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New Zealand

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In 1993 New Zealand adopted Mixed Member Proportional as its electoral system for the House of Representatives after many years of first-past-the-post.

The term of the Parliament is set at three years from its first sitting. This means that elections must be held within around three years, two months after the previous election (for instance the 2002 election was held on 27 July, the latest date the 2005 election could be held on was 24 September). Elections have historically been held in November or December, but this has fallen out of tradition.

Contents 1 MMP in New Zealand 2 Electoral boundaries 3 Representation statistics 4 See also 5 External links

The New Zealand electoral system is a two-tiered system. The lower tier determines the local representative. The upper, over-riding tier determines the proportionality of the House.

New Zealand voters have two votes. The main vote is the party vote. This vote determines the proportionality of the House, the upper tier of the electoral system. The other vote is the electorate vote for the lower tier. This determines the local representative within the House, and usually does not change the proportionality of the House. The electorate vote works as a plurality system, whereby whomever gets the highest vote in each electorate receives the seat.

Parties that receive either 5% of the party vote or one electorate seat are entitled to a share of the nominally 120 seats in the House of Representatives. The seats are allocated using the Sainte-Laguë method. If an independent candidate is elected, then the number of seats to be allocated falls to 119 (or 118 if two are elected, and so forth).

Parties then fill their seats. Seats are allocated firstly to electorate MPs. Then parties fulfil their remaining quota from their party list. If a party has more electorate MPs than proportional seats, then it receives an overhang. If the party does not have enough people on its list to fulfil its quota, then there is an underhang.

The number of electorate MPs is calculated in three steps. The less populated of New Zealand's two principal islands, the South Island, has a fixed quota of 16 seats. The number of seats for the North Island and the number of special reserved seats for Māori are then calculated in proportion to these. (The Māori seats have their own special electoral roll; people of Māori descent may opt to enrol either on this roll or on the general roll, and the number of Māori seats is determined with reference to the number of adult Māori who opt for the Māori roll.)

The number of electorates is recalculated, and the boundaries of each redrawn so as to make them approximately equal in population within a tolerance of plus or minus 5%, after each quinquennial census. After the 2001 census, there were 7 Māori electorates and 62 general electorates, or 69 electorates in total. There were therefore normally 51 list MPs. By a quirk of timing, the 2005 election was the first election since 1990 at which the electorates were not redrawn since the previous election. A census was held on 7 March 2006 and will apply to the 2008 election.

The Gallagher Index measures how disproportionate an election is.

Election	Disproportionality
1946-1993 FPP average	11.10%
1996	4.36%
1999	3.01%
2002	2.53%
2005	1.14%

(source: Stephen Levine and Nigel S. Roberts, The Baubles of Office: The New Zealand General Election of 2005 (Wellington: Victoria University Press, 2007), pp.33-4 (ISBN 978-0-86473-539-3)

• Electoral reform in New Zealand
• New Zealand elections

• Two Ticks? Too Easy! - MMP basics
• Sainte-Laguë allocation formula
• Virtual Election Calculator