-> I guess 47% are prepared to let the others decide... 
  
Or don't think it makes much difference. 
  
-> Coalitions tend to avoid extremes - if that is 'governing better'.  
-> In my view, thorny issues go further back with coalitions than  
-> with majority governments... 
  
Not always. The two largest parties here are the Liberals and the 
Conservatives. The third-largest is the New Democratic Party, which is 
social-democratic. The Greens are fourth. The Conservatives are 
definitely on the right of the political spectrum, and the NDP on the 
left. The Liberals try to command the centre, which is why they are 
often in power. But, a few decades ago when Pierre Trudeau was Prime 
Minister, the Liberals won only a minority, and had to make a coalition 
with the NDP to govern. The result was that policies well to the left 
of the Liberals' usual position were put into effect. 
  
 
->  DW> There's an empirical rule called the Cube Rule that predicts pretty 
->  DW> well how many seats the parties get. The numbers of seats are 
->  DW> proportional to the *cubes* of the numbers of votes. If you calculate 
->  DW> the numbers of seats this rule predicts with the voting numbers above, 
->  DW> they are pretty accurate. 
 
-> It works very well over NZ's voting history, too - but I've never  
-> ever managed to get any of our political scientists to give it  
-> credence. 
  
It works well in Britain, too, but not in Canada on the federal level. 
The reason for that is that there is a party, the Bloc Quebecois, 
which is popular in one province, Quebec, but has no support elsewhere. 
So it wins a lot of seats in Quebec, even though, on a national level, 
its share of the vote is low, such that the cube rule would predict it 
would get no seats, or very few. Basically, if there are parties with 
localized support, the cube rule fails. 
  
-> Suddenly, we're out of both soccer and rugby worlds and looking  
-> succeed at lacrosse (sorry, Lacrossians) or tiddleywinks or  
-> summat...   :-( 
  
Lacrosse is a good game. It was originally played by North American 
"Indians", and is still popular and taken seriously here. NZ would be 
welcome to play us, but I bet we'd trounce you. 
  
Incidentally, I'm going to be away for the next 3.5 weeks. Have fun... 
  
                               dow 
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