PROPORTIONAL REPRESENTATION  – a pitfall

New Zealand has two major parties, the National Party, the Labor Party, and two minor parties, the Greens and NZ First. NZ First is essentially a one man party, Winston Peters.

Last year the National Party had been in power for two terms and called an election. They won the election by a good margin, but not a majority:

 

National    56

Labor        46

Green         8

NZ First     9

 

The Greens and Labor were relatively quick to get together, but it wasn’t enough so they went to Winston Peters. Winston had been a sitting member but lost his seat. No other party members were elected however the party was allocated 7% of the seats as that was their percentage of the vote.

Winston agreed to join the coalition providing he became Minister of Foreign Affairs.

A month after the election Jacinda Ardern, the Prime Minister announced she was pregnant. When she went off on mat leave Winston became interim Prime Minister.

The guy who lost his seat, leader of the party that won 7% of the vote became PM!

That’s how Proportional Representation works in NZ.

A post script: The Fraser Institute has completed a study that shows that average government spending of countries with pro-rep systems is 30.35 of GDP compared with 23.7% for countries with a first past the post system.