Tuesday, December 2, 2014

What Mauritian Voters Want on December 11

By and large, a Government with about 35 MPs and an Opposition with 25. They don't want a Government with a lot more seats because then it will start having funny ideas and do some really stupid things. Like messing up an excellent constitution. And they want policies that work for a majority of their fellow citizens not the kind of nonsense that we've seen since 2005.

It now appears that none of the two major political blocks -- thank God! -- will win three-quarters of the seats. Although Labour/MMM won all the seats in 1995 with 65% of the votes. In fact a little data analysis for that election -- which happened two decades ago -- will reveal that all we need for that alliance to shed 25 seats is a displacement of less than 16% of the voters. And about a 13% movement of voters should prevent them from grabbing 75% of the seats.

Shifts of these magnitudes have happened before. For example in 2005 LP/PMSD got 12.7 percentage points more votes than they had five years earlier. And the issues were not as important as they are now. For a hint of the kind of shift that may happen in a week we need to look at the change in the sum of the share of votes the IP and the PMSD received in 1967 and 1976. 44%.

3 comments:

Sanjay Jagatsingh said...

There is an error in the second paragraph of this post. A bigger shift than 14% and 11% will probably be needed for the LP/MMM alliance to shed 25 and 16-17 seats. I am working on that so please bear with me.

What I can tell you is that with a shift of 11% the results of 1995 would have seen the LP/MMM shed at least one seat in 10 ridings while for a shift of 14% that number would have increased to 12 ridings.

So just you have an idea -- if you don't already -- the MMM got 18 seats with 42.9% of the votes in 2010 but only 19 seats with 46.4% in 1983 while the MMM/MSM got 22 with 43.3% in 2005.

Sanjay Jagatsingh said...

The error has now been corrected. The numbers increase to 16% and 14%.

Sanjay Jagatsingh said...

Pa interesan sa ki l'allians lepep pa finn enn mazorite 3/4 (apre best losers ek si u pa kont pa depite rodrig). Plis pa pwena sa proze byen danzere de 2e repiblik. Plis paglanomist finn al manze feyaz dan no. 13.

Sometimes crowds can be really wise.