On Mon, 25 Dec 2017 17:14:38 +1300, Crash <
nogood@dontbother.invalid>
wrote:
Time to review the election results in 2017 compared to 2014 in terms
of MP numbers:
National went from 60 in 2014 to 56 so -4
Labour went from 32 to 46 so +14.
The Greens went from 14 to 8 so -6.
NZF went from 11 to 9 so -2.
Maori went from 2 to 0 so -2.
United NZ went from 1 to 0 so -1
ACT went from 1 to 1 so no change.
Total no of MPs went from 121 to 120 so -1
After the 2014 election National formed a government with support from
ACT, Maori and United with 64 of 121 seats. In the 2017 election that
party block was down to 57 of 120.
National retained the same number of electorate seats in 2017 (41) so
their loss came from a reduced party vote only.
Labour was the big mover - gaining 2 electorate seats and 12 list
seats. The Greens and NZF are both list-only parties and both went >backwards.
So most of the gains Labour made were at the expense of the Maori,
Green and NZF although they would gave also taken the 4% of the party
vote that National lost.
That is certainly one possibility, and there may be some truth to it.
The figures you have given however could be interpreted differently.
For a start, Labour took votes from the Maori party, but National may
have taken some from that party as well. It is likely that most of the reduction in ACT went to National. In Ohariu, both Labour and National
took votes from United Future. Labour probably took quite a few votes
from National as well, and very little of the Green vote that went to
Labour was ever going to go to National - it was moving within the
Labour/Green group; and it is possible that the issued raised by
Materia Turei helped the Labour/Green group at the expense of
National, but moving towards Labour instead of the Greens.
There will undoubtedly be some analysis of movements by the pollsters
/ analysts, but they will be based on surveys and therefore only
partially reliable.
This helps explain why Winston Peters (and reportedly NZF) got to
decide the government make-up in 2017 despite a reduced seat count.
This was not due to a major shift in voter support (though there was
one) but due to the mathematical results of small shifts in support.
So far the new Government appears to be working well, but the
stability required to keep it together requires that all three parties
team up together. While Winston was a 'team player' with National up
to the early 90s, he is not now so the potential for another bust-up
on similar lines to the 96-99 National-NZF government will always be
there.
The prevous government was finding it increasingly difficult to get
legislation through as the "support parties" (Maori, ACT, UF) realised
that they were bleeding support as they had little to show for
supporting National. The 4 way hydra "coalition" was visibly marginal.
The new government is easier having only three parties, but all of
them are being careful to give both support and recognition to the
other parties - more recent polls are showing that the Greens are
getting back some of the support lost in the Turei furore, at the
expense of National and NZ First, but there is little doubt that at
least for the rest of this term all three parties will get visible
gains through legislation as well as fair coverage in government
announcements.
2018 shapes up as a momentous year.
It sure does - we have yet to see the effect of quite a few major
decisions by the new government. In a couple of cases some of the
gloom and doom predictions of National will have a clear test - that
may result in either elevation of Joyce within National, or his
disappearance, and may also influence when National seeks a new
leader.
--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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