Posts by linger
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Hard News: The Day After Tomorrow, in reply to Tom Semmens,
One could also frame it as sheer disbelief that many Māori electorate voters don’t after all have the same degree of rabid self-interest and mad tactical voting skillz exemplified by Epsom. “It fucking worked for fucking ACT!” It is a tad unfair.
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Legal Beagle: Election 2017: the Special…, in reply to Jason Kemp,
As previously noted, up to 10% of the population officially counted as eligible voters may actually know themselves not to be eligible, or truly not be involved enough in NZ society (yet/currently) to want to vote. So 90% may be the effective maximum possible.
Recent immigrants (within last 3 years): over 100,000.
Long-term expats (adults, over 3 years abroad) who are registered and therefore officially eligible: about 300,000. Votes from overseas are included in specials, but they’re a very small proportion of them, so nowhere near that number are voting. -
Hard News: The Day After Tomorrow, in reply to Tom Semmens,
Eh, some considerable frustration at this stage is understandable. Once gone from Parliament, there's no easy way back for the Māori Party, and they know it.
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Hard News: Where are all the polls at?, in reply to tussock,
Values (1972-1990) never won a single seat in any election. Their best showing was in 1975 (5.2%, which under FPP still got them nothing).
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Hard News: Where are all the polls at?, in reply to simon g,
Social Democrats pre-MMP, maybe. The Bob Jones vanity project got to double-digit support back in the day, too, but again, rich man's hobby, and guess which two digits I'm raising to that.
Anybody starting without a representative already sitting has a huge disadvantage. Maybe someone with a massive media profile could break in, but you look at the possible contenders there, and you think, how could they be any kind of force for change? -
Legal Beagle: Election 2017: the Special…, in reply to Caleb D'Anvers,
I have spent the last day trying to explain the results to my colleagues in Japan in terms of “Well, we don’t know yet, but the most likely outcome seems to be that the Lying Bastard Party will try to form a coalition with the Racist Party. … Yes, I know, I thought we were better than Australia too.”
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Hard News: Where are all the polls at?, in reply to simon g,
For all practical purposes, unless the threshold is reduced to <1%, that better option would have to involve a locally popular sitting electorate MP forming their own party. Any takers?
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Nah, just a less than brilliant opposition (with a surge coming too little, too late).
Want to look back at the "lessons to be learned for Labour" comments after the 2014 election? Things like:
(i) Labour should adopt a more collegial leadership structure, with co-leaders.
(ii) Labour should visibly, consistently, and positively work with the Greens and other potential coalition partners throughout the term.
(iii) Labour should do much more to express opposition to National's policies, and explain what they would repeal and do differently.Were those lessons learned? No, they were largely ignored for almost the entire term. The relatively amicable passing of leadership from Little to Ardern was about as close as they came to (i), and came only after 2 years of backbiting; meanwhile, partnership with the Greens wasn't pursued in any timely sense and remained sketchy up to the last, while any possible partnership with the Maori Party wasn't allowed to outweigh the battle for electorate votes.
Sometimes it feels like being a Cassandra in a coalmine.
(i.e. no-one listens ... but if you stop complaining,
that doesn't mean things have gotten any better...) -
Legal Beagle: Election 2017: the Special…, in reply to Tom Semmens,
Well, if we're indulging in wild speculation, imagine this far-fetched scenario: Winston chooses to remain outside government, leaving National scrambling to make an agreement with the Greens. That'd be an entertaining three years.
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Hard News: Where are all the polls at?, in reply to Ian Dalziel,
1.2 million
Reckon they multiplied the % of votes for National by the total number of registered voters, rather than the number of actual voters. Muppets.