spiting the face
Over at Public Address Keith and Che have been having a right ol' barney about the Maori Seats, and DPF has given summarised, interspersed with his own views.
Given National's well known intention to abolish the Maori seats if it is ever in a position to do so, what would actually happen to all those voters? Where would they go?
Assuming that instead of creating several new electorate seats, we had 60 list and 60 electorate (as opposed to 53 and 67 now), all of those lovely left-leaning voters would go into the current general electorates. They'd slosh around in them, potentially turning slightly safe National seats like Northland and Whangarei and those notorious swingers the Hamiltons a redder shade on a semi-permanent basis.
I'm no maths whizz, but the impact would be significant in the electorates, even if it didn't have much dent in the overall party percentages.
6 comments:
big question would be whether maori would turn out in the same numbers if the maori seats weren't there.
I did scenarios on this once and the likely result would be National losing 2 or 3 seats. However Labour (or now Lab and Maori Party) would have lost 7 and only gained 2 or 3.
There's arguments either way on whether less or more Maori would vote - less because they would feel less engaged, but more because it becomes easier for them to vote. I tend to think if the seats were abolished without Maori consent then large numbers might be turned off voting.
i think the difference would really be felt in areas like Whangarei and Northland, where there are relatively high numbers of Maori who are on the Maori roll. I'm not sure that the South Island is a good example Bren as it's geographically the biggest Maori seat.
'what would actually happen to all those voters? Where would they go?'
Onto the streets, that's where. Changes in electoral arithmetic are insignificant compared to the sort of civil disorder that would result from a significant chunk of the population believing they no longer had basic democratic rights.
i agree about the political violence maps. it would transform our entire political map, not just in terms of electorates, if the Maori seats went. the repurcussions of abolishing them without Maori buy in would be huge.
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