New Zealand votes for MMP

Almost every New Zealand election between 1853 and 1996 was held under first past the post, in which the candidate with the most votes in each electorate won the seat, even without a majority. From the late 1930s the system helped entrench the dominance of Labour and National, because the most popular party usually won a larger share of seats than of votes, and minor parties were often shut out. By the 1970s many voters were disillusioned with both major parties, but the system did their alternatives no favours. Social Credit won 16% of the vote in 1978 but only one of the 92 seats, and nearly 21% in 1981 but just two. In 1984 the New Zealand Party won 12% and no seats. At both the 1978 and 1981 elections Labour won more votes overall than National, yet National won more seats and stayed in government.

During the 1981 and 1984 campaigns Labour promised a royal commission on the electoral system. After winning power in July 1984 it appointed one early the following year. The commission's report, Towards a better democracy, released in December 1986, was in NZHistory's description 'surprisingly radical'. It recommended the German-style mixed member proportional system, or MMP, under which each voter would have two votes, one for an electorate MP and one for a party. Parliament would grow to 120 members, half elected in electorates and half drawn from party lists, so that each party's share of the seats would broadly match its share of the vote. Few politicians in either major party welcomed the idea. Shortly before the 1987 election, Prime Minister David Lange pledged in a televised leaders' debate to hold a binding referendum on electoral reform. It was not Labour policy, and his party ignored the pledge in its second term. Largely to highlight that broken promise, National's 1990 manifesto promised a binding referendum before the end of 1992. A lobby group, the Electoral Reform Coalition, kept the issue alive.

National won the 1990 election with more than two-thirds of the seats, but was soon under fire for breaking election promises of its own. Trust in politicians fell further: polls ranked them alongside used-car salespeople as the least-respected occupational group in the country. On 19 September 1992 Jim Bolger's government held an indicative referendum, one that did not bind it. Voters were asked whether they wanted to change the voting system, and then which of four alternatives they preferred: MMP, the single transferable vote, supplementary member or preferential voting. Only 55.2% of registered electors took part, but 84.7% of them voted for change, and 70.5% chose MMP. As the Labour leader Mike Moore put it: 'The people didn't speak on Saturday. They screamed.' The government then held a binding run-off between first past the post and MMP alongside the general election on 6 November 1993.

This time well-organised lobby groups on both sides fought a fierce campaign, and a barrage of television and newspaper advertisements tried to sway undecided voters. Because the referendum was held with a general election, turnout was 85%, much higher than in 1992, and the result much closer. MMP won 53.9% of the vote and first past the post 46.1%. The result meant that the Electoral Act 1993 became law. New Zealand held its first MMP election on 12 October 1996.

NZHistory calls the vote the most dramatic change to the country's electoral system since women won the vote exactly 100 years before. It traces the change to a gradual breakdown of public trust in politicians, Parliament and the old two-party system that began in the 1950s and 1960s and gathered pace in the 1970s and 1980s. In 2011 a third referendum, again held alongside a general election, asked whether to keep MMP. Voters chose to keep it: NZHistory puts the vote in favour at around 57%, Te Ara at nearly 58%. In Te Ara's assessment, governments under MMP have not been quite as strong as in the first-past-the-post era, but they have not been unstable.