After each general election, a group of political scientists conduct a survey of the views, values and voting behaviour of a large sample of voters. It’s known as the New Zealand Election Survey, or NZES. Because their sample group is so large – usually about 3000 people – you can examine subsets of voters with some confidence that the data has statistical significance. So we can look at the supporters of different political parties and ask what they believe and who they are.
Under first past the post, New Zealand had swing electorates: a handful of strategic seats the major parties battled over, and these determined the outcome of the election. Under MMP, we have strategic constituencies: demographic groups that can swing from one party to another. In
