Herald journalist to vote National
John Roughan has decided to vote National, but would have voted the Maori Party if he thought his vote would count in getting a Government that has Maori Party influence. But the Maori Party is likely to get more seats than the proportion of the vote allows it to so all a vote fore the Maori Party will do is assist in reducing overhang as long as others think similarly - and it's not like Roughan can vote for an electable candidate of the Maori Party.
See if anyone will respond to this: Which minor party should a centre-left person vote for if they want a change of Government and want their party vote to count in influencing a National government? Suggestions welcome.
Labels: National
4 Comments:
Which minor party should a centre-left person vote for if they want a change of Government and want their party vote to count in influencing a National government?
ACT. Compared with the rest of the world - even the UK - ACT is a centre-left party
Policy for policy, all of Brown, Blair and David Cameron are all to the right of ACT. And Barak "Jesus" Obama makes ACT look like a socialist wet dream.
I said centre left - roger douglas is too right wing for me - and a vote for Act is a vote for Roger Douglas. Any other suggestions? What are your thoughts on contributing to the reallocation of the wasted vote v not party voting at all?
Under those criteria, I think you vote Maori. By doing so you hope to reduce the size of the overhang, and thus increase the proportion of Maori Party seats. 6 out of 123 might not sound much different from 6 out of 124, but if the lost seat comes from a right party, it might be the difference between the Nats working with the Maori Party and the Nats making do with Rodney and Dunne. If, on the other hand, the one seat comes from a left party, it reduces the chance of Clark sneaking back into the Beehive.
You could also make an argument for the Greens, since they have a strong record of pushing through legislation from outside of Cabinet, though one assumes this will be harder under a Key govt.
Sorry, my last comment was oversimplified. The effect of reducing the Maori overhang depends on both (a) who loses the extra seat, and (b) whether the size of Parliament changes from odd to even, or from even to odd -- this is because, assuming you need strictly more than half the seats to form a Govt (so disregarding the possibility of abstention), changing from even to odd reduces the number of seats required by one, while changing from odd to even does not.
Then, broadly, there are four possibilities:
(a) Even to odd, seat lost by right: slightly more likely to get Helen back
(b) Odd to even, seat lost by right: slightly more likely the Nats will need the Maori, slightly more likely to get Helen back
(c) Even to odd, seat lost by left: slightly more likely the Nats can do without the Maori, slightly less likely to get Helen back
(d) Odd to even, seat lost by left: slightly less likely to get Helen back
Now, it's slightly more likely the lost seat will come from the right than the left, assuming that the right have more seats to lose (the calculation is, naturally, messier than this). Odd or even is very unclear, since the size of the overhang is hard to predict.
On balance, a vote for the Maori Party is likely to increase the bargaining power of the Maori Party, but a plausible scenario can be constructed where this isn't the case.
(Disclaimer: I'm a Green voter, which according to conventional wisdom means I can't do maths.)
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