How would you solve the overhang? (self.politics)

submitted 2 days ago by Mr_Fish to c/politics

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The election results this year are bad. Even if you voted for the national coalition, I think you should be angry about this year's results because they go against the point of MMP. I have two ideas of how to fix overhangs and make sure the government is always proportional, but I'd love to hear your thoughts on it.

Idea 1, the simpler solution: Just add more list seats. Fill up all the electorate seats, then add list MPs until there are at least the base number of seats, and adding another seat would make it less proportional. Pros: It's simple, intuitive, and makes more sense than allowing overhangs. Cons: There could be a lot of MPs in the house.

Idea 2, STV + MMP: This idea uses STV or some other ranked system to elect the electorate MPs, which would be better than the FPTP we use for them now. But in this case, if an overhang happens, the overhang seat with the thinnest majority would be recalculated with the previous winner's votes transferred. Pros: it works in a better system for the electorates, and it makes for a consistent size of parliament. Cons: It's slightly more confusing for the voters, and calculating the seats could take much longer.

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[-] absGeekNZ 2 points 5 hours ago

I have been thinking about this for a couple of days now; here is my proposal for how to fix the overhang issue:

Note - by fix, I mean maintain the two vote system, whilst also preserving proportionality (as closely as possible); whilst also pissing off the fewest people.

Note 2 - this system does not completely eliminate the overhang, but will significantly limit its influence.

The proposed system will work; from the voters point of view; exactly as the current system does with a party vote and a candidate vote.

Each party is afforded precisely one overhang seat if the vote count comes out that way. Limiting the size of parliament to 120 + (the number parties)/2, rounded up. So with seven parties the limit is 124, this is unlikely but possible.

Any other overhang seats are "flipped"; to the second place getter; starting at the closest races in each electorate. These are the places where a few hundred votes either way would have put the second place candidate in. This is going to piss off a bunch of people, but this is statistically the fewest people that are pissed off.

The only dispensation where a seat cannot be flipped is if the seat is that of the party leader(s).

The allowance of one overhang seat; means that parties HAVE to campaign on the party vote, as more seats means nothing to them beyond that. This also allows for TPM to get say 2.5% of the party vote which would allow 3 seats, but have a 4th from their allowed 1 seat overhang.

The reason I have settled on this as the "best" option, is three fold.

Fewest changes for the voters of NZ; educating the public on a new system is difficult.
1 seat overhang, still reflects the will of the people if a party really does have a whole bunch of great candidates but shit party....seems weird but possible.
Candidates will really have to work not to have their seat be a "close" race, be visible and serve their communities.

[-] absGeekNZ 1 points 5 hours ago* (last edited 5 hours ago)

Current election results:

Nat @29.2 gets 36+1; 37 E, 0 L
Lab @29.4 gets 36; 21 E + 4 E from TPM flip + 5 E from NAt flip, + 6 L
Grn @13.3 gets 16; No change to E/L
Act @10.9 gets 13; No change to E/L
NZF @9.8 gets 12; No change to E/L
Opp @6 gets 7; No change to E/L
TPM @0.4 gets 0+1; 1 E 0 L

This gives a 122 seat house, compared to the 131 seats we are looking at.

The current election results are quite unfair to TPM under my system; mainly because their strategy to shift party vote was well executed. If they got their 2023 result of 3.1% it wouldn't be so distorted. The numbers would shuffle around a bit and that 3% would likely have come from Lab/Grn.

TPM 2023 would have got 4 seats + 1 in overhang; giving them 5 instead of the 6 they actually got in 2023.

2023 would have see a 121 seat house rather than a 122 that we actually got.

this post was submitted on 08 Nov 2026

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