It’s time for New Zealanders to decide the country’s future once again! After 9 years of leadership by John Key through both good and bad times, he has decided to retire from politics, handing over the reigns of power to his deputy and former leader Bill English. What seemed like a cakewalk to victory has turned into a battle of popularity and experience, as Andrew Little suddenly resigned as Labour leader just weeks before election day. Labour decided to coalesce around the young and charismatic Jacinda Ardern, electing her as their new leader. Coming from mid-20% polls, Ardern has a big task ahead of her to overcome. How will New Zealand decide?
The election’s unique nature allows for some hypothetical scenarios:
- What if Andrew Little had persevered through the bad polling numbers and led Labour to the end?
- What if Winston Peters decided not to do the unexpected and formed a coalition with National?
- What if Peter Dunne continued fighting in Ōhāriu even though polls showed he might not make it back this time?
- What if the coalition arrangements changed, with a Red-Green coalition aided by Uncle Winnie?
- What if National decided it was time to have an economically responsible and environmentally responsible government by forming a coalition with the Greens?
Because of the lack of an MMP system in PMI, we decided to get a little creative by converting the list seats into actual electorate seats. You can battle it out here in the marginal seats, which are basically voters who are undecided but voted for said party last time and might be able to be persuaded to vote for you this time around. To make it a tad bit more realistic, I have made it as hard as possible for you to get the “Base” Party support seats – for example, the National has 12 “Base seats” which would be hard to get. Every party that makes it into the threshold in the 2014 election has this. It’s not perfect, but it’s the best we can do under the circumstances.
