MMP gaining support

By VERNON SMALL

The election has brought a sea-change in support for MMP, which is now backed by a clear majority.

A special post-election Herald-DigiPoll survey has found 54.2 per cent of voters are happy with the electoral system, against just 30.3 per cent who want to go back to first-past-the-post.

In 1993, MMP was picked to replace FPP by 53.9 per cent of voters in a referendum. FPP won support from 46.1 per cent.

Since then MMP has frequently been less popular than FPP - especially after the breakdown of the 1996 coalition between National and New Zealand First.

But Greens co-leader Rod Donald, who led the campaign to bring in MMP, said it also gained popularity close to the 1999 election.

"The result appears to be to the voters' satisfaction - they didn't want Labour to win an outright majority but did want them to form a Government with some checks and balances."

In the survey more than 70 per cent thought the two-vote system had worked well on election day, but nearly 17 per cent believed the electoral vote was the more important.

It is the party vote that mainly determines how many seats the parties win in Parliament.

The poll of 500 voters has a margin of error of 4.4 per cent.

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