2020 New Zealand general election & referendums (17 October)

[brucejoel99]

ASHLEY BLOOMFIELD MADE COVID COME BACK ON PURPOSE SO JACINDA STAYS PRIME MINISTER BECAUSE HE'S SCARED OF JUDY COLLINS, I JUST KNOW IT !!!!1!

[brucejoel99]

The election has been delayed until 17 October due to the new Covid-19 outbreak, and that a majority of MPs supported a delay to the election with National and NZ First demanding it. Even though their demands are clearly politically motivated, sticking with 19 September did risk a political and constitutional crisis. I would have liked her to tell them to go to hell, but it's probably the safer choice to just delay the election and turnout might be higher than it would have been.

How kind of Jacinda to give National the chance for another leadership change or 2.

[brucejoel99]

A private corporate poll from UMR (before Labour's recent tax announcement) has Labour on 53%. I know UMR does Labour's internal polling, but the way the Stuff article is worded makes it seem that this isn't a Labour internal.

https://twitter.com/henrycooke/status/1303478958386601985

Plugging the numbers into the Electoral Commission's MMP calculator gives me the following numbers:

- LAB: 72
- NAT: 40
- ACT: 8
- GRN: 0
- NZF: 0

That seems like a significant loss for the Greens, compared to the 6%-8% some recent polls have had them at. Hopefully they can get to 5% on the back of the referendum (or - alternatively - winning Auckland Central, for which some polling would be really cool right about now).

In any event, the obvious trend thus far is Labour governing alone, National ending up under 30%, & NZ First being kicked out of Parliament. That really hasn't changed since the lockdown.

[brucejoel99]

New Colmar Brunton poll;
Labour-48% (-5%)
National-31% (-1%)
ACT-7%(+2%)
Green-6%(+1%)
NZ First-2%(_)

That comes out as a Labour majority.

Preferred PM; Jacinda Ardern 54% (_), Judith Collins 18% (-1%)

Not happy seeing ACT that high, though everything else is decent.

[brucejoel99]

Is it just me, or are the polls fluctuating like crazy this year? I know this has been a different kind of election, given COVID, lockdowns, & everything else that 2020 has had to offer, but even then, it still seems overly volatile.

[brucejoel99]

If nothing else, it's gonna be fascinating to watch the trouble that'll result from ACT going from 1 MP to 10 first-time MP's. At least David Seymour has his head screwed on in a political sense, but he'll be spending the next 3 years putting out fires left & right if 9 others get in. Hell, they probably didn't even give the list rankings much thought as they were still polling on like ~1-2% when they made it.

And ngl, ACT's rise kinda reminds me of United Future in 2002 when it also suddenly gained several MPs, only for the party to fracture over the course of the next few elections.

[brucejoel99]

A UMR poll has been released, with cannabis legalisation ahead 49%-45%. This seems to be an internal poll for the Yes campaign, as it is funded by the Helen Clark Foundation and the New Zealand Drug Foundation which are both Yes supporters. UMR has seemed accurate in the past, so hopefully this is also accurate. There is hope for the Yes campaign, we'll need to see what other polls say. Minor quibble with NZ media also, but the headline saying a 4-point lead shows a likely Yes victory is exaggerating the reliability of polls imo. One day NZ probably gets hit with a relatively normal polling error that swings a close election and so is seen as a huge shock and embarrassment to pollsters.

Watch it end up being a very close result, like less than a 1% difference.

[brucejoel99]

Given the continuing clown car that is the Nationals, a swing back to Labour in the final days (giving them very possibly an overall majority) can't be ruled out.

True but with there being so much early voting, a lot of these votes will have already been locked in.

[brucejoel99]

Yeah, it's gonna be a short election night.

[brucejoel99]

Yeah, the real question of this election at this point is basically whether Labour is able to govern alone or ends up needing the Greens, which seems similar to 2011 & 2014, when National kept polling in the 48%-54% range & ended up on 47% in both elections with 59 seats in 2011 & then 60 seats in 2014.

[brucejoel99]

Final Colmar Brunton poll;
Labour-46%(-1%)
National-31%(-1%)
Green-8%(+2%)
ACT-8%(_)
NZ First-3%(+1%)

[...]

Colmar under-polled NZF by 2.3% in their final poll last time. Perhaps Winston has one last trick up his sleeve after all

[brucejoel99]

Oh my god, Winston's actually gonna pull it off, isn't he?

Now I almost wanna see him do it (though preferably with Jacinda not asking him to return to the government) just for the thrashing he'll give the media. His smugness will be enough to power the whole North Island for a month.

[brucejoel99]

Oh dear, there's a concerning amount of New Conservative votes for there already having been 1% of the votes counted. Leave the Dark Ages where they belong, NZ.

[brucejoel99]

Swarbrick (GRN) currently leading in Auckland Central by ~100 votes. 6% of votes counted.

7.1% counted now, with Swarbrick (GRN) on 579, White (LAB) on 454, & Mellow (NAT) on 339.

Nevermind, close to 11% in now & Swarbrick's still leading in Auckland Central! Let's go, Chlöe!!

[brucejoel99]

Interesting, so apparently the early Auckland Central votes usually favor National as they're usually from the more rural areas, so if we're still waiting for the urban votes... well, then, Swarbrick's probably in it there. Still very early days, though.

[brucejoel99]

So does Labour seemingly doing better than projected potentially mean good things for the 'Yes' side on the cannabis referendum (perhaps as a result of higher turnout among social liberals)?

EDIT: on top of that, does the Greens' outperformance of their pre-election polling by a significant margin suggest that we'll see a similar overperformance of the 'Yes' vote come the announcement of the cannabis referendum's results at the end of the month?

[brucejoel99]

Auckland Central is a real doozy of a race, it's switching every time it's updated!

[brucejoel99]

Is David Seymour drunk right now? (I mean, God only knows I'd be too if I were in his position, but still )

[brucejoel99]

THE NATIONAL PARTY'S TWITTER PAGE HAS GONE PRIVATE LMAOOOOOOOO

[brucejoel99]

To more knowledgeable Kiwi posters, are there historically any notable shifts once the advance votes are done and all that's left are on-the-day and special votes? I know special votes tend to favor left-of-center parties, but what about on-the-day votes?

Obligatory "not a Kiwi poster," but usually National loses 2 seats, Labour & the Greens get an extra one each, & sometimes a marginal electorate flips. Probably won't make any difference this time around, though, what with the results so far being so overwhelmingly one-sided. (And in any event, this election is so weird because of the sheer number of advance votes making this all out to be more-or-less uncharted waters.)

As for which way on-the-day votes lean, well, it's "traditional" to vote on-the-day, so take from that (anecdote) what you will.

[brucejoel99]

Extremely happy to see that NZ has indeed overwhelmingly supported a continuation of Jacinda as PM, but I'd be remiss if I didn't express my being a bit letdown by that majority government status. Hearing Labour refuse to say over the course of the campaign that house prices need to drop or that they won't push for a capital gains tax or a wealth tax definitely pushed me toward believing that Labour ending up with less than 61 seats - thereby necessitating an actual coalition with the Greens - would truly be the best-case scenario.

Ah well, what can ya do? Now here's hoping that a majority of those who turned-out voted 'Yes' on a certain referendum!

[brucejoel99]

The pre-election data indicated that the advance vote was nearly 2 million, but the election site with 100% counted has just 1,689,018. Where are the remaining 300k? Are those the fabled "special votes" that will be counted in two weeks? Were they rejected ballots? Or is there some other reason for the discrepancy?

A lot of people may have advance voted outside of their electorate, & their votes would be counted as special votes.