Posts by Kyle Matthews
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Actually, many National MPs have jobs and families as well.
Yes, but if they're an MP, then their job for the past couple of months consists of getting themselves elected. Smaller parties, like the Greens have to cover as many electorates, but only have half a dozen people who are being paid to do it as an MP, compared to National's 40ish.
Labour's campaign was just bad, but my point wasn't about Labour, it was about the Greens.
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It has struck me that Rodney Hide has been actually like one of those little poodles that are owned by many of Epsom's residents and repeatedly humping Key's leg at ever opportunity...
Ew.
Not only that but there is a 100 year old rottweiler with rabies by the name of Roger Douglas waiting to get out of his cage and get humping also (but not just Key's leg).
Umm, double... triple ew.
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Or Goff, the guy who introduced the nation to student debt in the first place?
Goff introduced the $1000 fee in 1989.
National introduced the student loan scheme in 1992.
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You'll note that the image of Bob is aged in a feeble attempt to fool readers into thinking it's really an old photo of me.
Is it not enough to bring out naked baby photos at his 21st? He's going to go through life looking at people reading books and hiding his head in shame!
A plot to turn your son off reading if ever I saw one.
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It's not really possible to lose votes from the Specials.
Yeah, I meant "lose, relative to other parties". Everyone will gain votes, it's a question of how much.
Basically, if Labour get more special votes than National, they pick up the 120th seat, which National loses. Because National are using a much higher quotient for their last MP (divided by 117) than Labour (85), Labour could take the MP off National even if they get less special votes.
If National picked up 10,000 votes, Labour would only need to pick 9000 votes to get that seat. Greens need to pick up about 6000 votes to get it instead (it would be a lot less, but currently they're not particularly close).
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Off-topic, but can I talk up a band touring at present: Reb Fountain and her Bandits? Graham gives her two good reviews for her albums on Elsewhere.
Went to her gig at Arc here on Wednesday last week, and unfortunately the advertising had been screwed up (as in, no physical or internet advertising happened), so there were only about six members of the audience, but they put on a great set. Ranges between alt-folk and breeders-like rock. Touring the south island at present, and then back to Auckland (details on her page above), and deserves packed bars.
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I ran the electoral night figures through excel and came up with my own Sainte-Laguë formula.
If I've done my calculations right (and I'm completely unqualified, so it's possible I haven't):
1 The quotient to get within the 120 is 8129 - the 120th seat, allocated to national.
2 Missing out is 8122, the 121st seat, which Labour would get. So specials could easily change the final allocation.
3 If you were to play with the numbers, and add 300 party votes to Labour, and leave National's the same, Labour gets the 120th, National loses one. You have to add close to 20,000 votes to give Labour two extra seats however.
4 You have to add several thousand to the Green vote to give them an extra MP. Depending how the specials play out, that second MP would likely come from National as well.
5 Act's 5th seat isn't particularly vulnerable, unless they do pretty badly come specials time - have to lose about five thousand. -
Tussock: Umm yup. That was my point.
kyle: many people think the evil of an overhang lies in having to increase the total size of the House, and so they seek to address the problem by capping the number of MPs at 120. This misses the real problem: disproportionality.
Yes. But if you have electorate seats, it's not possible to avoid that. If I win an electorate, but get no party votes, either you ignore or overrule the electorate result, or parliament no longer represents the proportionality of the party vote.
To make MMP properly proportional, you'd have to do away with the mixed membership component, and not have electorates.
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There's a lesson in that for Labour -- and for the Greens, who need to learn to get their vote out and translate their polling into real election results.
Yeah. Hard for the Greens, who have to front up with almost 60 candidates whose jobs isn't actually to campaign for much of election year. Some of these people have jobs and families, and might be able to take a week off work for the election, and just do evenings and weekends beforehand.
National and Labour have the advantage of having full time MPs who spend the months leading up to the election in campaign mode, and then go full time for at least 6 weeks.
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Professor Winiata disagreed, noting that such a position could well be an expression of National's rangatiratanga.
Weird. That's maybe nice in theory, but you'd have to wonder what the MP are getting for their people, and party.
I get the impression that the Maori Party need a term in power to start to learn some interesting truths. It'll be interesting to see their approach in three years.