- Location
- Tamaki Makaurau
When New Zealand fell into the grips of the Depression, the old parties of government - the urban, liberal United Party and the rural, conservative Reform Party - joined together in coalition against the rising Socialist threat. As the 1935 election approached, however, the old parties grew increasingly fearful that they were in for an almighty drubbing. The Finance Minister, Gordon Coates, was assaulted on the streets of Auckland after he mistakenly wandered into the Queen Street Riots.
Exacerbating the problem was New Zealand's 'first past the post' (FPP) electoral system. If United and Reform candidates opposed one another, they could split the vote and let Labour take seats on a minority vote. However, if they didn't oppose each other at all, then the voters who were loyal to one party but not the other might stay at home. Fortunately, a visit to Prime Minister Forbes at this point from a disreputable Uruguayan businessman, Diego Ogardo y Mazda, resulted in the Coalition copying the electoral system of Uruguay - this would, thought Forbes and Coates, allow the parties to differentiate themselves and broaden their electoral support.
Essentially, the system is that voters do not cast their votes for one of the several catch-all parties, but for a particular faction (or 'Motto') within that party. Some of the factions band together with a particular PM candidate, which pools the votes for those factions together and occasionally allows an extra MP to be elected from the surplus votes that haven't contributed towards the election of an MP for the sole faction. In this way, factions such as the United and Reform parties can convincingly differentiate and compete with one another without jeopardising the overall result.
That's the theory, anyway: Labour still won a majority of the vote in 1935, consigning the new 'National Party' to the Opposition benches, and very quickly split into several varied tendencies, which helped them dominate NZ politics for most of the country's modern history. The traditional Labour factions are: the Savageites, who were originally moderate social democrats loyal to Michael Joseph Savage, but have now gradually morphed into power-seeking technocrats; the Leeites, who have generally been an eclectic collection of misfits and radicals on the fringes of respectable politics; and the Real Democracy Movement (sometimes called Langstonites, but very rarely), the partisan sector of the Social Credit movement. The RDM was integral to appealing to centrist and centre-right voters for most of the post-war period, but a series of splits and a general organisational decline have rendered them a very minor faction. Over the ensuing decades, a Savageite split led to the creation of the Kirkites, who are labourist Christian Democrats now running under the 'Mike Moore Club' banner, and the centre-right vote has since been delivered by this Motto and - from the late 1970s - by the Douglasite 'Backbone Group'. These Mottoes traditionally support the Savageite candidate (along with the Maori Ratana movement) unless they feel confident enough to go for the premiership themselves - in 2014, as you can see below, they did not, which caused some trepidation for the Savageites.
In the National Party, both Reform and United are still in existence ('Coatesites and Wardites' in the discourse), while the Democrats of 1935 also joined for a spell before merging with the Wardites. Since then, Muldoon's populist 'AOK' (Alliance of Ordinary Kiwis) swept the old factions away over the course of the late 60s and 70s, but has since died down since the passing of its founder. New Democracy, meanwhile, was a conservative (and quite anti-semitic) splinter from the Real Democracy Movement in the 70s, which has very rarely won seats but refuses to combine with any other factions for reasons of ideological purity - for this reason, Coatesites have some antipathy towards them, accusing them of being Labour entryists designed to take votes away from Reform and increase the relative power of the other, more moderate factions. Reform themselves have put up the same candidate for every election since 1996, because Bill English is equally appealing to the Christian Coalition which grew up in the 80s in protest at the permissive society - and Christian support can swing the victory for Reform over United in a close battle. Finally, One Pacific is an astro-turf party led by South Auckland community leaders.
The Alliance was formed in the early 90s out of several new parties (Values was the first third party to enter the legislature in the post-war period in 1972), the main currents being: 'Andertonite' social democrats who were uncomfortable even in the Lee Tendency; 'Bruntite' Greens and Cannabis fans; and 'Matite' Maori liberationists. There are also minor factions of RDM and United splinters, who mainly serve to strengthen Labour '89 - the Andertonites would have won 15 seats to the Bruntites' 14 if the unused votes of the Liberal Assembly had not been transferred over to the rest of the Woods coalition.
In 2014, as is now quite usual, the centrist Labour candidate was elected Prime Minister, despite coming second in the popular vote and having only the second-largest home faction in his own Party.
And now onto the Upper House, which
Exacerbating the problem was New Zealand's 'first past the post' (FPP) electoral system. If United and Reform candidates opposed one another, they could split the vote and let Labour take seats on a minority vote. However, if they didn't oppose each other at all, then the voters who were loyal to one party but not the other might stay at home. Fortunately, a visit to Prime Minister Forbes at this point from a disreputable Uruguayan businessman, Diego Ogardo y Mazda, resulted in the Coalition copying the electoral system of Uruguay - this would, thought Forbes and Coates, allow the parties to differentiate themselves and broaden their electoral support.
Essentially, the system is that voters do not cast their votes for one of the several catch-all parties, but for a particular faction (or 'Motto') within that party. Some of the factions band together with a particular PM candidate, which pools the votes for those factions together and occasionally allows an extra MP to be elected from the surplus votes that haven't contributed towards the election of an MP for the sole faction. In this way, factions such as the United and Reform parties can convincingly differentiate and compete with one another without jeopardising the overall result.
That's the theory, anyway: Labour still won a majority of the vote in 1935, consigning the new 'National Party' to the Opposition benches, and very quickly split into several varied tendencies, which helped them dominate NZ politics for most of the country's modern history. The traditional Labour factions are: the Savageites, who were originally moderate social democrats loyal to Michael Joseph Savage, but have now gradually morphed into power-seeking technocrats; the Leeites, who have generally been an eclectic collection of misfits and radicals on the fringes of respectable politics; and the Real Democracy Movement (sometimes called Langstonites, but very rarely), the partisan sector of the Social Credit movement. The RDM was integral to appealing to centrist and centre-right voters for most of the post-war period, but a series of splits and a general organisational decline have rendered them a very minor faction. Over the ensuing decades, a Savageite split led to the creation of the Kirkites, who are labourist Christian Democrats now running under the 'Mike Moore Club' banner, and the centre-right vote has since been delivered by this Motto and - from the late 1970s - by the Douglasite 'Backbone Group'. These Mottoes traditionally support the Savageite candidate (along with the Maori Ratana movement) unless they feel confident enough to go for the premiership themselves - in 2014, as you can see below, they did not, which caused some trepidation for the Savageites.
In the National Party, both Reform and United are still in existence ('Coatesites and Wardites' in the discourse), while the Democrats of 1935 also joined for a spell before merging with the Wardites. Since then, Muldoon's populist 'AOK' (Alliance of Ordinary Kiwis) swept the old factions away over the course of the late 60s and 70s, but has since died down since the passing of its founder. New Democracy, meanwhile, was a conservative (and quite anti-semitic) splinter from the Real Democracy Movement in the 70s, which has very rarely won seats but refuses to combine with any other factions for reasons of ideological purity - for this reason, Coatesites have some antipathy towards them, accusing them of being Labour entryists designed to take votes away from Reform and increase the relative power of the other, more moderate factions. Reform themselves have put up the same candidate for every election since 1996, because Bill English is equally appealing to the Christian Coalition which grew up in the 80s in protest at the permissive society - and Christian support can swing the victory for Reform over United in a close battle. Finally, One Pacific is an astro-turf party led by South Auckland community leaders.
The Alliance was formed in the early 90s out of several new parties (Values was the first third party to enter the legislature in the post-war period in 1972), the main currents being: 'Andertonite' social democrats who were uncomfortable even in the Lee Tendency; 'Bruntite' Greens and Cannabis fans; and 'Matite' Maori liberationists. There are also minor factions of RDM and United splinters, who mainly serve to strengthen Labour '89 - the Andertonites would have won 15 seats to the Bruntites' 14 if the unused votes of the Liberal Assembly had not been transferred over to the rest of the Woods coalition.
In 2014, as is now quite usual, the centrist Labour candidate was elected Prime Minister, despite coming second in the popular vote and having only the second-largest home faction in his own Party.
And now onto the Upper House, which