This is how much each political party has received in donations, per currently elected MP
I was recently reading this excellent article by The Spinoff: Three-and-a-bit years and $50m+ of political donations, visualised
But I felt like something was still missing. Sure it looks bad that the coalition parties are receiving a suspiciously high amount of donations from big vested interests. But how do you measure that political pressure? When you break those donations down on a per-MP basis, I think that this is a more approximate measure of the political pressure that is being bought or exerted on that specific MP.
And so I'm asking myself these questions:
- If TPM is only receiving 30k per elected MP, how much pressure are they under to kowtow to political donors than say... an MP who is receiving over 220k
- Each party has overheads, but surely the overheads are somewhat correlated to the size of the party? So when a small party is receiving the most, how much more do they have left over to dedicate that money to getting MPs re-elected?
- The Electoral Commission dictates how much parties can spend on election advertising, but what can this money buy that directly helps that MP get re-elected? Transport to speaking events, PAs to manage schedules? Bots or intern salaries to propagandize on social media?
- To what extent can we reasonably use these numbers as a measure of the financial resources each party can dedicate to getting MPs re-elected?
- Most importantly: where is the threshold for buying influence? At what point is the "donation" too large for there to be any reasonable doubt that there is at least an unspoken expectation of a quid pro quo, if not actual behind-closed-doors negotiations taking place?
I'm curious to hear other people's thoughts, especially from those with direct experience in our political system who might be able to provide some informed answers.
Edit for clarification: monetary values are from RNZ, the bar graph was me and Google Sheets.