote National. Those sentiments of mine hadn't stopped the disgruntled Labour candidate from trying to convince both TOP and Green candidates to stay out of the race, and for me it reinforced them.
It irritates me when I see candidates and supporters expect other candidates to stand down through some belief that they’re entitled to the votes that people would rather cast for someone else. The real problem is that electorates don’t provide any preferential mechanism to let voters reassign their votes when there are similar candidates.
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Isn't this whole perceived Winston dilemma a hangover from FPP days? As a population, we're still in a collective mindset of wanting big parties to run things, but that also means that we end up with giant blobs of parties that aren't allowed to mix.
If this is what those voters want then whatever. It has its advantages, but under MMP it also means that every time there's no absolute majority (ie every time so far) there are very few minor parties around, to negotiate with. If National, however, were really 2 or 3 separate parties that people could elect according to the lines they preferred, it's more feasible that one or two of them might even be able to fit with Labour, or even the Greens, and form a decent government.
Labour shrank a while back and many who might have been Labour voters previously are probably now established Green voters, or at least content to switch between the two depending on various factors. Voters in that area get to influence what they want their side to look like.
National doesn't really do that, though. Differences all stay behind closed doors and are handled within the party, and there's just a brick wall for voters to throw their votes at.
It's this obsession with having large controlling parties, which can't practically mix, that makes someone like Winston the centre of attention. Everyone hoping to form a government has to deal with him, even though few really like him around except the 1/13th of voters who elected him.
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Hard News: Where are all the polls at?, in reply to Bart Janssen,
The reactions to the review in this article really highlight that attitude.
Labour "backs the changes", but only makes a deal of getting rid of coat-tailing (something that National's been taking lots of advantage of lately to foster coalition partners).
National opposes lowering the threshold (no reason given).
ACT opposes the changes, especially removing coat-tailing. (At the time, it was allowing ACT to have lots of MPs whilst more popular parties had zero MPs.)
Greens support the proposed changes entirely.
NZF doesn't support lowering the threshold.
Jordan Williams, who was queried for no obvious reason, just hates MMP. I guess that's because it gives people some degree of representation by those who govern them. In line with that he supported getting rid of coat-tailing but not to lower the threshold. (How dare it be practically possible for smaller parties to be elected in any form!)
I think I'd need to be convinced about lowering the threshold as far as 1% for similar stability concerns expressed by the Chief Electoral Officer, but right now it definitely seems much too high.But I also hate the idea of people whose votes get obliterated by the system, after the count, not having an opportunity to reassign them. Has a transferable vote idea ever been seriously considered under MMP that anyone's aware of?
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Hard News: Where are all the polls at?, in reply to simon g,
So real outsiders breaking in: none. Have I missed any?
The 5% threshold seems, to me, like a statement that we don't want to risk any weirdos whom we don't know getting in. Only the people entitled enough to be there, thanks.
The likes of TOP and Conservative have demonstrated it's an extremely hard ceiling to break through. Even with the resources and (often) the apparent sympathies of many voters, many people simply won't vote for a party they see as at risk of not reaching the threshold, presumably(?) because they want to feel like their vote's counted for something.
The sooner a government seriously considers lowering that, as was recommended by the MMP review that Judith Collins binned, the better. Another idea I saw the other day, which I'd not seen before, is an Alternative Vote type of thing for the Party Vote. (ie. If your first preference of party doesn't break the threshold, let people assign it elsewhere.)
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Hard News: Where are all the polls at?, in reply to Ian Dalziel,
I see Joyce tweeted "I stand by the way we campaigned" - which says it all really - what loathsome lying lowlifes.
I find the tactics disgusting yet cannot help but think it still works. As long as people are content to respond to this stuff, it's always going to happen.
I guess there are a million ways to frame the outcome, but to me there are just a heap of people don't want things to change. An excuse for the status quo is needed, National throws it in front of its supporters, and it's accepted.
In 2014, the lying excuse was "but Dirty Politics is normal for all politicians!" (ie. everyone's as bad as we are). This year it was about $11 billion and non-existent taxes.
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More of the same, I guess, but I’ll be interested to see what’s happened after specials.
It’s a shame they take so long to come in because a government forming deal may well be done and dusted by that time. How does 16% of advanced votes being specials compare with previous years, especially given the absolute number of advanced votes was so much higher? https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/97170107/election-2017-jacinda-ardern-hoped-for-better-after-strong-national-result
Looking at some of the electorate results (eg Nelson) I once again think it’d be worthwhile using a preferential system for electorate voting. The higher number of options for non National voters seems to suggest vote splitting between similar candidates is a common thing in electorates, and I cringe when I see candidates and supporters complaining about that, but I don’t see preferential voting happening any time soon.
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Hard News: Where are all the polls at?, in reply to Alfie,
I'd have voted early but, after seeing how many are doing so and the discussions about outdated electoral laws, I've held off. It's occurred that this might be the final election where I get an opportunity to vote on a day when nobody's allowed to scream at me about how I should vote.
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Hard News: Where are all the polls at?, in reply to David Haywood,
For example, if (as we're told) Labour voters are particularly fired up now, then isn't it possible that their keeness means they're voting early in higher numbers than supporters of other parties. Because these early Labour voters would then be excluded from opinion polls, then the polls would record this as a *drop* in Labour support
Will the final results be divided into early vote counts versus election day vote counts? It could be a very interesting comparison if it's legal.
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Hard News: Where are all the polls at?, in reply to Dennis Frank,
Undecideds are back up to 14% apparently
Is this possibly just an effect of polling companies only polling people who haven't already voted? ie. There might be the same number of undecideds as there were before, but decided voters have been puling out of the sample population whereas undecideds probably haven't. (After election day, I guess undecideds become 100%.) Or do polling companies weight their results for this?
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Hard News: Where are all the polls at?, in reply to linger,
I read that article closer to when he wrote it and it makes some sense. Australia snagged me when I lived there for a couple of years and signed up to a power company. I've been a dual citizen most of my life, so they forced me to vote. I tried my best to understand the issues, I read about and ranked every one of the 35 candidates for the municipality which was the rectangle of residential houses in Melbourne where I spent 8 hours each night... but it felt really stupid and meaningless because I knew I didn't understand the issues and also I didn't feel especially connected to them. I shifted back to NZ a couple of weeks before a federal election, and removing myself from the Australian electoral roll was my first action after waking up on my first morning back.
But re Danyl's article, I'm still unclear on whether the recent-immigrants and expats explanation fully explains the large number of young people who've not even enrolled. Are these recent immigrants and expats all young people?
I'm not meaning to suggest there's likely to be any sort of youth-quake. Everything about elections always seems to be much much harder than politicians and enthusiastic supporters like to pretend or expect. Getting a party started. Getting people to notice you when they're more interested in their own lives. Getting people to take you seriously. Getting people to agree with you. Getting people to turn out and vote. Expecting that if people bothered to vote, that they'd actually want to vote for you!
All this stuff is really really hard, and often what shows up rapidly also falls over easily. Assuming TOP doesn't reach parliament, I'll be interested if it sticks around and continues to work on building a solid reputation, or if it goes the way of the Internet Party.