The Morning After [New Zealand Politics]
Well, election night has been and gone, and the make up of New Zealand’s next government will be determined by Winston Peters and his New Zealand First Party. All we can do at this point is wait, both for Peters and for the counting of special votes from overseas and elsewhere.
In the meantime, a friend of mine has started some statistical analysis of the election, taking the form of the following spreadsheet:
2017 Election night summary (1)
After playing round with it for a bit, I noticed the following:
- Eight of the eleven biggest increases in Labour party vote were in South Island electorates. This is also true for eleven out of the top sixteen.
- The fourteen smallest increases in Labour party vote were in electorates in the Auckland region.
- Twelve out of the sixteen lowest turnouts were in the Auckland region (the remaining four were in Christchurch).
The conclusion? The South Island was the Red Island in 2017, and if the National Government does survive, it will be because of a weak Labour performance in its South Auckland heartland.
A Phuulish Fellow 