Guest Post: One Electorate MP Threshold
Posted: May 7, 2012 Filed under: Policy Leave a comment »This is a guest post submitted by Bruce Tulloch. It also happens to be his submission to the MMP Review.
I believe that the one MP threshold which allows a “Tail” of extra MPS in despite less than 5% overall support should be withdrawn.
Figures of donations to parties and their election expenses are now available. The attached tables are illuminating.
The Winston Peters phenomenon shows the impact of personality over policy. Charisma plus publicity (very largely free in Winston’s case) can have a huge effect on the electoral outcome.
ACT, with neither personalities nor policies with more than marginal appeal, did very poorly in this election. Despite getting donations ten times those of the Greens they got less than 1/10 of the Green vote, however with this sort of money a party with a more telegenic candidate plus saturation advertising and manipulated coverage could well swing one electoral seat and an increased party vote.
84.3% of ACT’s donations were were of $5,001 or more, only 5.4% were under $1,500. ACT received a very significantly higher proportion of large donations than National, Labour or the Greens.
The Conservative Party apparently did not release its donation figures to the Electoral Commission by the deadline but its election costs were the second highest at $1,878,000, some 80% of National’s total. It appears the bulk of the funding came from the party’s leader. They achieved 2.65% of the party votes.
The dominance of support for ACT and the Conservatives by a relatively small number of big donors and the lack of widespread voter support would indicate that their best tactic is concentration of force, to focus on a single electorate (as in Epsom) and thereby drag in extra MPs, despite less than 5% support.
This distorts proportionality and is also wide open to collusion with other parties hoping for inflated support from ideological allies or manipulable opportunists.
Therefore the one-electorate threshold should be dropped.
Getting NZers to vote
Posted: April 29, 2012 Filed under: 2011 Election Leave a comment »Great to see that people are starting to look very seriously at the 74.2% rate in the 2011 general election.
Radio NZ have done a very good program me looking at non-voting and declining turnout. It’s 28 minutes long, and well worth a listen. You can download an MP3 of it here.
Thanks to Jordan Carter for the heads up.
Election Ads: London Mayoralty
Posted: April 12, 2012 Filed under: Campaigning, International 2 Comments »One of the largest local body elections on the planet is just over a month away. It is to elect the Mayor of London and the Greater London Authority. It is worth noting that any commonwealth or EU citizen living in London is eligible to vote – so make sure you remind your friends doing their OE in old blighty (details here).
The two main players, Tory Mayor, Boris Johnson, and his Labour challenger (and predecessor), Ken Livingstone have been on the campaign trail literally for years already. But they formal campaign has just kicked off with the launch of their television ads. While I do have my obvious partisan bias, I do think that Ken’s ad really outshines Boris. Very interested to hear what you think.
Firstly, Ken’s ad…
And now Boris’…
Dystopian campaign ads
Posted: March 30, 2012 Filed under: Campaigning Leave a comment »We don’t often see negative campaign ads in New Zealand, at least not anywhere near the scale that you get in the US.
Slate have done a fantastic article on dystopian ads - where they advertiser portrays the potential disasters electing their opponent will create. The whole article is worth checking out, but this brilliant one from Rick Santorum is quite special…
Obamaville is a place where all the women are terrified, all the men are oppressed, and all the gas prices are above average. It’s the setting of the most popular Rick Santorum commercial of all time; half a million YouTube clicks for a video set in a dark, dramatically edited 2014. Santorum isn’t the first candidate to try to scare Americans into voting for him. There’s a history here, a rich tradition of ads from candidates who predict doom if they don’t win. These candidates, being desperate, usually lose. America endures. But the ads keep coming anyway.
Labour’s review – have your say
Posted: March 30, 2012 Filed under: Labour Transformation 2 Comments »Labour’s organisational review is on-going. I went to the Wellington City meeting a few weeks ago, and it was an interesting affair. There were a lot of thoughts flying around the room. Some really good ideas. One or two that I didn’t personally agree with as well, but I think it’s really important with a process like this to get as many points of view as possible.
The current phase of consultation closes first thing on Monday morning. If you haven’t already done so, I’d highly recommend you take five minutes to make a quick submission on the review website. I’ve just made my submission – I didn’t answer all the questions, but I did have one or two points that I emphasised.
Regardless of if you’re a member, or just interested or concerned about the future of the Labour Party, I’d urge you all to take a few minutes to make a submission. It’s painless!
News looking good for the European left
Posted: March 27, 2012 Filed under: International Leave a comment »The French elections are quickly approaching, and things are looking good (but not great) for Socialist candidate François Hollande…
A quick look at the 13 – yes, 13 – polls carried out recently reveals … not a lot for the first round, next month.
Four suggest Sarkozy is leading, seven have the socialist candidate, François Hollande, ahead, and two have them neck-and-neck. The leader of the far-right Front National (FN), Marine Le Pen, is given a first-round score ranging from 13.3% to 18%, in an election when even 1% is going to make a difference.
Six of the 13 polls give the former prime minister, and Sarkozy’s sworn enemy, Dominique de Villepin between 1% and 1.5%. There is only one problem: he’s not even standing.
Interesting times.
Then in Spain, the austerity budgets of the recently elected People’s Party (Conservative) government are coming up against massive resistance…
Spain‘s prime minister, Mariano Rajoy, faces the toughest week of his three months in office as he is forced to announce up to €40bn (£33.45bn) in spending cuts and taxes in a budget on 30 March, the day after a general strike.
…
Rajoy was recently forced to backtrack by fellow EU leaders who refused to accept the deficit target of 5.8% of GDP Spain set unilaterally for this year. They told him to cut to 5.3%.
Queensland and proportional elections
Posted: March 25, 2012 Filed under: International Leave a comment »Firstly, commiserations to Anna Bligh, her team and my ALP colleagues who fought so hard for Queensland. Also, congratulations to Campbell Newman – the size of his win is impressive indeed.
One thing that has struck me though, is just how un-proportional the results are. For example, Bligh’s Labor Party received 26.6% of the first preference votes, yet they are only predicted to gain seven seats in the 89 seat Parliament (roughly 8% of the seats).
I’ve crunched some numbers and determined what the Queensland state parliament would look like if they used a purely proportional voting system, with a 5% threshold. It’s important to note that there are other systems out there, such as New Zealand’s MMP, which would allow for the two independents to maintain seats and would change the makeup of Parliament. It also demonstrates the size of Newman’s LNP win – even with a proportional voting system they manage to get a majority of the seats in the parliament – something traditionally very rare with systems like this.
It leaves me feeling very grateful that here in New Zealand we have a proportional voting system!
What the current makeup of the Queensland parliament looks like.
What the Queensland parliament might look like with a proportional voting system.
| Party | % Vote | Predicted Actual Seats | Proportional Seats |
| Labour | 27% | 7 | 25 |
| Liberal National | 50% | 78 | 46 |
| Greens | 8% | 0 | 7 |
| Australian | 12% | 2 | 11 |
| Others | 5% | 2 | 0 |
| Total | 89 | 89 | |
A big day in politics
Posted: March 24, 2012 Filed under: International Leave a comment »Two big events for social democratic parties this weekend.
The first is the Queensland state election. It’s expected that Labor are going to lose – but there may be a silverlining is they can prevent opposition leader Campbell Newman from winning a seat.
The other event is the Canadian NDP leadership convention, which is underway. I haven’t been following it closely and have no idea who will prevail.
I’ll probably be live tweeting the evening – feel free to follow!
Nick Leggett on the role of local government
Posted: March 23, 2012 Filed under: Local Government Leave a comment »Nick Leggett, the Mayor of Porirua City, has caused a few headlines this week with his take on the government’s proposed local government reforms.
His main point is that councils’ first priority must be infrastructure, but that does not mean that they don’t have a moral obligation to look at the wider picture and highlight areas of need or concern to central government and advocate on behalf of the community.
He made the point very well on Back Benches this week…
Osbourne’s budget – the reaction
Posted: March 22, 2012 Filed under: International Leave a comment »The Conservative British chancellor, George Osbourne, has just released their budget. It’s not going down so well. The New Statesman have a fantastic gallery of the various newspaper front pages.
When even the Daily Torygraph are publishing stuff like this, you know you’re in trouble…
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