Ardern re-elected in NZ

[stui magpie]

Like fishing with dynamite, one stick and out come the senile socialist collective, the possum wrangler in his possum powered sled and the specimen in his V10 iron lung.

So Trump and Adern can both win elections with less than 50% of the vote, but Trump is a cheat and Adern is a hugely popular leader who won in a landslide.

[Pies4shaw]

Yes, Trump is a cheat. What's your point?

It's all comparative. Trump won the Presidency with way less of the popular vote than his opponent. Arden won the NZ election with about double the vote of the nearest rival. NZ is not a two-party system. The US is. It's not that difficult, surely?

[David]

[Tannin]

A clarification. Suppose there are 100 seats - 50 ordinary electorates, and 50 party list seats.

Now suppose that the Parrot Party and the Wombat Party each win 20% of the vote. (For simplicity, assume that all voters who voted Parrot in their electorates also voted Parrot with their party vote.)

However, Wombat Party voters are spread out all over the place where Parrot Party people congregate in specific areas. (This is very common in real life: consider the Nationals and the Greens here in Oz. Because most National Party voters live in a small number of electorates, they get quite a few MPs, while the Greens - who get way more votes, year in and year out - are lucky to get even one seat. This shows how unfair single-member electorates are, even when you have preferential voting.)

Back to New Zealand. With 20% of the overall vote, but quite localised, the Wombat Party wins 16 electorate seats. With the same vote spread out evenly, the Parrots get nothing at all!

But because the Parrots got more than the threshold (5%), and they got 20% of the overall vote, they are allocated 20 party list seats (out of the 50-odd available).

The Wombats, also with 20% of the vote, are allocated 4 party list seats, taking them up to 20 as well.

Result: a pretty fair representation of the will of the people.

[Tannin]

[stui magpie]

^^

Which is how Winston peters, the previous deputy PM lost his seat because his party didn't get enough votes to clear the threshold.

[Pies4shaw]

Peters supported this system (he campaigned for it around the time he quit the Nats). At one stage, it yielded his party 17 seats. Last time, his party held 9 and this time, they were dumped out on their backsides because they received almost no votes.

[stui magpie]

I wasn't suggesting otherwise, simply elaborating on Tannin's quite good explanation of how the NZ electoral system works with the observation about Winnie.

[Tannin]

^ Agree with all of that.

[David]

Peters always seemed a strange guy – was painted as NZ's Pauline Hanson at one point, but seemed more like a Bob Katter to me (politically all over the place, mostly there on the strength of his own charisma / media profile). Seems like he used to attract a lot of the non-Nationals right-wing vote, but after his alliance with Ardern they fled to the ACT party instead.

[Pies4shaw]

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-10-21/new-zealand-jacinda-ardern-election-parliament-diversity-lgbt/12782724

[What'sinaname]

....and, she's gorn.

Her popularity in NZ has fallen to the lowest level as NZs liberal approach to crime is seeing the country dealing with record levels of crime.

[stui magpie]

Never really had the chance to try to implement the things she wanted, failing popularity to the point she would likely have lost the next election if she stayed as leader, the option of taking a generous pension for life at 37 is far more attractive than staying in Parliament.