Is Winnie going Labour Or National Poll
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you guys all know that MMP is meant to work by parties working together and finding common ground, compromising and behaving like adults eh?
now i understand having limited faith in the participants doing that - and pollys in general - but if everyone thinks this is going to be a clusterfuck simply because one party is not in sole charge, then why not just go back to FPP?
oh, because that is a shit system, that's why.
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@reprobate said in Is Winnie going Labour Or National Poll:
parties working together and finding common ground, compromising and behaving like adults eh?
I suspect that will be the problem.
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@reprobate said in Is Winnie going Labour Or National Poll:
you guys all know that MMP is meant to work by parties working together and finding common ground, compromising and behaving like adults eh?
now i understand having limited faith in the participants doing that - and pollys in general - but if everyone thinks this is going to be a clusterfuck simply because one party is not in sole charge, then why not just go back to FPP?
oh, because that is a shit system, that's why.
Labour could no doubt work with the Greens and NZF in isolation. But when you have the Greens and NZF in the same government, well, grab your popcorn. Remember the Greens branded Winnie a racist during the campaign, and he didn't exactly let it slide...
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@reprobate said in Is Winnie going Labour Or National Poll:
you guys all know that MMP is meant to work by parties working together and finding common ground, compromising and behaving like adults eh?
now i understand having limited faith in the participants doing that - and pollys in general - but if everyone thinks this is going to be a clusterfuck simply because one party is not in sole charge, then why not just go back to FPP?
oh, because that is a shit system, that's why.
Shit is in the eye of the beholder though I guess. I think MMP is a shit system.
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Was listening to the Spinoff's politics podcast (Gone By Lunchtime), and Ben Thomas (National staffer from 2008, so he'd have a good idea) downplayed how much impact a large opposition will have because:
- All oppositions get a lot of questions in the House and generally coordinate better than they are given credit for
- Government resources dwarf opposition resources
- A lot of the current National ministers aren't that knowledgeable of the details of their portfolios (Bennett and Coleman are particularly bad, apparently) so without departmental support, they won't be effective
Not stated at that point of the podcast, but Labour get to choose the Speaker, who will almost certainly be Trevor Mallard, so that might have some sort of impact (ideally Speakers would not be biased, but most of them tend to favour the government that appointed them).
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I just spent some time reading about MMP, hearing that its a shit system.
MMP has been sent to two referenda in NZ and won both times, if only just (53% in 2003 originally and 56% in 2011). That was after a long process into electoral reform.
Are those percentage wins due in part to which government was most recently elected?
Is there another system that would be preferred?
Because here we have any number of systems depending which election you're talking about - tho we're burdened by having states as well as federal government.
FPP obviously cops flak for not necessarily being representational. But our preference system(s) here allow parties to basically sell their allegiances anyway, to a party you may not necessarily like. So does it really make a difference?
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@nta I agree with you, basically all systems will produce results which are anomalous or upsetting from time to time. FPP produced a number of results where the party with the most votes did not win the most seats, or where coalitions left the party with the most seats and votes in opposition or where smaller parties with high numbers of votes won no seats at all. If you lived in Avon (now Christchurch East - my electorate) or Wallace (now Clutha-Southland), a vote for anything other than Labour or National respectively was a lost vote, where now those votes still have meaning.
So, is MMP ideal - no. Is it better than FPP - I say it is because FPP produced more anomalies, others may say it isn't. Is there a better system - maybe, but I don't know if it would be much better.
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@godder the lost votes is key. if some people's votes don't count, that isn't democracy. it also gives a massive 'barrier to entry' for any small or new party. nobody wants their vote wasted.
i know a few people who said they would have voted TOP, but didn't think they would get 5% so didn't. good decision under the current rules.
if you have enough votes proportionally to get an MP, then you should get one i think. there's 50 ish list seats, so the threshold should be 2%, and fuck off the coat-tails nonsense.
don't know if this will paste properly, but it shows that MPs under MMP has been much more closely aligned with people's votes. from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electoral_system_of_New_Zealand#MMP_in_New_ZealandRepresentation statistics[edit]
The Gallagher Index is a measurement of how closely the proportions of votes cast for each party is reflected in the number of parliamentary seats gained by that party. The resultant disproportionality figure is a percentage – the lower the index, the better the match.[39]Election Disproportionality[40] Number of Parties in Parliament
1946–1993 average 11.10% 2.4
1996 3.43% 6
1999 2.97% 7
2002 2.37% 7
2005 1.13% 8
2008 3.84% 7
2011 2.38% 8