Good to see this from Stuff this morning.
They have this nifty interactive up where we can change marginal seat outcomes, and compare current results with the percentage shift from Special votes in 2023.
I’ve seen people doing various scenarios using AI, but they seem to be preloading political reckons about likelihood. This one is straight numbers.
This is the most basic change: Wairarapa goes to Labour and not National (quite likely), and the same kind of party vote swing from right to left as in 2023 once the Specials were counted.
We can also load the current results into the MMP calculator and then adjust National and Te Pati Māori electorate numbers (because they affect the overhang), or party vote percentage shifts from various parties to others. More cumbersome than AI, but better on keeping the numbers clean.
Official preliminary results are here.
This is the MMP calculator with this years’ preliminary results pre-loaded.
The Progress Report pre-loads their calculator with the preliminary results too.
My back of the spreadsheet calculations say one seat flip from National to Labour and a maybe 1.5% party vote swing from right to left, would give a Labour/Green/Te Pāti Māori plus Opportunity government pathway. But it’s more complex because of which votes go where, and if any marginal seats clip to Nat, or god forbid Te Tai Tokerau from Te Pati Māori to the Greens.
I am not a political scientist or statistician, treat all my reckons and maths as amateur. Feel free to point out mistakes.
Here is an interesting question for you. And probably one for game theorists:
Lets assume there is a hung parliament, and we go back for another election, which would probably be under the same rules.
What would the result be assuming that tactical voting is maximised by both sides?