Editorial: MMP not to blame for impasse

When a royal commission recommended a new electoral system, MMP, it explained that there was a price to be paid. A system which more accurately represented public opinion would make elections less decisive. The previous system, for all its faults, usually produced clear-cut results. We have had MMP for four elections now and for a second time the votes have left the Government of the country indeterminate on election night. Inevitably, there will be a certain nostalgia for the days of winner-take-all.

Both Labour and National must wonder what the outcome this time might have been. Labour can look at its 1 percentage point victory on the night and remember that a similar margin was capable of delivering a majority of seats in the old days. National might be looking at all the electorates it won from Labour on Saturday and remembering that twice under the previous system it won enough seats to govern while trailing Labour in the vote nationwide. Would the same have happened this time?

It is impossible to know of course because the rules change the way voters might behave. But National has taken 10 electorates from Labour this time: Aoraki, East Coast, Hamilton East, Invercargill, Napier, Northcote, Otago, Tukituki, Wairarapa and Whanganui, and tipped Winston Peters out of Tauranga. Some of those results might have reflected the performance of the member or the calibre of the challenger but MMP's two votes provided a ready reckoner of the personal factor. In all the seats except Invercargill this time National also won the party vote.

In fact only seven electorates "split" the two votes between different parties. National took the party vote in five seats held by Labour - New Plymouth, Rotorua, Taupo, Waimakariri and West Coast-Tasman - and conceded the party vote to Labour in two that National won: Invercargill and Nelson. So it is conceivable that under a single-vote system National would have collected more of those seats.

But for all that, when the first-past-the-post electorate results are stacked up this time they produce a result no more decisive than the nationwide vote. National and Labour have each won 31 electorates. Add Rodney Hide's Epsom to National's list and give Labour Jim Anderton's Wigram and the result is all square. In a winner-take-all election National might also count on Peter Dunne's Ohariu-Belmont seat, where National won the party vote on Saturday. But even if Mr Dunne held that seat he would not be deciding the election, the decisive element would be the four electorates won on Saturday by the Maori Party.

It is an intriguing thought that if the country had not changed its electoral system the Maori Party alone would probably now hold the balance of power.

Be that as it may, the country cannot blame its electoral system for the indecisive outcome of this election. The blame, if that is the right word, lies entirely with the electorate. The country was evenly divided no matter how you count the votes and, either way, parties representing a very small proportion of the voting population have been handed disproportionate influence. At least proportional representation has put several small parties in that position rather than one. They will be vying with each other to use their influence to their best advantage and that gives the leading large party, Labour on election night, more leverage.

Several more elections may pass before the electoral system ceases to be on trial, as it were, but this time it appears to have passed the test. It has put all significant shades of opinion into Parliament, and left the decision dependent on several parties, moderation and responsibility.