NZ 2008

Elections were held in New Zealand on Saturday and the centre-right Nationals under John Key defeated the incumbent Labour-led government of Helen Clark. The new coalition is likely to be formed by the National Party, and the classical liberal ACT (5 seats) and perhaps the centrist United Future (1 seat).

Here are the full results. New Zealand uses MMP where each voter votes for a local rep in his constituency and for a party in a list vote. E refers to electorates (constituencies) won, and L refers to list seats won. To win a list seat, a party must win over 5% of the votes or hold atleast one electorate.

There are 70 electorates in total, but 7 of those seats are special Maori electorates (Maori voters can choose whether they vote in an electorate or in a Maori seat). 52 seats are allocated through party-list proportional representation, for a total of 122 seats (maj 61). The seats are allocated using the Sainte-Laguë method.

NZ used FPTP for a while but changed to MMP in the late 90s. FPTP produced some very unproportional results (I’m thinking of one where SoCred won like 20ish percent and like 1/2 seats IIRC).

National 45.45% (+6.36%); 41E, 18L total 59 (+11)
Labour 33.77% (-7.33%); 21E, 22L total 43 (-7)
Green 6.43% (+1.13%); 8L total 8 (+2)
ACT 3.72% (+2.21%); 1E, 4L total 5 (+3)
Māori 2.24% (+0.12%); 5E total 5 (+1)
Progressive 0.93% (-0.23%); 1E total 1 (-)
United Future 0.89% (-1.78%); 1E total 1 (-2)
New Zealand First 4.21% (-1.51%); total 0 (-7)

Wikipedia has a map showing the colours of the electorates following this election.

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