JC: A True MMP Election at Last

This election, the entire landscape has changed but some of the thinking surrounding the landscape hasn’t. Under MMP, elections were not supposed to be a two-horse race where National or Labour dominated to see who passed the post first. The initial MMP election was held on 12 October 1996. This election will be the tenth one under the MMP system. For some people, especially long-term dyed in the wool National supporters, this is hard to get their heads around.

Ani O'Brien: Don Brash & Te Pāti Māori agree on a strategy

How both sides of politics are thinking strategically about voting.

After 30 years of Mixed Member Proportional (MMP) representation, we may finally have reached the point where everyone works out how to properly game the system at the same time. For most of the MMP era, political parties have called for “two ticks” with a few notable exceptions like the Epsom electorate. The idea has been to not encourage voters to think too hard about the fact that they have been given two separate votes because parties would very much like both of them.

Mike's Minute: The trouble with revisiting MMP

Is Luxon's MMP vote a stroke of genius to avoid an otherwise problematic week?

His apology for Rotorua was a cluster, the Māorification issues that haven't been resolved despite all the talk, the Corrections massages, MBIE, Treasury love-ins, the Justice Department cock-up on the Harrison bloke, and the unemployment rate to the upside – it's all looked like very bad news.

Mike Grimshaw: Getting MMP to work

While MMP was meant to provide more diversity of parties and peoples represented in parliament, the question is whether it has really succeeded in breaking the old two-party bloc faction as it promised to do?

Was the last time when MMP acted as it could when the John Key National Party invited the Māori party to effectively cross the floor and join the government?

But would any party consider doing so today…in either political direction?

Nicholas Kerr: Alienation and the Failure of MMP

Bryce Edwards’ column on New Zealand’s growing “alienated” class raises an important issue. The numbers are striking: more than a quarter of the country feels politically disconnected, and nearly half believe the system needs major change or replacement.

That is not noise. It is a flashing red light.

Pee Kay: A mirror can only reflect what is standing in front of it!

New Zealand society is as divided on the issue of race as never before. From the 23rd of September 2017 until the 14th of October 2023 we were encumbered with a Labour government that for 6 years, set about dividing the country along lines based on ancestry.

To criticise was to be labelled racist. Critical analysis of the government by the MSM became a long forgotten process. Academics, they who rode extremely high horses, were free to revel in perpetrating the Treaty partnership myth and condemning anyone who questions the magnificence of Te Ao Maori.

Philip Crump: New Zealand’s MMP Journey - Lessons from Germany’s Electoral Long Game

New Zealand’s move to Mixed Member Proportional (MMP) representation in 1996 unlocked the old two-party grip of Labour and National and ushered in the multi-party era. Achieving greater representation in Parliament was, after all, one of the drivers for reforming the electoral system at that time.

Nearly three decades later, the vote shares of the two main parties in New Zealand have slid from highs above 40% to long-term averages hovering in the 25–30% range.