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Déjà vu all over again for @NZLabour @NZGreens
07 Jun 2016 Leave a comment
in economics, economics of media and culture, politics - New Zealand Tags: 2014 New Zealand election, 2017 New Zealand election, Attack Ads, New Zealand Greens, New Zealand Labour Party
Split voting analysis for the Greens in the 2014 election
09 Jul 2015 Leave a comment
in politics - New Zealand, Public Choice Tags: 2014 New Zealand election, ACT, Grant Robertson, James Shaw, Labour Party, MMP, National Party, New Zealand Greens, split voting, ticket splitting
Split voting analysis suggests there are not a lot of blue green National voters. Few Green Party voters split their party vote and give their electorate vote to National with the exception of tactical voting in Epsom. The Greens and Labour fight for the left-wing vote and that’s about it.
Source: The Electoral Commission.
In the electorate of Epsom, many Green voters voted for the National candidate as a tactical ploy to defeat the ACT party candidate.
Source: The Electoral Commission.
In Wellington Central, the National Party won the party vote with 14,689 party votes. The Greens came second with 11,545. The deputy leader of the Labour Party, Grant Robertson, came a miserable third in the party vote with 9,306 party votes.
Source: The Electoral Commission.
Grant Robinson nonetheless won the seat easily on Green electorate seat votes and more than a few National Party electorate votes.
Indeed, so many of Grant Robinson’s votes came from Greens and National voters that the Greens have a good chance of winning Wellington Central if they tried. More so now that the Green Party leader stands in the seat.
The Greens need to win Wellington Central in the election after they go into a coalition with Labour in government in New Zealand because of the 40% drop in green votes every time they go into government everywhere else.
The Greens have a party vote of 10.7% at the moment. Some of that are Labour voters parking their vote with them while they’re grumpy. A significant part of the rest will be lost when they go into government. Enough of that party vote is risk to push the Greens below the 5% threshold necessary to win any list seats in Parliament.
Vote splitting for the Conservative Party and New Zealand First
08 Jul 2015 Leave a comment
in politics - New Zealand, Public Choice Tags: 2014 New Zealand election, Conservative Party, National Party, New Zealand First, New Zealand Labour Party, split voting, ticket splitting, voter demographics
At the 2014 General Election 31.64% of all voters split their vote compared to 30.70% in 2011. Slightly over 80% of Labour Party and National Party voters give both their party vote and electorate vote to the same party.
Source: The Electoral Commission.
New Zealand First vote splitting data above suggests more Labour voters vote New Zealand First than National Party voters by a noticeable margin. 1/3rd of voters who gave their party vote to New Zealand First voted Labour with their electorate vote. This compares to one in five New Zealand First voters who gave their electorate vote to the National Party.
Source: The Electoral Commission.
It’s a different story with the Conservative Party. A good 40% of Conservative Party voters give their electorate vote to National. This compares to a 10% split to the Labour Party.
The National Party has much to gain from the collapse of the Conservative Party as does fellow populist party New Zealand First. This split vote analysis does not throw much insight into how New Zealand First would benefit from a collapse in the Conservative Party.
If New Zealand First picks up a significant amount of the current party vote for the Conservative Party if the latter was to fold, New Zealand First will pick up one or two list seats in the next general election giving it the balance of power.
The only thing that could be said is the lack of Labour voters among Conservative Party voters suggest they are reluctant to support New Zealand First because in the past it has supported Labour Governments. The Conservative Party effectively promised to support a National Party Government.
A vote for the Conservative Party is a vote for a National Party government. A vote for New Zealand First is much more likely to see a Labour Government. That suggests to me that many Conservative Party voters are National Party voters at heart.
Edward Snowden misspoke on a secret American spy base located in Auckland
17 Mar 2015 Leave a comment
in politics - New Zealand, politics - USA Tags: 2014 New Zealand election, conspiracy theories, conspiratorial left, Edward Snowden, paranoid conspiracies, Twitter left
Edward Snowden made a last-minute intervention in the recent New Zealand election to claim that there is a secret American spy base located in Auckland. I have persistently asked on Twitter where it is so I can look it up on Google maps Street.
Today, Bryce Edwards revealed in a reply to one of my tweets that Edward Snowden got mixed up. It is yet to be revealed where this secret spy base really is so I can still look it up on Google Maps Street view.
If there is a secret spy base anywhere in New Zealand, I’m sure the neighbours would have noticed and lodged objections to the resource consent for the planning permission because of all the cell towers.
The GCSB’s Waihopai spy station pictured above which was built decades ago in rural New Zealand is decidedly conspicuous.
Turns out ‘Vote Positive’ not a new slogan after all for NZ Labour!
03 Feb 2015 Leave a comment
in politics - New Zealand Tags: 2014 New Zealand election
HT: The Guardian
Media completely missed this report in the lead-up to 2014 election: Rich-poor gap not growing in New Zealand and hasn’t for 20 years
20 Jan 2015 Leave a comment
in applied welfare economics, politics - New Zealand Tags: 2014 New Zealand election, child poverty, Gini coefficient, inequality and poverty, media bias, top 1%
Figure 1: Gini coefficient New Zealand 1980-2015
Source: Bryan Perry, Household incomes in New Zealand: Trends in indicators of inequality and hardship 1982 to 2013. Ministry of Social Development (July 2014).
Figure 2: Real household incomes (BHC), changes for top of income deciles, 1994 to 2013
![clip_image002[7]](https://utopiayouarestandinginit.files.wordpress.com/2014/12/clip_image0027_thumb.png?w=696&h=443)
Source: (Perry 2014).
Figure 3: Real equivalised median household income (before housing costs) by ethnicity, 1988 to 2013 ($2013).
![clip_image002[9]](https://utopiayouarestandinginit.files.wordpress.com/2014/12/clip_image0029_thumb2.png?w=686&h=452)
Source: (Perry 2014).
HT: http://www.listener.co.nz/current-affairs/new-deal-for-kids/
HT: http://i.stuff.co.nz/business/industries/10244667/Rich-poor-gap-not-growing-report
Uncomplicated Loyalties: Why Cunliffe and the Labour Left Cannot Win – Chris Trotter
26 Sep 2014 Leave a comment
The Key to victory: Run against Piketty-nomics, Scott Sumner | EconLog | Library of Economics and Liberty
23 Sep 2014 Leave a comment
in income redistribution, politics - New Zealand, Public Choice, rentseeking Tags: 2014 New Zealand election, Piketty
This is good news:
New Zealand’s NZX 50 Index increased 1.1 percent, driven higher by power-company stocks, after John Key won a third term as prime minister. Key, a former head of foreign exchange at Merrill Lynch & Co., led his National party to a 48 percent victory in New Zealand’s weekend election, securing the first single-party majority in the South Pacific nation’s parliament since at least 1996. The main opposition Labour Party, which wanted to introduce a tax on capital gains and raise the minimum wage, suffered its worst defeat since 1922.
Perhaps Labour got their ideas from Paul Krugman.
When right-of-center parties are elected, they generally disappoint. Although right-of-center economists favor free markets, most conservative politicians do not. Abe (Japan) and Modi (India) are two recent examples of conservatives who promised reforms and failed to come through (thus far). Fortunately New Zealand is different.
Via http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2014/09/the_key_to_vict.html
The personnel economics of putting up election billboards
04 Sep 2014 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, labour economics, managerial economics, organisational economics, personnel economics, politics - New Zealand, theory of the firm Tags: 2014 New Zealand election, agent principal problems, labour economics, moral hazard, New Zealand politics, paid versus unpaid labour, personnel economics
I’ve been out of late, helping put up election billboards. Maybe I should get a life, but I noticed that the quality of effort by volunteers was much better than that by the contractors hired by the Internet – Mana party. Everybody in that party appears to be paid including the leader for $140K year. She is not yet in Parliament.
The Internet-Mana party election billboards are very heavy, solid wooden signs and obviously pre-manufactured and must be driven around in a truck. They are certainly too heavy to be put on the back of a trailer behind a private car.
Our signs are constructed on site from a dozen pieces of wood of various sizes. The only pre-prepared part is the billboard itself with fits on the back of a trailer.
What first took my interest is the contractors hired by the Internet – Mana party signs seem to pay not all that much regard to the traffic flow. Some of their signs are parallel with the traffic so hardly anybody can see them. They are all one sided signs.
When we are putting up a election billboard, we squabble like a bunch of old women over the exact angle each sign should face the traffic to capture the most number of passing cars and buses. Everybody has an opinion including those doing it for the first time.
We then squabble about whether the sign should be one-sided or two sided depending upon how well it can be viewed from the other side by traffic coming the other way.
We also squabble about its positioning and height to maximise the number of views by the passing traffic relative to the positioning all the other signs.
There is also a lot of vandalism of these signs by rather naive people who don’t understand that the passing motorist looks at the vandalised signs first.
It takes a whole lot of hatred to vandalised a sign in this way. Photos of the above sign immediately went viral. For some reason, the National party has repaired that sign. I don’t know why.
Utopia, you are standing in it! 
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