Bob McCoskrie: Can You Really Waste Your Vote?

It’s General Election time – and because we operate under an MMP mixed member proportional voting system, the concept of the “wasted vote” always comes up in discussion.

Generally the statement is thrown around, something along the lines of, “If your vote is wasted, it goes to another party”. “Another party benefits”.

But is this true. In the next 5 minutes I’m going to explain how the wasted vote phenomenon works in practice – based on what happened in the general election in 2020.

Sandra Goudie: Giveaway Votes

Giveaway votes – in 2020 the ‘giveaway vote’ was 7.9% of the total ‘party vote’ cast.

That 7.9% party vote came from the 12 minor parties who were unsuccessful, but still managed to garner 225,182 party votes between them. The smallest was HeartlandNZ with 914 votes.

What happened to those 7.9% party votes? They were apportioned on a pro rata basis to the successful parties. This meant Labour scored an extra 5 seats from the party votes cast for all the minor parties. National scored an extra 3 seats from those same party votes cast.

People don’t seem to understand that even in protest, party voting for a minor party which is clearly not going to win a seat and get anyone into parliament, just means giving your party vote away.