Posts by linger
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Legal Beagle: Election 2017: the Special…, in reply to Dennis Frank,
Nobody should have to explain their own vote (secret ballot and all, innit); but this is not a surprising result at all, surely. The Greens were transparent about campaigning for the party vote, not the electorate vote; and they didn't expect to win any one electorate, so it would be natural even for Green supporters to choose another local representative to support out of the remaining options.
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Legal Beagle: Election 2017: the no…, in reply to izogi,
Yes indeed. National of course has even been marketing itself explicitly on its "stability" as opposed to any option relying on negotiations between different parties. This is of course a big fucking lie, on several levels: (i) the last few National governments have actually relied on such negotiations; and (ii) National had internal disagreements and scandals, but managed to keep them mostly hidden from and soon-forgotten by the media because they continued to be in power.
It is amazing how having power enhances a party's stability (perceived, and actual, as a ministerial salary is quite an incentive not to show disagreements with other members).
So would the Conservatives have fragmented if they'd been in government? Maybe not; but we don't know, because the threshold prevented it.How about other possible minor parties?
Getting 1-2% of the vote, with no threshold, would make for 1 or 2 representatives. It is just about impossible for a 1-representative party to split or show internal disagreement, so it is hard to see how allowing those in would increase party-internal instability.By contrast, for a party to get over 5%, it almost always has, firstly, to gather a critical mass of support from a number of smaller groups that don't necessarily agree with each other; and secondly, if they are successful, to bring in a long tail of less experienced and less competent members. This is not a recipe for stability; quite the reverse. (See Alliance; UF; ACT.)
That leaves bloc stability (e.g. for the purpose of forming a coalition government). That must depend on integrity and flexibility of negotiators ... just as it does at present.
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Legal Beagle: Election 2017: the Special…, in reply to simon g,
As for "Labour [...] holding out hope for [...] govern[ing] alone with New Zealand First" —WTF Claire, were you paying no attention whatsoever during the election campaign?
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Legal Beagle: Election 2017: the no…, in reply to Craig Young,
I don’t agree that a low threshold necessarily increases instability, nor that a high threshold prevents instability, nor that stability itself should be allowed to trump all other considerations.
(i) We will never know whether the Conservatives would have imploded that fast if they’d got into Parliament. We only know that, freed of all responsibility, they were free to do so without any consequences.
(ii) You’re assuming that all parties getting into Parliament over the 5% threshold are inherently more stable. On the evidence to date, this seems unlikely. It was not true of the Alliance (10% in 1996), nor United Future (6.7% in 2002), nor ACT. It is unlikely to be true of NZF post-Peters. Even the Greens have recently demonstrated the potential for personal disagreement to disrupt a party, though I believe they will prove more durable than the others.
Hence the high threshold is not a protection against instability; rather, the high threshold demonstrably acts to shrink small parties under the threat of votes being wasted, and thus increases instability of personnel, at least from one term to the next, if not in the middle of term when such parties split. In the long run, your argument prioritising “stability” is an argument for only a two-party state, at best. -
Legal Beagle: Election 2017: the Special…, in reply to tussock,
Um. NZF went from 162,988 total votes before specials to 186,706 after specials. If they'd really failed to get any more votes over the 15% of specials, they'd have lost a seat or two. I think you accidentally compared the NZF preliminary total with the Greens’ final total.
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Moral of story: observation-based persistence forecasting can work out pretty well. Certainly more reliable than fantasy scenarios.
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Footnote: as expected, not enough nett swing to change the result in the Māori electorates. The specials instead further favoured Labour candidates, except in Te Tai Hauāuru, where Adrian Paki Rurawhe's majority over Howie Tamati decreased slightly (to just 1,039). That's how agonisingly close they came to getting in; and if they had, they were only just under the party vote level required for two seats.
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Speaker: The Government lost the election, in reply to linger,
buggrit, ran out of editing time:
wrong
in the sense of showing incomplete understanding of the system.
["Don't know" responses presumably should be included in that category.] -
Speaker: The Government lost the election, in reply to tussock,
Agree entirely. Thought I’d made the same points, actually (perhaps too obliquely?): (i) that in some electorates (equating to ~5% of voters in 2014) the “right” answer was indeed that the electorate vote was more “important” (where it determined whether one of four minor parties would be included at all); and (ii) there were other possible reasons for thinking the electorate vote at least as “important” — such as the one you state: wanting a local representative who’s not a total douchetard. Though that’s more complex: depending on list rankings and overall party vote share, it might not matter how you cast your electorate vote, both the aforementioned douchetard and your preferred representative might still get in.
(…Hm, douchetard … is that a word? meh, should be… :-)
But regarding (ii): if the context of the question defined “important” more narrowly, then, even given (i), about 30% of the responses would arguably be wrong. -
Hard News: The Day After Tomorrow, in reply to stephen walker,
And the coat-tails provision should definitely be scrapped if the threshold were to be halved.
Nah, that would still maintain the possibility of inequality in value of votes between electorates and/or between electoral and party votes in some electorates. As it stands the coat-tail provision acts to increase the possible proportionality in the face of limits imposed by the threshold; much of the criticism it has received seems based on who has benefited most from it to date. If the threshold is removed, then coat-tailing becomes unnecessary; similarly, if the threshold is lowered to anything under 1.2%, coat-tailing has no practical effect and so becomes moot; but if the threshold remains above the level where a party would get 2 seats (minimum % of non-excluded party vote = 1.5/120=1.25%), then coat-tailing can increase proportionality and should remain.