Public Address | Cafe | Legal Beagle: Election 2014: the no threshold counterfactual

tussock

Sat, 04 Oct 2014 16:15:25 +1300

And with the specials counted (update the post!) the Greens grab a seat off New Zealand First, instead of from National, in this counterfactual situation.

Still 7 seats change
+5 Conservative and +2 Mana,
National -3, Labour -2, Green -1, NZ First -1.

@PualRowe, Without National supporting Dunne, his overhang…

Kumara Republic

Thu, 25 Sep 2014 14:06:36 +1200

“the Conservatives insatiable desire to lock poor and brown people in prisons”

If there's a racial motive to do so, then the CCCP are pretty good at concealing it. If they didn't, they'd probably be a lot more like the European ultra-populist movements like the Front National, UKIP or Partij…

Paul Rowe

Thu, 25 Sep 2014 13:54:29 +1200

I do wonder (I have no data to back it up) whether some National voters in Epsom gave their electorate vote to Labour or the Greens because they didn't want to hold their noses and vote for Act. They had been told not to vote for the National candidate, and…

Craig Ranapia

Wed, 24 Sep 2014 07:31:14 +1200

I don’t really understand how tactical voting isn’t isn’t tribal. Voting for your local MP, even if the polls tell you it’s futile, because they represent your ideology isn’t tribal, it’s just being truthful. And trust me, that’s a more sustainable way of being.

Yes! And it's more than a…

Stephen R

Wed, 24 Sep 2014 06:23:30 +1200

but the Conservatives insatiable desire to lock people in prisons, just gives me the shits.

"the Conservatives insatiable desire to lock poor and brown people in prisons"

FTFY.

Maori kids with spray cans should go to prison; White-guys-with-knives who chase Maori-kids-with-spray-cans down the road and stab them to death should…

tussock

Tue, 23 Sep 2014 22:21:49 +1200

Labour and National really still want it to be FPP with two parties where they scrap over the median voter and can ignore everyone else, but what Social Credit and the NZ Party did to them in '81 and '84 resp. means they can't.

It's funny, they set up the…

icehawk

Tue, 23 Sep 2014 15:40:10 +1200

The Conservative party platform is evil, and I am gleeful at their misfortune.

Yet even I acknowledge that their exclusion in unfair. I hope the Nats do reform the threshold.

I question, however, your belief that it is in the Nats best interests to do so. Always remember that the…

Keir Leslie

Mon, 22 Sep 2014 14:11:01 +1200

The people who are voting Labour candidate in Epsom or Green candidate in Ohariu will either be (a) very principled and impossible to sway or (b) low-information voters who don't know what they are doing. Inherently, there is almost nothing political parties can do to change the behaviour of those…

tussock

Mon, 22 Sep 2014 14:07:07 +1200

If the left told people to vote Blue candidate, it would just drive more National voters to the Yellow one. They have over twice as many party votes, they can elect whoever the hell the want with a 67% split.

It makes more left votes nationwide to complain at what…

Robert M

Mon, 22 Sep 2014 12:36:38 +1200

Re: tactical voting: In Epsom, Labour + Green + NZF + Maori + IM candidates received 5557 votes, their parties received 8926. So maybe about 38% voted tactically (presumably for the National candidate). National received 9398 candidate and 19961 party votes, so 53% voted tactically. It's hard to believe that…

mike gemmell

Mon, 22 Sep 2014 08:48:42 +1200

I'd like to see something like an approval voting system for electorates. Where you can vote yes or no to any or all of the candidates. It's supposed to elect the Condorcet winner almost all of the time and goes some way to negate tactical voting.

Kumara Republic

Mon, 22 Sep 2014 00:26:54 +1200

And it seems Labour & Green voters in Epsom and Ohariu still remain too politically tribalistic to tactically vote.

Daniel

Sun, 21 Sep 2014 22:31:33 +1200

Definition from an online dictionary:

Counterfactual: expressing what has not happened but could, would, or might under differing conditions

It's just a "what might have been" scenario, without a threshold, and all else being equal.

BenWilson

Sun, 21 Sep 2014 12:57:21 +1200

It's a counterfactual because why? 7 seats would have been decided differently in favour of the 113,000 people who voted for Conservatives or IMP. If you believed in more proportional representation yesterday why would you stop believing it today?

tussock

Sun, 21 Sep 2014 12:50:13 +1200

Zero threshold places use a first divisor of 1.4 (or higher) but stick with Sainte-Laguë. For 120 seats it's effectively a 0.6% threshold.

Even with the Conservatives I like it better. National gets a lot of combinations (seven, I think) to trade off against each other for their votes on…

archie t

Sun, 21 Sep 2014 11:17:38 +1200

oops

i was only thinking the alcp would not make it this time.

of course it would harm the small parties

Simon Lyall

Sun, 21 Sep 2014 10:07:21 +1200

I personally favour the ability to order my party vote, so if my first choice doesn't make the threshold my vote can be transfered to a party that does.

JonathanM

Sun, 21 Sep 2014 09:56:16 +1200

I wouldn't be surprised if the Electoral Commission's guidelines are implemented this term. It now clearly benefits the Nats to do so (Conservatives will get across next time at 4%, no advantage at all in the last 2 elections to coat tail).

archie t

Sun, 21 Sep 2014 02:55:04 +1200

Not that it would make any difference this time. But if we had no threshold, I'd hope and expect the D'Hondt method would be used, not the Sainte-Laguë.

Public Address

Sun, 21 Sep 2014 02:55:04 +1200

Discussion from blog post.