Posts by linger
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--which is to say, yes: graeme is correct, because seats given to "independents" are deducted from the total of 120 allocated among parties. (The provision is there in subsection 8, but we haven't had any real cases for that to apply to yet.) So for "independent" in my thought experiment, read: "party with only one serious candidate".
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independents don't create overhang
... but a one-electorate party a la Jim Anderton could?
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In an alternative universe, Labour could actually have won the last election by the following strategy:
(1) Select 21 trusted Labour members with sufficient personal following to win their electorates regardless of party affiliation [yeah, I know; that's why we're in an alternative universe -- possibly a Twilight Zone];
(2) Let them run as independents. Presto, each wins their own seat, without affecting the Labour party vote.
(3) Labour campaigns chasing only the party vote, and (on last week's results) gets 43 members in off the list.
(4) Labour forms a coalition including the Greens, the Prog, and the 21 independents.
Meanwhile, keep all other election results exactly as they were.
Results: A hangover-inducing overhang; a Parliament of 143 MPs; and a Labour-led coalition that can call on the support of 43+8+1+21=73 members, compared to National+ACT+UF=59+5+1=65 and Maori=5.
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Maybe I missed something, but to me the most obvious feature is that she's signalling she voted twice and is happy she got away with it?
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andrew: if Palin is taken as the representative example, they jus' be so chillin, they even be mentally chillun.
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jb: One person's "humourless" is another's "not obviously funny enough" (which may well apply to the responses you got too -- you might want to consider re-reading them with that in mind).
Irony is tricky on the web 'cause tone of voice doesn't carry well in text.
Irony apparently directed at language errors is especially trickyon PAS. I think that's a positive sign, reflecting the site's general inclusive tolerance. The end result is that language errors that don't affect understanding of the message are usually politely ignored. Errors that result in some unintended reading are fair game (but only by gleefully taking that reading further, engaging the [apparent] message; any other response can easily come off as attacking the writer). -
There would be no Māori party overhang if Māori turned out at the same rate as [Pakeha]
eh? I'm sorry, but I can't see any logical connection between turnout and overhang. Overhang results when a party gets members in only through winning electorates. And you can win an electorate with a plurality, you don't need a majority.
Overhangs are most likely when there is a conjunction of a special interest party and special interest electorate(s).
Dunne presumably represents a plurality of his electorate constituents. He could call himself the Ohariu Party, poll just enough support to win the Ohariu electorate... and that would result in an overhang. If another electorate had the same voting behaviour, and could be represented by a Dunne clone, you could get a multi-electorate overhang. So in principle it's not a something limited to the Maori party -- though it's made easier for them by the existence of the Maori electorates. The combination of Maori electorates and a Maori party is particularly likely to lead to overhang primarily because they both aim to serve the same sector of the population.But what's that got to do with turnout exactly? A counterexample:
If more Maori registered on the Maori roll, there would be more Maori electorates -- and potentially, though not necessarily, a larger overhang. -
Actually, "Him and his partner" is at least as correct as "He and his partner".
"Him" here isn't marking object case, but is used as an emphatic form (which in English happens to have the same shape as the object).IIRC in French the two uses have different sets of pronouns
(objects me, te, se/ le... vs emphatics moi, toi, soi/ lui...)
but that doesn't make the English system any less valid.Pedants may argue about it; me, I don't really care. (Presumably jb would not feel any need to "correct" the pronouns in that last clause.)
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It isn't the "stable fees" we have to worry about:
they're predictable, by definition.
It's the unstable fees we may have to pony up for.And as for "saving our ponies" --
many NZers tried doing exactly that in the past few years
...albeit in finance companies...
how do you think we got in this deep a mess? -
Oh, Ben -- I forgot one other problem with the PCA (which in part links to your point about quantifying vote differences, but is mathematically even worse):
(iii) the behaviour measured (voting choice) isn't necessarily scalar (=your point), or even *ordinal*, as there can be (and have been) cases where two parties both oppose a bill -- or both support a bill -- but for completely opposite reasons. In order to give any interpretation to the principal components, we have to assume (or hope) that such cases are extremely rare.
(The original analyst was very careful to avoid interpreting the dimensions; but an uninterpretable principal component is effectively useless.)