Preferential Voting

August 19th, 2011 at 10:00 am by David Farrar

In my “By the numbers” blog I outline how Preferential Voting (PV) works, and use Waitakere as an example of how PV may have had a different result to FPP, as vote preferences from the Greens may have seen Lynne Pillay keep her seat from Paula Bennett.

17 of the 70 electorates were won with a plurality, rather than a majority, of the votes and hence could have a different outcome under PV. Of course under PV there would be 120, not 70, electorates.

Tags: PV, referendum

This entry was posted on Friday, August 19th, 2011 at 10:00 am and is filed under NZ Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

4 Responses to “Preferential Voting”

backster (1,782) Says:
August 19th, 2011 at 10:05 am
So why would you prefer that, it would invariably solidify the left wing vote.
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toad (3,549) Says:
August 19th, 2011 at 10:33 am
@backster 10:05 am

Democracy is about fair process, not about using unfair process to get the outcome you want.

I support retaining MMP, because it provides a Parliament that (almost) represents the way voters vote. PV doesn’t. In the last Australian House of Representatives election (which operates under PV) the Greens got 11.76% of first preference votes, but only 0.67% of the seats. That is simply unfair and unrepresentative, whatever you may think of the Greens politically.

That said, I would support using PV for electing the electorate MPs under MMP. It would encourage people to vote more for whom they want as their local representative, rather than to vote tactically to keep out someone they don’t want. As things stand, if I were to live in the Epsom electorate, I would feel I would have to vote for the National candidate to try to keep Brash and his team of RWNJs, bigots and climate change deniers out of Parliament, rather than the Green candidate whom I would personally prefer to vote for.
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Shazzadude (358) Says:
August 19th, 2011 at 11:16 am
The Waimakariri electorate race would’ve been very interesting under PV.

BAKER, Leighton KIWI 536
COSGROVE, Clayton LAB 16,360
KEOWN, Aaron ACT 1,717
LIEFTING, Alan GP 1,253
MARK-SHADBOLT, Melanie NZF 1,157
SHEFFIELD-CRANSTOUN, Kelleigh UFNZ 114
WILKINSON, Kate NAT 15,970
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MyNameIsJack (2,415) Says:
August 19th, 2011 at 11:31 am
It is OK as long as it is OPTIONAL PV, ie, to be valid a vote must have a 1 marked in one box, the voter may then mark with consecutive numbers as many or as few additional boxes as they desire.
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