The lifeboat, every time it mattered
Every MMP election New Zealand has held, from the Electoral Commission’s own returns. In each one, some party was let into Parliament at its full proportional share on a tiny party vote — because it won one electorate — while another party’s votes, often more votes, bought nothing. Pull a lever and watch the Parliament that arithmetic would have produced. Every number is computed by the engine that reproduces all ten official results exactly.
Under the 5% line, 2008
Bars are share of the party vote; the dashed line is the 5% threshold. Coloured bars got in anyway — every one of them through the s 191(4) electorate door.
Pull a lever
Pulling a pulled lever puts it back.
The Parliament that would have followed
Hand New Zealand First one electorate — any electorate — and their 95,356 party votes stop being worth nothing: 5 seats, taken proportionally from the field (National −3, Labour −1, Greens −1). National hands over the seat and gets it straight back as a list seat.
What this can honestly claim: the seats, exactly — this is the Electoral Act applied to the official votes with one electorate moved, by an engine that reproduces every real MMP result. What it cannot claim: who would have governed. Coalitions are negotiated, not computed. The donated seat is taken from National, the year’s biggest electorate winner, and it does not matter which big party donates — they get the seat straight back off their list, and the Parliament comes out identical either way (that invariance is tested). The newcomer’s seats are the part that isn’t free: they come out of every party’s proportional share, by quotient order.