Over the next few weeks there will be six general elections I’ll be following closely. My expectation is that parties of the right, overall, will perform better than those on the left. The big exception will be the American congressional elections about which I made my predictions in my last article. See “US mid-terms: I’m tipping a Democrat sweep of Congress”.
The first election to take place will be on Sunday 25 October. It will be Brazil’s “run-off” presidential election. In their presidential elections the Brazilians have two rounds, the second not being needed if the first round produces a winner with an absolute majority of votes. Anyway, the first round on Sunday 4 October gave 45-year-old Flavio Bolsonaro of the right-leaning Liberal Party 47.3% of the vote and he led the count. In second place was left-leaning President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva of the Workers’ Party and he received 44.8%. The rest combined won 7.9%.
President Lula (as he is known) is 80 years old and he has made the same mistake that Joe Biden made, seeking another term. I am willing to predict that Bolsonaro (son of former President Jair Bolsonaro) will be elected.
The next election will be for the Israeli Knesset on Tuesday 27 October. In that case I must admit I do not have the degree of expertise needed to make a prediction. I do not know who the prime minister will be on this year’s Christmas Day.
Next come the US mid-terms on Tuesday 3 November about which I have already made my detailed predictions. Then on the following Saturday 7 November comes the general election for New Zealand’s House of Representatives.
The final weekend of elections begins on Saturday 28 November when Victorians go to the polls, producing (on my prediction) a Coalition government led by Jess Wilson. Finally, on Sunday 29 November the Spanish people will be asked to return a verdict on that country’s socialist prime minister, Pedro Sanchez. My prediction is that he will be voted out of office and replaced by Alberto Nunez Feijoo who is currently Leader of the Opposition and leader of the right-wing People’s Party.
Although I am interested in every democratic country, I am the first to admit that my interest in Brazil, Israel and Spain is quite marginal. By contrast I do follow New Zealand quite closely which means I can offer an informed prediction there, even though such prediction may well turn out to be quite wrong.
The main thing to know about this election is that it is being contested under a proportional representation (PR) system, known as Mixed Member Proportional, or MMP. This system has applied at elections in 1996, 1999, 2002, 2005, 2008, 2011, 2014, 2017, 2020 and 2023. It has produced National Party-led and Labour Party-led governments, none of which has lasted long. The three longest-serving prime ministers were produced by the old British system of first-past-the-post in single-member constituencies.
Nevertheless, there have been three recent prime ministers of moderate length, the 37th Helen Clark (Labour) serving from 1999 to 2008, the 38th John Key (National) serving from 2008 to 2016 and the 40th Jacinda Ardern (Labour) serving from October 2017 to January 2023 when she retired on her own terms. Mind you, there are cynics who assert that she gave the job away to Christopher Hipkins (41st prime minister from January to November 2023) in expectation that Labour would lose the 2023 general election.
The most recent general election was held on 14 October 2023, and it returned three right-of-centre parties to government. In a House of Representatives of 123 members, National won 49 seats, the ACT Party 11 and New Zealand First 8. That makes 68, which is a majority. Parties on the left won 55 seats, 34 Labour, 15 for the Green Party and 6 for the Māori party, known as Te Pāti Māori.
Christopher Luxon has been the National Party prime minister since November 2023. His deputy PM has alternated between Winston Peters, leader of New Zealand First, and David Seymour, leader of ACT. This latter party is very much free-market orientated and arose originally from the Association of Consumers and Taxpayers (ACT). Peters used to be described as “New Zealand’s Pauline Hanson”, which was always unfair to him. While he is a populist his party has never been described as “racist”. That is where he differs most from Hanson.
Although MMP is a PR system it differs significantly from Israel’s PR system and it also differs substantially from Australia’s PR system for our Senate. New Zealanders call theirs a “two-votes” system, which it is, technically. I think all three countries have bad PR systems for their national legislatures. For me the only good PR system is Ireland’s single transferable vote which in Australia goes under the name Hare-Clark.
In expressing my hostility to MMP I have always described it as “New Zealand’s two-ticks, one-vote semi-proportional set of contrivances”. The point is that there are 71 single-member first-past-the-post constituencies (48 on the North Island, 16 on the South Island and 7 Māori seats). Then there are 49 party list seats. These are not distributed proportionally between the parties. They are there to “top up” constituency wins to produce overall proportionality. There were 51 in October 2023, and they went 17 to Labour, 12 to the Green Party, 9 to ACT, 8 to New Zealand First and only 5 to National. Having won six single-member constituencies, Te Pāti Māori did not win a single list seat.
So, what will happen? My prediction is 44 for National, 13 ACT and 11 for NZ First, so it would still be 68 for the Coalition government. For the Opposition benches I predict 32 Labour, 11 Greens and 6 each for Te Pāti Māori and the new Opportunity Party. So, still 55.
Many things could prove the above predictions wrong. The total number of members might be 120, 121, 122, 124 or 125, not the 123 I predict. If I am right then the 44 National Party members would all be single-member constituency local members, that being consequent upon all those sitting members retaining their seats. The same would be true of the six Te Pāti Māori seats. The other five parties would carve up all the party-list seats between them. What a horrible, unfair system this is!