A Labour/Greens coalition on the cards | The Jackal

5 Jun 2012

A Labour/Greens coalition on the cards

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Today, Kiwibog reported:

What is scary is that in a Labour-Greens-NZ First-Mana Government, the Greens will probably hold the Finance portfolio.

I expect Labour will want to hold onto the money purse in any new government. But if that's not the case, Russel Norman couldn't possibly do any worse than Bill English...

National has been a complete economic disaster for New Zealand, with increased unemployment, increased debt, stagnant growth and a raft of other failures as a result of basing policy on neo-liberal hogwash.

David Farrar also reported:

May saw just three political polls published – two Roy Morgan polls and One News Colmar Brunton poll.

The average of the public polls has National 14% ahead of Labour, down from 19% in April. The centre-right has 59 out of 121 seats on the May average which would have the Maori Party hold the balance of power.

What rubbish! Farrar is completely wrong that the Maori party would hold the balance of power. In fact if an election was held today, a Labour Greens coalition would likely form the next government.

In the calculation below, I've been kind to UnitedFuture. It's more likely that Labour will take Ohariu off Peter Dunne, who only has a majority of 1646 votes.

* Parliament will have one or more overhang seats.
You might note that the % of effective Party Vote is different than the average percentage in the polling results. This is because the calculator has not taken into account all votes... only those for parties that reach the 5% vote threshold.

Farrar has assumed that all the current electorate seats will be held by National, when this is an incorrect way to make the projection. A number of electorate seats were won by the slimmest of margins and any movement in the party vote will also be reflected in the electorate vote.

Therefore a Labour/Greens coalition at 54 seats could potentially govern alone. A Labour/Green/Mana/NZFirst coalition on 65 seats would easily beat a Nat/UF/Maori coalition on 56 seats.

If an election was held today, New Zealand First would hold the balance of power.

h/t The Dim-Post