This interactive diagram shows the number of seats in the House of Representatives won by each political party in the elections of 1914, 1919, 1922 and 1925. In none of these four elections did the Reform Party (led by Bill Massey) win a majority of the popular vote. Yet in all of them except for 1922 Reform won a clear majority of the seats in Parliament. This was a consequence of the first-past-the-post voting system, which favours major parties and penalises minor parties.
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Te Ara - The Encyclopedia of New Zealand
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Sources: Dieter Nohlen, Florian Grotz, and Christof Hartmann, Elections in Asia and the Pacific: a data handbook. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001, p. 731–734; New Zealand Election Results
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