Election 2011

I'm having a harder time than David seeing the potential new Left party as that big a threat for National. The biggest threat is through increased turnout: disaffected Labour folks showing up and voting for Sue Bradford rather than staying home and sulking about Phil Goff. Otherwise, it's just leakage from the Greens, Jim Anderton's old party, bits of Labour, and bits of the Maori Party. What's the worst case? They draw enough party vote away from the Maori Party that the Maori Seats form a bigger overhang and that they get a couple of points from folks who otherwise would have stayed home. That might get you three seats for the Bradford Party and increase the size of Parliament by one relative to what it otherwise would have been.

Let's assume iPredict's numbers are right - they're our best guess even if I'm a bit skeptical of the the vote share markets. And let's further assume that all of the vote share bet now on "Other" is for some new left party: 2.1% of the vote. If Hone's with them and takes a seat, that's 3 total seats. Running the numbers through my little iPredict election spreadsheet, I still don't see more than a 7% chance that a combination of Labour, Green, NZ First, with or without the addition of a New Left Party, can beat National, ACT and UF. The only way it happens is if NZ First gets past the 5% threshold (very unlikely, as Peters is still trading at only a 33% chance of entering) and neither ACT nor UF do, or NZ First gets in with a New Left party and ACT fails to. iPredict's numbers imply a 7% chance of those outcomes. Note that I'm also taking the chances of a New Left party as coming from Hone's chances of winning as an independent or for another party rather than from the contract paying out on a New Left party. Hone's sufficient by himself for there to be a new party, whether or not Bradford or McCarten want to join him.

The most likely scenario, at a 21% chance overall, has ACT and a New Left party entering Parliament, UF and NZ First failing to do so. In that case, {National + ACT} has 64 seats, {Labour, Green, Maori, New Left} have 59 in a 123 seat Parliament.

If any Bradford/Hone run New Left party will have any real effect, it's yet to show up in the iPredict numbers. Folks thinking Bradford will have a real go at this ought to be bidding up the price of Vote.2011.Other. But to the extent they draw vote share at expense of Green and Labour, it won't much affect the likely outcome.