New Zealand general election, 20th September 2014

[politicus]

Frodo created a "who would you vote for" thread on the Individual Politics board. I don't think there ever was a NZ 2014 general election thread.

How did Labour manage to get that unpopular?

[politicus]

The Labour leader Mark David Cunliffe is in deep sh**t.

[politicus]

Because the many new parties of the right and centre-but-lol-actually-right of the 1990s were run by crooks and lunatics.

Sure, but that still doesn't really explain why there hasn't been any serious competition to the Nationals.

Generally its difficult to keep the centre-right united in a non-FPTP system, so "How have they managed to keep free marketeers/the religious right/the anti-immigration types in the tent?" is an interesting question.

[politicus]

Sure, but that still doesn't really explain why there hasn't been any serious competition to the Nationals.

There was. Look at elections from a decade ago.

Yeah, 2002 is 17,5% for ACT and NZ First combined, but by serious I was refering to a non-clown/crook/lunatic challenge.

I suppose you could say that the Nats have been lucky being challenged by low quality opponents, but that is in itself an interesting fact.

[politicus]

There is also ACT New Zealand and United Future with one seat each.

There is a 5% threshold, but it doesn't apply to parties winning an electorate (through doesn't really apply to ACT and United Future because .66% and .21% doesn't gave any proportional list seats anyways, even without a threshold).

Odd that United Future can win an electorate on 0,2%, it must be an extremely small one, do they have very uneven electorates?

Clearly unfortunate that Conservatives can get 4,1% without representation and two parties get in with less than 1% (and less than 1/121 of the votes).

[politicus]

National Party        48.1  61 (majority of 1 seat!)
Labour                 24.7  32
Greens                 10.0  13
New Zealand First    8.9  11

Below threshold
----------------------------
Māori Party               1.3     2
ACT New Zealand    0.7    1
United Future        0.2    1
Conservative           4.1    0   
Internet MANA        1.3    0
----------------------------

Fringe parties
---------------------------
Aotearoa Legalise Cannabis Party   0.4    
Ban1080                                  0.2   
Democrats for Social Credit          0.1   
The Civilian Party   906                  0.0    
NZ Independent Coalition          0.0   
Focus New Zealand                  0.0    

1/121 = 0,83%, so United Future clearly got a very cheap seat for Peter Dunne. I gotta look at his electorate, but the votes for other candidates must have split a lot.