By popular demand, a thread for discussion of the looming (November 8th) New Zealand election. Below are the results of every poll from the last month I was able to locate. Recommended reading: Kiwiblog.
Reflections on the Miracle of Democracy at Work in the Greatest Nation on Earth
New Zealand election minus 16 days
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62 Comments
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Scotty J @ 49 lol, lol, what a beauty!
Adam, agree on Rotterdam, where I had some direct experience of the chasm. Austria is a very interesting place! As for the Austrian right, all those centuries of Hapsburgs and Empire have yet to wash through, I suspect. The empire years serve as dream fodder for the Right. Brutal losses in two world wars and the mass murder of Austrian jewry must still feed into Austrian consciousness. The Jewish cemetary in Vienna is worth a look - it is a curious cemetary in the sense of being not only a burial place for the dead, but the burial place for culture - the cemetary itself is almost dead because there are so few jews remaining in Vienna. It gives a sense of scale of what happened. The Right must yearn for the days when, if Austria felt like trashing a subject people, they did; of the days when being an Austrian meant something to others. The Austrians would also have a consciousness of having been the bulwark of Aryan European and Christian civilization against the Mongols, the Ottomans and then the slav Soviets. There is also a bit of uncertainty of what being an Austrian means in a world without empire. I think it was after WW2, significant parts of what is now Austria wanted to join Switzerland. Globalization and europeanization further erodes feelings of being in control - a mainspring of extreme movements of both left and right.
BTW, I think Gemütlichkeit may be for insiders only. If you can get some, it is incredibly warm.
Nerd question: what is the process and practice for electorate candidates and list candidates? How many are list-only and how many are electorate only?
63 electorates, 7 Maori seats and 50 list seats.
But what’s the practice? Do the larger parties generally select the list candidates from their electoral candidates? ie do the intended top-of-the-list candidates get sent off to unwinnable seats? or are they completely separate?
Things still seem to be very tight, although National seems to be favoured.
http://www.nbr.co.nz/article/national-stays-strong-nz-first-could-cause-upset-37066
Martin B @54
Electorate candidates and list candidates are not mutually exclusive. Virtually all the larger parties have their leaders as either incumbents of a electorate seat or challengers to an electorate seat, as well as being at the top of the party list. So even if they lose their electorate seat, they will still get up on the party list seat.
Obviously, the candidates lower on the party list ranks will be hoping that as many of the electorate candidates who are also above them on the party list will be elected at the electorate level, so as to give them (the lower ranked candidates) a better chance of getting up.
That’s how it works in Germany too. In 1998 Helmut Kohl lost his seat at Ludwigshaven, but it didn’t matter because he was top of the CDU ticket for his state.
That is stupid, if your electorate does not even want you, you should not be in parliament
Hmm, but why do most of the top candidates stand for electorates? Is it a prestige thing, or a remanant of people’s history in parliament?
The PM and Op Leader have pretty big jobs and effectively represent national constituencies - what’s the point of having them doing electorate-level work as well? (Or more realistically outsourcing electorate-level work to someone else.)
For minor parties if they win an electorate seat they don’t need to meet the 5% threshold. This means if they stand their top candidate in an electorate seat and win that seat then they don’t need to get over 5% to have the chance of electing other members.
Winston Peters lost Tauranga at the last election but managed to stay in from the party list vote. The party is hoping he will re-win Tauranga so that they don’t need to be so worried about gaining over 5%
I presume it has something to do with them being high-profile and thus drawing a bigger party vote?
Martin B, of course not all party leaders come from electorates. Don Brash was elected via party list. I think it would paint a bad message if leaders dropped out of their electorate seat, it would create the image they think they are above needing to campaign for the personal support of people.
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