Greens and Māori Party voted their own way last Parliament
By analysing party voting on final bill readings, we can see how the political parties differ when it came to legislation passed during the 48th New Zealand Parliament.
The closer two parties are on the plot, the more often they voted the same way in final bill readings. The distances between parties is calculated from their bill votes. The axes don’t have any special meaning. It is the distances between parties that explain similarity in their voting.
Is there an explanation for the party clusters?
New Zealand First and United Future voted in a similar way to Labour as they were part of the Labour led government. Both parties had a confidence and supply agreement with Labour. The Progressives were in a coalition agreement with Labour and voted almost exactly the same as Labour - their logo is displayed in an offset position to be visible on the plot.
National and Act were relatively similar in their bill voting, but voted quite differently from the other parties.
The Greens and Māori Party were relatively similar in their bill voting.
Potentially challenging coalition negotiations
The Greens and Māori Party may find potential coalition agreements difficult with Labour as their bill voting has been substantially different from Labour in the past, indicating different policy directions. The Greens and Labour voted in the same way in 65% of the final bill readings (71 out of 110), the Māori Party and Labour voted in the same way in 52% of the readings.
The Māori Party voted in a different way from National in 73% of the final bill readings (80 out of 110). The Māori Party voted almost twice as often with Labour on final bill readings (57 the same) than they did with National (30 the same). Any post election coalition involving National and the Māori Party may prove a very difficult negotiation for both parties.
How was the party distances plot made?
The plot was created by a statistical analysis of final bill reading votes, using a technique called principal components analysis. The two principal components plotted above explain 74.4% of the variance in the way parties voted on final bill readings.
You can read a blog post for details of how to do the principal components analysis for yourself. The data is provided.
See the TheyWorkForYou.co.nz website for more party voting analysis and information.
