{"id":1467,"date":"2008-11-10T02:25:33","date_gmt":"2008-11-09T16:25:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/slackbastard.anarchobase.com\/?p=1467"},"modified":"2008-11-10T02:25:33","modified_gmt":"2008-11-09T16:25:33","slug":"2008-election-in-aotearoanew-zealand","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/slackbastard.anarchobase.com\/?p=1467","title":{"rendered":"2008 Election in Aotearoa\/New Zealand"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>NZ employs the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.elections.org.nz\/voting\/mmp\/\">Mixed Member Proportional<\/a> representation (MMP) voting system. The NZ Parliament has a total of 122 seats, 7 of which are reserved for Maori candidates. The Nationals won 59 (gaining 11), Labour 43 (losing 7), Greens 8 (gaining 2), ACT New Zealand 5 (gaining 3), Maori 5 (gaining 1), Progressives 1 (no change) and UnitedFuture 1 (losing 2). The election marked <a href=\"http:\/\/www.theaustralian.news.com.au\/story\/0,25197,24626907-2703,00.html\">a generational sea change<\/a>, with 47-year-old millionaire former currency trader John Key (National) taking power from Helen Clark (Labour) a long-serving veteran of the Left of New Zealand politics&#8230; such as it is, and such as it may be found within the ranks of Labour.<\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/2008.electionresults.govt.nz\/partystatus.html\">Results<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><em>Parties what won seats:<\/em><\/p>\n<ul>1. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.national.org.nz\/\">National Party<\/a> : 951,145 : 45.45% : 41 : 18 : 59 (Conservative)<br \/>\n2. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.labour08.co.nz\/\">Labour Party<\/a> : 706,666 : 33.77 : 21 : 22 : 43<br \/>\n3. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.greens.org.nz\/\">Green Party<\/a> : 134,622 : 6.43% : 0 : 8 : 8<br \/>\n4. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.act.org.nz\/\">ACT New Zealand<\/a> : 77,843 : 3.72% : 1 : 4 : 5 (Conservative)<br \/>\n5. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.maoriparty.com\/\">M\u00e4ori Party<\/a> : 46,894 : 2.24% : 5 : 0 : 5<br \/>\n6. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.progressive.org.nz\/\">Jim Anderton&#8217;s Progressive<\/a> : 19,536 : 0.93% : 1 : 0 : 1 (Left)<br \/>\n7. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.unitedfuture.org.nz\/\">United Future<\/a> : 18,629 : 0.89% : 1 : 0 : 1 (Christian\/Conservative)<\/ul>\n<p><em>Parties what didn&#8217;t:<\/em><\/p>\n<ul><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nzfirst.org.nz\/\">New Zealand First Party<\/a> : 88,072 : 4.21% (Conservative vehicle for <a href=\"http:\/\/www.radionz.co.nz\/news\/stories\/2008\/11\/09\/12437f5e86e2\">Winston Peters<\/a>)<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.thekiwiparty.org.nz\/\">Kiwi Party<\/a> : 11,659 : 0.56% (Christian\/Conservative)<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.facebook.com\/pages\/The-Bill-and-Ben-Party\/15629742821\">The Bill and Ben Party<\/a> : 10,738 : 0.51%<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.alcp.org.nz\/\">Aotearoa Legalise Cannabis Party<\/a> : 7,589 : 0.36%<br \/>\nNew Zealand Pacific Party : 6,991 : 0.33% (Christian\/Conservative)<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.familyparty.org.nz\/\">Family Party<\/a> : 6,973 : 0.33% (Christian\/Conservative)<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.alliance.org.nz\/\">Alliance<\/a> : 1,721 : 0.08% (Socialist)<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.democrats.org.nz\/\">Democrats for Social Credit<\/a> : 1,112\t: 0.05%<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.libertarianz.org.nz\/\">Libertarianz<\/a>\t: 1,070 : 0.05%<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/workersparty.org.nz\/\">Workers Party<\/a> : 824 : 0.04% (Socialist)<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.ram.org.nz\/\">RAM &#8211; Residents Action Movement<\/a> : 405 : 0.02% (Socialist)<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/republicans.org.nz\/\">The Republic of New Zealand Party<\/a> : 298 : 0.01% (Conservative)<\/ul>\n<p>On the whole, and leaving aside the Greens and Progressives, it was a fairly dismal result for the (<a href=\"http:\/\/slackbastard.blogspot.com\/2008\/04\/trot-guide-new-zealand.html\">Socialist<\/a>) Left. On October 10, RAM boasted that &#8220;RAM&#8217;s &#8216;Protect Our People&#8217; campaign has been swinging into action nationwide &#8211; and our election campaign has been going from strength to strength!&#8221; In reality, it received an extremely meagre total of just 405 votes. What&#8217;s especially odd about this result is that in April, RAM claimed a membership of 500. RAM &#8216;co-organiser&#8217; <a href=\"http:\/\/aucklandcentral.blogspot.com\/\">Oliver Woods<\/a> stated &#8220;I&#8217;m from RAM, New Zealand&#8217;s fastest growing political party with more than 3000 members in only a few months!&#8221; Further, \u201cRAM won 87,000 votes in the 2004 ARC election, and over 100,000 votes in the 2007 council elections which saw a slightly higher average vote for our ARC candidates as compared with 2004.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Where did they all go? Did RAM forget to remind its (incredibly absent-minded) 3000 members to vote for their party?<\/p>\n<p>For the bizarros of the Workers Party, the results are a little more pleasing. After all, it was only a few years ago that its Leader, Daphna Whitmore, was singing the praises of Marx, Lenin, Mao, and even Presidente Gonzalo.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>NZ employs the Mixed Member Proportional representation (MMP) voting system. The NZ Parliament has a total of 122 seats, 7 of which are reserved for Maori candidates. The Nationals won 59 (gaining 11), Labour 43 (losing 7), Greens 8 (gaining &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/slackbastard.anarchobase.com\/?p=1467\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1467","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-state"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6AyE-nF","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/slackbastard.anarchobase.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1467","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/slackbastard.anarchobase.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/slackbastard.anarchobase.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/slackbastard.anarchobase.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/slackbastard.anarchobase.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1467"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/slackbastard.anarchobase.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1467\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/slackbastard.anarchobase.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1467"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/slackbastard.anarchobase.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1467"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/slackbastard.anarchobase.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1467"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}