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In the 1993 New Zealand election, the right-wing National Party won a narrow majority, of just one seat, 50/99 seats in parliament. This was a loss of 15 seats and a dramatic decrease from their 1990 landslide, in fact National's vote share went down by 13%. This was largely due to their controversial 'Ruthanasia' economic reforms that shrunk the state, cut social spending, rolled back the power of unions and generally continued and expanded the already unpopular neoliberal economic reforms that had been underway since 1984. However, this result had not been predicted by the polls, which at the time of the election predicted National won win relatively comfortably(though reduced from their 1990 win). On election night, seeing the results(in fact, it was thought at the time National had outright lost their majority) Prime Minister Jim Bolger said on TV "Bugger the pollsters." Let's say Ruthanasia still occurs, but the polls hold up.
1993 NZ election
Jim Bolger-National: 56-9 37.14%
Mike Moore-Labour: 39+10 32.79%
Jim Anderton-Alliance: 2+1 18.11%
Winston Peters-NZ First: 2+1 8.40%
99 seats
50 for majority
I changed the percentages and then found what the resulting vote change was, divided it by 99(99 seats in parliament) and found the swing per seat. All seats Labour won by 772 votes or less go to National. This means that Labour MPs Dianne Yates, Martin Gallagher, Ruth Dyson, Jill White, Richard Northey, and Suzanne Sinclair lose. The only major one is Dyson losing. What would be the effects of a stronger National win? One would be that Ruth Richardson probably is not fired and so continues as Finance Minister and National pushes more economic reform during this period. What other economic reforms could be made during this period that weren't made IOTL? What would be the other effects? What would be the longer-term effect on New Zealand? What if?
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