60% of MPs directly elected (97% to Lab-Nat), 8% 'wasted' votes, 1% invalid

KEY INSIGHTS

Of our 120 MPs in Parliament:

65 (54%) get elected by the general electorate
7 (6%) get elected by the Māori electorate
48 (40%) get elected from party lists based on our collective party votes

Of the 2,919,073 votes cast in the 2020 General Election

2,886,420 (99%) were considered valid votes:
- 2,661,230 (92%) went to parties that made it into Parliament
- 225,190 (8%) went to parties that did not make it into Parliament because they did not win an electorate seat or reach the 5% party vote threshold. These are often referred to as ‘wasted’ votes.
32,653 (1%) were considered invalid votes:
- 21,372 (~2/3) were informal votes and discarded
- 11,281 (~1/3) were disallowed for other reasons, e.g. special votes that arrived late.

KEY QUESTIONS

Is there a better way to do:
a) General electorate seats?
b) Māori electorate seats?
c) Party-list seats?
Is the 5% party vote threshold at the optimum level?
Should we introduce STV (Single Transferable Voting) so that if your first choice doesn’t get in, your second or third choice still counts?
Over 10,000 Special Votes were disallowed, presumably because they arrived late. How do we fix this?

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HAVE YOUR SAY

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EXPLANATION

The term “wasted vote” is commonly used to describe a party vote at a general election which is discarded because the political party did not win a seat in Parliament via either:
- Winning one of the 72 electorate seats (65 General Electorates + 7 Māori Electorates)
- Winning 5% of the overall party vote
Some argue that it is not a wasted vote, as it still shows support for that party, or a protest vote against other parties
We couldn’t find a good definition/explanation of an “informal vote” in the data, on NZ Government Department websites, or in The Electoral Act 1993, but have asked for this. Here is Australia’s:“When a ballot paper has not been fully completed, is completed incorrectly or you can identify the person who voted, it is known as an ‘informal vote’, and will not be counted toward the election result.”
The average of “wasted votes” (party didn’t get in + informal votes) across the nine elections from 1996 to 2020 is 5.9%

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FULL DATA ANALYSIS
Please contact us if you would like the full data set and analysis.

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Other notes:

We adjusted the pie chart sizes so that the area was proportional to the votes received.
Party colours were based off their logos in the 2020 election.
New Zealand’s electoral system changed from FPP (First Past the Post) in 1993 to MMP (Mixed Member Proportional) in 1996. Under FPP, voters only got one vote for a candidate in their local electorate, so the definition of “wasted votes” is very different, e.g. you might have voted for a party candidate who didn’t win their electorate seat, but their party formed the Government. Or, someone might have won their electorate seat with, say, 40% of the vote so, arguably, 60% of votes were “wasted”. This is why we have focused on MMP election data only where voters can vote for political parties as well.
In the Electoral Commission’s Report that was released in October 2012, they recommended several changes, including lowering the party vote threshold from 5% to 4%.
All numbers are provisional and subject to revision.

Thank you to the Factors who helped pull this together.

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SOURCES:

Data published by The Electoral Commission
(c) Crown Copyright
Licensed for use under the creative commons attribution licence (BY) 4.0

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Did we make a mistake, or have you got smarter data? Let us know.

60% of MPs directly elected (97% to Lab-Nat), 8% ‘wasted’ votes, 1% invalid