MMP is the electoral system that we currently have, in order to gain representation in Parliament a party must either win an electorate or get over 5% of the party vote, the share of seat that a party gets in parliament is very similar to the share of the votes of the represented parties that it received.
1996
In ’96 the citizens of the Republic of Hamilton East had their first election under the new MMP system that they had recently selected. The MMP system had been brought in to end the two party system in Hamilton politics and in it’s first outing it was successful in this regard.
Neither of the two major parties were able to gather a majority of the seats in parliament, instead the people of Hamilton East were treated to a long drawn out negotiation process before a government was formed between the National and New Zealand First parties.
1999
The voters of Hamilton East had been disappointed with the conduct of the parties after the first election and they hoped that the parties would conduct themselves better after the second election.
This time the parties had largely sorted out coalition agreements before the election, the only surprise was that the Labour – Alliance government required the support of the Greens to govern. The New Zealand First party had been blamed for overplaying its hand in the preceding elections and the voters of Hamilton East responded by booting them out of parliament completely. There were however a few voters surprised that National did not continue to govern as they had won the most seats.
2002
The 2002 election was called early as the Alliance came apart under the pressure of government and conflict erupted between the Labour Party and the Greens over the issue of genetic modification, Labour had no option but to call an election early, fortunately the National Party, the largest party in parliament, were having problems of their own.
The Labour party managed to increase it’s share of the vote as the Alliance were completely removed from parliament, However New Zealand First was returned to Parliament and was joined by a new party United Future. Given the troubles with National a number of voters had been looking around for an alternative and had found them in these two parties. Labour, now the largest party, was again able to form a government this time with New Zealand First and United Future.
2005
Between 2002 and 2005 the National Party had been able to recover from it’s poor performance and with a new leader was again capable of competing with Labour, the polls were showing that the two major parties were very close.
National managed to win exactly half of parliament and working with New Zealand First were able to form a government.
2008
Perhaps it was the memories of the previous 96-99 government but after three years of a National – New Zealand First government the voters again rejected New Zealand First, with the high percentage of wasted votes National was able to gain more than half the seats in parliament and govern alone.
Table of Results
Summary
MMP is a proportional system and as can be seen in these results comes fairly close to giving each party fair representation, the fact that all parties are over represented in these examples is because of the vote wasted on parties that did not cross the 5% threshold, this is particularly evident in 2008 where only the Green, National and Labour partes managed to win seats in Parliament.
