Interesting NZ Issue....

[JoeyNormal]

One which I'm not really complaining about, though...

The NZ election is a month away, and all the parties are going into the usual frenzy.

Except...the Opposition...is...not...opposing. Popularity ratings for Labour, the Centre-Left Party are off the scale. The Far-Left party, Alliance, has torn itself apart, and that leaves:

National [Centre-Right]
Act [Far-Right]
The Greens [Green]
United [I'll put it this way. The random drawing of parties for the first leaders debate missed out United. It was in the hat, but it never came out. Peter Dunn can stand, and wave, but not speak. Nobody noticed]
NZ First [No one really knows what they want. Popular amongst the very old and the people of Tauranga, niether of whom know what they really want ]

And the polls are showing National's suppoprt collapsing, the rest hoverring on the margin of error, as usual.

Except the Greens. The Greens are climbing. GE is a big issue here, and a book has just came out showing Labour coverred-up an illegal release of GE corn. Pretty weak stuff, something like .04% of a shipment might have been contaminated. But it's hurting. Helen Clark, the PM and leader of Labour has sworn [mildly] at an interviewer, walked out of an interview and generally is letting the stressv show.

But the oppositition isn't getting noticed, no, the GREENS are.

It appears that no party will be able to rule alone, as usual with MMP. BUT who would form a coalitition? Labour has burned it's bridge with the Greens, National plain doesn't like the Greens, the Alliance has shattered into the "Alliance" [minus the leader and about half the candidates] and "Jim Anderton's Progressive Coalition", both of which are laughing stocks. Act and the rest are insignificant.

The Greens will hold the balance of power, if Labour cannot rule alone. Labour doesn't see National as a threat, and are expecting to rule alone. I disagree, with this latest fiasco. The Labour campaign is collapsing. So, no one likes the Greens, and they don't like anyone, but someone might have to appease them...

[Manu]

How many 'major' political parties are there? Are all of those the major ones? Or some of them have smallish showings?

[JoeyNormal]

Two "major" parties - Labour and National, with 30-40%. The lesser ones have roughly 5-10%, or have had that in the recent past.

Due to our MMP system, half the MPs are elected individually, based on an Electorate, which they represent. The other half are "list" MPs; each party ranks there candidates, and you vote by party; if 5% support a party, roughly 5% of these MPs will be from that party.

We have 120 MPs, so 60 list [approx], and the cutoff for a party to enter off the list is 5% [so all the crazy minor parties like the McGillicuddy Serious Party don't get in... do... not... ask... about... them...]. So, a party can get in to parliament either if 5% of the population support it, or they win one electorate. This is important, as some parties have a charismatic leader who will win his electorate due to his strong personality and speaking [Winston Peters, NZ First in Tauranga], whereas others have good policies so may get in off the party vote.

Due to this system, we rarely ever have an absolute majority. In fact, since MMP's introduction, we have never had one. This makes the minor parties important, as they hold the balance of power.

All those parties I listed are major enough to make it into parliament, in however small a role. The "minor" parties are the sub-5% ones that don't make it into parliament.