Posts by Danyl Mclauchlan
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Twitsplaining: verb. informal. Mode of discourse in online debate deploying a combination of neologisms, portmanteaus, animated gifs, insults and exasperated complaints about how stupid everyone else is to try and win people to your point-of-view
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If you argue that women should be quota-ed into parliament on the basis of their communication skills and empathy, then you're suggesting a meritocracy, rather than a quota to balance representation of viewpoints.
I too am worried that I might not become a Cabinet Minister because some grasping women who is more qualified than I am displaces me.
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Would there be a men’s quota as well as a women’s quota?
The way the Green Party does it is that you can't go over a maximum of 60% for either gender.
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But, even with that qualifier, the actual swing voters hiding among the "Im a centrists" are the ones who eventually decide the election, so it's probably better to take them seriously.
I just think the best way to win these people is to 'be good at politics' rather than make all sorts of policy and value compromises that these voters almost certainly do not care about.
In the UK context, Labour Party centrists attacking Jeremy Corbyn as a radical communist are being terrible at politics. He's going to be the next leader and screaming that the de facto leader is unelectable is just stupid. You notice how disaffected National factions DIDN'T do that with Don Brash?
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A couple of quick observations.
1. Being a centrist is about marketing as much as anything else. Don Brash is the most radical, ideological party-leader we've ever had in New Zealand (with the arguable exception of Hone Harawira) yet he branded himself as 'mainstream' and came incredibly close to winning a general election.
2. I think there's often a gap between what people are thinking when they identify themselves as 'centrist' ie 'I am a moderate and sensible person', and what politicians and political analysts hear, ie 'I am available to your party.' A teacher who is a delegate for the PPTA and who has voted Labour their entire life or a farmer who has voted National for their entire life are just as likely to self-identify as 'centrists' as people who are actually swing-voters.
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If left-wing centrists are going to occupy the central place in left-wing parliamentary democracy they seem to feel they deserve they need to either (a) be able to beat right-wing parties in general elections or (b) beat left-wing candidates in party elections. Blair was able to do both but his successors haven't been able to do either.
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The responses to Q B9 - number of immigrants allowed into NZ - are also interesting.
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There's a weight column which makes the data a bit more robust. But yeah, Asian and Pacifica New Zealanders are way younger than other demographics, which gives them lower response rates to surveys like these, so the data isn't as robust as you'd like. On the other hand, it's all there is.
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the ethnicity categories only reach to “Chinese, Indian or other Asian
Yes. You can also specify your ethnicity; most of the entries in this category are people writing 'New Zealander' in a state of high dudgeon.
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And if Labour put this much effort into programming an algorithm to identify us, I wonder if it also estimated how many New Zealand Chinese votes this study would cost them.
Based on the 2011 NZES survey, not many. That's a National or Did-Not-Vote bunch of voters.