Posts by tussock
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The average MP does about 4 terms, so every 4th seat on the list should be a fresh face; then no matter how many you lose or gain you've always got proportional untainted faces. Ideally the older MPs should be retired from the list to marginal electorates, and they can stay as long as they hold them. Makes for an automatic clean-out every time you score badly.
But selling the dams to the retirement fund and ACC is just fiddling the books. Net loss of government assets in exchange for temporarily lower debt increases; they're just selling their foreign shares of big companies rather than the dams. Which would be awesome if they'd invest it in something better than irrigation at about 1-2% return.The Greens may be able to help them there, fortunately. Renewables, FTW.
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I wonder if we could allow post-vote coalitions to form to get people over the threshold. So ALCP could go Green to get them an extra MP, and maybe Mana too if it rounded them up to another one in total. Conservatives could go with National to drag in 3-2 = 1 more total MP on the right and one less Labour or Green. Labour could always save a more radical left-wing party like Mana that tries to energise the youth vote, as National would with ACT.
Winston could've gone with Labour in 2008 for another couple of "opposition" MPs and a tied parliament, but only if Labour agreed.
That should mitigate the issue of small parties, ACT wouldn't need it's free electorate when it's supporting National anyway, same with Dunne, and there's no wasted vote if someone in parliament can hold their nose long enough to pick up the seats; but truly obnoxious parties still miss out.
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Most fun with Sainte-Laguë is the odd rounding when you shift the total.
124 MPs = 62 v 62.
120 MPs = 61 v 59.
116 MPs = 58 v 58.Bullshit, eh. That's why we need preferences on the party vote, stop the left-right rounding errors on these close ones, even though Conservative would push right in this case. 8]
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Hard News: Democracy Night, in reply to Steve Parks,
The more people who would be willing to tactically vote to be rid of ACT for the left, the more people you'd have to assume would be willing to tactically vote to keep them in for National. Given that it's a National seat, there's only one realistic result there.
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Oh, and apologies to Sua William Sio and his crew in Māngere that I pointed at before here, because 27759 including specials is a really good turnout given the age profile of the electorate, the high number on the Māori roll, and it's all higher and redder than last time. As is all of Auckland. Well done there. Just a couple percent down on typical enrolments for under-25's, but better enrolment with older voters.
Where Labour has fallen isn't Auckland, they gained everything back in the city from the 2008 drop-off, it's everywhere else in the country that's flipped to brand Key, there's a lot of people in the other centres and wider out voting Labour local and National list.
I guess there's only so much money and time to go around.
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The results were pretty much what the polls were suggesting
The hell they are.
The poll of polls I've seen had national at 51 or 52, and that should be +-2%. They're probably only getting 47 after specials, which demonstrates a massive flaw in polling methodology (or a one in a thousand oddball, which it isn't, because this always happens, worse for the Greens).
The polls lie for National and the Greens. Always have, always will.
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So, a question again for every political party: who are the 250,000 ticks that would have made a classical 80%+ turnout. If someone could figure out what they'd vote for, there's 12 seats just waiting to be had, 6 of which come off National.
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Changes things though, dunnit. Winston doesn't get the "save that wasted 4% this time" vote off Labour/Green. ALCP maybe gets more than it's 60% of a seat when it's not a wasted vote (they've had 2% in the past). More anti-sale (christian-)conservatives flee National to Colin's party knowing it's a safe anti-Labour vote.
That could change things to ...
ACT 1
National 55
United 1Conservative 5
Māori 3
NZF 6Labour 34
Greens 14Māna 1
ALCP 1Then if Labour and National hadn't rorted all the funding for themselves, we might even hear from the little guys occasionally. Certainly leaves a lot of ways to build the 61 vote majority on any particular policy.
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At that rate he could sell the super fund to the ACC, and then sell the ACC to the superfund. Think of the profits!
So, turnouts in National seats are 35k or so, turnouts in Labour seats are 28k or so. Basically, National wins by default when poor people stay home.
Just 22k in Māngere: that alone costs Labour two seats. Do they not know this? Is there just a fundamental lack of enrolment and engagement there? Language barriers? What? How does that keep happening?
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Holy fuck. JK just said on TV3 that the super fund and the ACC are going to buy the power companies. So he's selling half of his 100% owned government assets to some other 100% owned government assets and claiming a profit.
Super fund sells a billion dollars of US assets, buys a billion dollars of NZ assets, and the govt thereby claims a billion dollars profit to "balance the books". Of course. Except the govt now owns a billion dollars less assets.