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Friday 18 NOVEMBER 2011

Polls Showing MMP'S Rough Edges

“There is no perfect voting system. Deciding which system is best for New Zealand involves making trade-offs among a whole range

“It seems strange that a week out from the election we can have one party leading every other party by 20 percent of the vote, and yet still not feel certain that they will be in the government,” says Steve Thomas, Researcher at Maxim Institute. “The polls that have recently come out expose some of MMP’s rough edges”

“There are a whole lot of small factors that are going to have big consequences this election, and most are to do with narrow margins for minor parties. As newspapers have been reporting, New Zealand First could break the 5 percentthreshold, ACT could lose Epsom, and Peter Dunne and Hone Harawira are fighting to keep their seats to ensure the survival of United First and Mana respectively. All of these specific factors could easily determine which major party gets to be in government,” says Thomas.

“One of the big downsides of MMP is that it does not always produce clear electoral outcomes,” says Thomas. “If a five-party coalition government were to emerge after election day—through the Labour Party, the Green Party, the Maori Party, the Mana Party and the New Zealand First Party stitching together a coalition—it would be difficult for voters to know who to hold accountable for that government’s performance at the 2014 election,” says Thomas.

“I imagine that many voters would be surprised if this was the outcome, but it should not be a shock. This is exactly how proportional systems like MMP work. They are designed to elect more parties to parliament and to ensure that their number of seats is about the same as their share of the party vote. They are not designed to make it easy for one party to form a government. There are ways to smooth MMP’s rough edges, but coalition government is part of its DNA,” says Thomas.

“There are benefits and drawbacks to MMP, like there are with every voting system. What is crucial is that New Zealanders look realistically at the pros and cons of all the systems instead of just being wooed by claims that some systems are ‘fairer’ than others because they are proportional.”

“I will be voting not to keep MMP at the referendum because I think that the drawbacks of MMP outweigh its strengths and I think there are other better options. Accountability of government is very important, for example, and this is anarea in which MMP is weaker than other alternatives,” says Thomas.

“My biggest concern, however, is that voters understand what they are getting when theymake their minds up. There is no perfect voting system and voters ought to be aware of the sorts of outcomes that each system produces when they cast their vote next week.”

ENDS

Promoted by Maxim Institute, 49 Cape Horn Road, Hillsborough, Auckland

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