News Jaya

High pitched covert dog-whistling politics

Next year we are voting on the electoral system. Jon Key has further commented that recent difficulties with ACT and the Māori Party may have undermined confidence in MMP.

That implies that Key wants people to think that MMP has something to do with the state of the Māori Party and ACT, particularly relations between these smaller parties and National. Furthermore, a change to another system would go some way into restoring confidence in our electoral; system. Key says:

My instincts have been that when you see issues around smaller parties it tends to undermine the confidence in MMP as a system

It’s dogwhistling, as every single Maori Party, United Future and Progressive Party MP is an electorate MP, whereas MMP is list-based. It appears Key would prefer to see fewer parties represented in parliament. The only way to ensure this happens is to change the electoral system. That's because If the electoral system was changed to either FPP, Supplementary Member, STV, or Preferential voting, there is no gurantee that the party with the most votes will get the most seats, as with MMP.

If John Key wants that, he should say so. If he doesn't, he should direct his comments accordingly and suggest that changes should be made to the system, not the system itself. But I suspect Key still wants a change to Supplementary Member because it is a nicer way of reverting back to FPP. That's because in most cases since 1996, Supplementary Member would have produced the same government outcome as FPP, although minor parties would have had fewer MPs.