The Labour MP calculator

The Progress Report has a useful calculator for working out what the Labour Caucus will look like. It shows what a problem Labour has with their list ranking.

Let’s start with Labour getting the same party vote as last time, and Labour winning the same number of electorate seats except Hutt South (which will very likely go to National’s Chris Bishop).

They get 15 male electorate MPs and  11 female electorate MPs. Overall 32 MPs so six List Mps.

With Little No 1 on the list, then the next five have to be female to have gender equality.

At 31% (a level they have very rarely polled) they get 38 MPs. So they could get two male List MPs on top of Little – presumably David Parker and Trevor Mallard.

Now after the current caucus you have Raymond Huo (about to be an MP again) and Greg O’Connor and Willie Jackson competing for places. Now to keep gender equality they would need a caucus of 44 MPs to get them all in. For that they need to get 35% of the vote  And they were only above 30% in the average of the public polls once last year.

On current polling not a single male list candidate should get elected to Parliament, except Little. The only way they can do it is to ignore their own rules on gender equality or hope they get a magical 10% increase in their vote!10