Talk:New Zealand general election, 2008

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[edit] considered vulnerable?

is describing various seats as "considered vulnerable to (re)capture" weaseltalkin'? 'cause, some winner is going to come through and sow a bunch of those reference needed tags, where you have to go back and find out who considered it vulnerable, and why if it's "considered" vulnerable, why we can't say "is vulnerable". I was just wondering if people had any idea about the language of these paragraphs? Rocklaw (talk) 20:54, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

I don't like the term "capture" in this instance. A party doesn't "capture" a seat like some sort of animal, they win the support of voters. --Lholden (talk) 03:14, 8 February 2008 (UTC)
Is being considered vulnerable as simple as having less than x% majority, or n vote majority? If so, a single reference to someone saying that could be found, and then a paper majority for the changed seats also needs to be referenced.-gadfium 03:19, 8 February 2008 (UTC)
I agree with all of this. "capture" is a misnomer; for instance, Nick Smith won Nelson, but Labour hosed his party down for party votes. Who won that? And Gadfium is right, because (1) nobody did the maths on the numbers for the new seats (and probably nobody will) and (2) I don't know, do we wait for an article in the Dom from Nigel Roberts called "seats to watch" or somesuch? Is that dubious use of referencing, when we reference opinion articles? I take from all of this that the paragraph needs to be rewritten. Any ideas how? Rocklaw (talk) 11:26, 8 February 2008 (UTC)
I have got data calculating majorities on the new boundaries for all 70 seats if that would be helpful. It is based on reallocating polling places to the new boundaries and proportionally allocating special votes DPF (talk) 11:38, 24 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] last minute

Hi, I'm new here, and interested in helping make this page better. There are two things I want to talk about: 1. I would really like to have all 70 current electorates profiled (can we get maps?) before too long, maybe Easter? (of which I will gladly do a lot of the work) 2. that I would like to turn the 'marginal seats' section into a 'notable races' section, so as to avoid oversignifying electorate results (they're not super important any more)non-marginal seats. I guess, just nuts and bolts. So, yeah. hi. Rocklaw (talk) 00:08, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] snap election

what counts as a snap election? If 1984 was a snap then so was 2002, right? In which case, they aren't that rare any more. My point when I renovated the opening paragraph was to say off year snaps are ridiculously rare. I will follow it up by adding that we shouldn't get too hung up on presedence or convention, because those sorts of things are just made to be broken, especially while we're still feeling our way around the new(ish) electoral system. Kripto 21:49, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

It seems to be generally agreed that 1984 was a snap election, and our article calls it one. I'm not sure about the 2002 election; I looked at it before updating the page. It was certainly called months earlier than it legally had to be, and some people called it a snap election, but the government said it wasn't one. I see our article snap election says 2002 was one, so I would have no objection to the lead paragraph being updated to that.-gadfium 02:02, 4 April 2007 (UTC)
Perhaps we should avoid discussion of snap elections in this article, since they aren't relevant here at present.-gadfium 08:51, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

I think we should thrash out a theoretical definiton of a snap election with no particular year in mind, since it is a somewhat nebulous concept. Then we can apply it with total immunity friom prosecution. I open the bidding with, one that happens before the start of spring (ca. September 1) in a usual election year. Kripto 00:37, 20 June 2007 (UTC)

Heh, that's a good point actually - we don't have fixed election dates. Although, of course, I think we should... (rants about the constitution and lack thereof). However, the term "snap" implies an election called when no-one expects one. In which case only 1984 could be truly considered a snap election, as 1951 and 2002 were expected. --Lholden 02:06, 20 June 2007 (UTC)
"New Zealand parliaments traditionally run a full term" is either a contradiction in terms or an abuse of language, precisely because "we don't have fixed election dates". When talking of time, "term" means a defined span of time. It doesn't have to be precisely known in advance, e.g. a convict sentenced to imprisonment for "the term of his natural life", but it does have to be fixed in advance. In the Westminster System parliaments do not usually have terms at all, though they usually do have an upper limit on the interval between elections. It makes even less sense to talk of governments or ministers having terms of office, since they can span several parliaments without even a theoretical upper limit (apart from exception countries with variations to the Westminster System). 203.220.42.33 (talk) 08:55, 18 November 2007 (UTC) P.M.Lawrence.

[edit] 13 seats?

John Key doesn't need to win 13 seats to govern. What bollocks. If whoever did that doesn't understand the New Zealand electoral syste and is still using FPP lingo to describe it, could they at least have the good grace not to edit pages about it? 121.73.11.43 (talk) 23:54, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

In order to form the government, John Key will have to gain the support of 13 MPs in addition to the current 48 National MPs (assuming no overhang). That's not FPP lingo, that's fact. --Lholden (talk) 00:02, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

The current LAB+PRO government is always ten seats short of government using this "fact" let's call it "Holden's Law". With NZF+UTD, this number falls to two short, which is why the Greens abstain on sup&conf. This means that nobody has a majority in the house - to govern, in effect, you just need more seats than the other guy. MMP's dirty little secret, and the one that I reckon the future election will blow the lid off is - the idea of a group of people being obviously and demonstrably "the government" is dead. I've always held the sneaking suspicion that the centre-right haven't quite grasped this idea, which explains (not completely, but pretty well) why they keep getting beaten. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 121.73.11.43 (talk) 00:30, 16 December 2007 (UTC)

Ok, we'll remove it if you think it's such an issue. --Lholden (talk) 05:01, 16 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] the election funding scandal

Ten bucks says this: not one vote will be swayed by a year-old election funding scandal. In fact, if you were to ask a panel of experts what's going to be the major theme of a campaign that most likely won't be waged until next spring, they'd say they couldn't tell you, given that leaders don't like to play their policy hands too far out. In the light of that, I would suggest that we shouldn't talk about issues until closer to the time, and leave the article as a sort of skeletal look at the mechanics of not the campaign, but the electoral process itself. Kripto 22:48, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Resigning members

Taito Field is going to retire in 2006? Since when?

The article referenced states that he may possibly resign. --Lholden 21:57, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

Speculation is highly unencyclopediac. An alien could burst out of his stomach (this is unlikely, I grant); he could be deselected (which is more likely), etc, etc. But, one thing, if we're going to speculate in lieu of any good information which isn't due until probably the middle of next year, then what about the possibility of resignations of MPs in order to stand for various mayoralties? Kripto 22:48, 1 February 2007 (UTC)


[edit] Helen

Can anyone find a better free use image? Brian | (Talk) 04:07, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

Someone should email each politician, asking them to licence a photo under Creative Commons so Wikipedia can use it. If that someone is in Wellington, offer to come and photograph them personally if they prefer. The page Wikipedia:Example requests for permission might help.-gadfium 04:58, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
I tried that to Govt House once, never got a reply. Brian | (Talk) 05:00, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
We also need one for Key, as the image doesn't meet free use requirements. --Lholden 07:48, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
I've contacted Key's office, see if we have any luck... Brian | (Talk) 02:15, 7 December 2006 (UTC)
Contacting the Members of Parliament for pictures is a good idea. Many of the MP's I know use their parliament.govt.nz email primarily so I suggest contacting them that way. Sugnaguy | (Talk) 18:30, 23 March 2008

[edit] spec u later, alligator

1. The electorate boundaries aren't of notable interest - we're stuck an an FPP hangover when we say that a close call in Otaki is noteworthy. You might as well say that Nick Smith's majority in Nelson is a sign of things to come. Where was the party vote the closest? 2. seriously, take the election fnuding thing down. You're soothsaying. You're trying to guess what the campaign will be about. Don't do that. 3. Only list the people who will retire. There's a rumour (sure I just started it, but all the same) that Paul Swain will ascend to heaven on a golden chariot too, but I take that as seriosuly as I do stories of Pete Hodgson retiring - I've heard stories of PH quitting since the day he was elected. Don't speculate. 4. Where did the picture of John Key go? Kripto 03:02, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

To answer the last question, the picture we had was fair use, but then we got a free image so the fair use one had to go. For reasons I don't understand the free image was deleted, and no one has yet reuploaded the fair use one. Actually, that's hardly an answer at all.-gadfium 06:05, 18 June 2007 (UTC)
I disagree about the electorate boundaries. They aren't as important as before MMP, but they're worth commenting on and this is an appropriate article.
I agree about the election funding and National leadership issues, and have removed that section.
I've removed the list of retiring MPs since that is sourced as a rumour. Marion Hobbs apparently has announced her resignation as of the end of the term, but the others were unsourced. Retiring MPs properly should go into the New Zealand general election, 2005 anyway.-gadfium 06:26, 18 June 2007 (UTC)
I've been trying to contact Key's office about the fair use image, which I had permission to use last time, but I haven't had any response as yet. --Lholden 07:17, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] polls

hey, I count 67 opinion polls taken since the 2005 election. That's a lot, and read as a continuous bunch of numbers, does have some semblence of validity as an indicator of trends. I don't mind updating the polling chart, that's not what bugs me, it's more...if I put all 67 polls up, and maybe a graph I don't really know how to make, (screencap?) would it be better to have this on a new page? 67 table rows is a bit big. Kripto 03:52, 11 July 2007 (UTC)

We only have about 15 polls at the moment. If you have figures for others, by all means add them. A graph would be great, but I don't know a good way to create a graph as a .png file or similar.-gadfium 06:33, 11 July 2007 (UTC)
I've been thinking about generating a graph in a Open Source spreadsheet program I have, but it's a fairly complex task - e.g. do we want an aggregated poll, or individual results of parties? --Lholden 21:27, 11 July 2007 (UTC)
Well, I think a line graph will do the trick. I mean, you make a graph in openoffice, and then you take a screencap (I use kubuntu and it always saves them as as .png, so that's all sweet, nobody with a patent gets hurt) and post it as an image. I was just kinda hoping that there was a way to make wikipedia do it for me. Guess not. The second part of my question is do we want a separate page called Opinion Polling for the 2008 New Zealand General Election? Because once the election gets in full swing, (after the speculation of 2007, and the phony war that rages from February onwards) there'll be candidates, lists, results and stuff, and this can take up a lot of space. Also, I haven't been paying a lot of attention to preferred PM polls, so I don't have any. Kripto 02:37, 12 July 2007 (UTC)
That seems okay to me - there's an article on the US presidential elections similar to what I think you're plugging at - Opinion polling for the United States presidential election, 2008 - with a fairly complex scatter graph (although, there's multiple candidates so it's a bit of a mind twister, innit). --Lholden 02:48, 12 July 2007 (UTC)
Yeah, at least we know who's contesting our election. So if I come back in a few hours and start uploading data to a new page, then nobody is going slap a merge tag on it? Also, I'm not going to upload a scatter graph. Kripto 04:51, 12 July 2007 (UTC)
I think a screen capture is probably not the optimal way of making a graph. Ask at WP:HD, someone there will be sure to know. I agree that splitting the polls out into a separate article is a good idea.-gadfium 05:15, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Summary of polls

I don't like the way this article appears to treat Opinion polling for the New Zealand general election, 2008. It should be discussed here as well, using the main article template rather than pointing to another article only. Does anyone disagree? With candidates, it's different of course, but we can certainly give a quick summary of opinion polling. Richard001 (talk) 00:38, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

yeah, that's fair. While we're at it, maybe we could move the non-returning candidates' names under the link for Candidates for the New Zealand general election, 2008? Rocklaw (talk) 01:05, 28 January 2008 (UTC)