Sunday, November 09, 2008

Christian Parties and the Margin of Error

So, the great experiment should now be discontinued. You'd have been better to vote Bill and Ben than to vote any of the Christian parties. At least that way you'd have a heap more fun:


Kiwi Party 11,659
The Bill and Ben Party 10,738
New Zealand Pacific Party 6,991
Family Party 6,973

And for those who are interested - if all the Christian parties and UF's votes had all been mashed in together, you'd still only get to 44,000 votes which is about 2.2% Party Vote.

Next time give the money to the poor.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

National needs to pass a law that outlaws all political advertising, so we don't have to have to spoil our beautiful country with all the political billboards in 3 years time...

A. J. Chesswas said...

"Next time give the money to the poor."

blunt, but true...!

BJ said...

So what would happen if the 5% threshold was trashed? Someone worked it out:

National Party = 55 seats
Labour Party = 41 seats
Greens = 8 seats
New Zealand First = 5 seats
Māori Party = 5 seats
Act = 4 seats
Jim Anderton’s Progressive = 1 seat
United Future = 1 seat
The Kiwi Party = 1 seat
The Bill and Ben Party = 1 seat

Now you'd need 62 seats to be Government. So a centre-right coalition would be:

National 55 + ACT 4 + United Future 1 + Kiwi Party 1 = 61/122

which would make them one short of a majority.

And centre-left could be:

Labour 41 + Greens 8 + NZ First 5 + Progressive 1 + Maori 5 = 60/122

Which makes them under half by one.

Which would mean National would need Bill and Ben on confidence and supply. There's a scary thought!

http://www.kiwiblog.co.nz/2008/11/if_there_was_no_threshold.html