November 2018: New Caledonia independence referendum

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Despite the No vote falling by over 3% since 2018, all communes voted the same way they did in 2018. All of the Yes communes are remarkably solid: the weakest result for the Yes in a commune it won was 66.6% in Koné. Most of the No communes are rather lopsided as well, with only two of them voting No with less than 60% - Moindou (46.1% Yes) and Pouembout (48.2% Yes).

Nouméa voted 76.7% No, down from 80.5% two years ago. 41% of the No's entire vote came from the city, which cast around 28.5% of all votes. The other three communes in the Grand Nouméa also voted heavily No: 73.7% in Dumbéa, 71.8% in Le Mont-Dore and 71.2% in Païta. Obviously the vast majority of the No's votes came from these four communes.

The strongest municipality for the No was Poya Sud (the small part of the commune of Poya located in Province Sud), with 97.7% for the No albeit on a total vote of just 173. If you count Poya as a whole commune instead of in two parts it voted 62% Yes. The strongest actual commune for No was tiny Farino, at 88.5% No. Founded by Corsican settlers, it has the smallest Kanak population of any commune in New Caledonia.

The strongest municipality for the Yes was Bélep, a small archipelago facing the northern tip of the Grande Terre (main island) with a quasi-homogenously Kanak population (96.4% as of the last census in 2014). The second strongest was Hienghène, the former stronghold of the late independentist leader Jean-Marie Tjibaou, at 96.3% Yes. It is also over 90% Kanak.

Interestingly, while the Loyalty Islands had the strongest Yes vote of the three provinces, their Yes vote appears quite 'low' for a place where Kanaks are 94% of the population. Maré was the only commune where the Yes did worse than in 2018, falling from 84.6% to 79.3%. Lifou and Ouvéa both voted around 86% Yes. Not sure what's up with that.

As in 2018 the main predictor of Yes support is ethnicity. Since New Caledonia is the only part of France where they're allowed to collect these kinds of statistics, we can actually map out ethnicity against vote choice. So here it is.

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As may have been mentioned, the franchise for these referendums (as well as provincial elections in NC) is restricted. Basically, those born outside New Caledonia and who immigrated to New Caledonia over the past decades don't have the right to vote.

Those registered to vote in the referendum needed to meet at least one of the following criteria:

• Registered to vote or fulfilling conditions to be registered to vote in the 1998 referendum on the Nouméa Accord, i.e. 10 years residence between 1988 and 1998
• Not meeting residency requirements in the 1998 referendum, if you can justify that your absence was for family, professional or medical reasons
• Have had civil customary status or, born in New Caledonia, have the 'centre of their moral and material interests' there
• Have one parent born in NC and having the 'centre of their moral and material interests' there
• Able to justify 20 years continuous residence in NC by 31 Dec. 2014
• Born before 1989, and having resided in NC between 1988 and 1998
• Born after 1989, and having one parent able to vote in the 1998 referendum

New Caledonia therefore has three electoral lists: the general list (used for 'French' elections), the provincial list (for elections to provincial assemblies and Congress) and the special list for the referendum.

Thankfully, because of the municipal elections this year, held under the general list in New Caledonia, we can get a rather accurate picture of how many people are excluded from voting in the indyrefs. Granted, EU citizens can also vote in municipal elections but I doubt there are that many of them registered, particularly here. According to my estimates, there are 32,425 voters on the general roll who cannot vote in the referendums. That's 15.2% of registered voters who are not on the referendum list.

So here is a map which shows the percentage of those on the general list (as of March 2020) excluded from the special referendum list.



Of these 32,425 'excluded' voters, the vast majority - 94.7% - are in the Province Sud. 59.5% of 'excluded' voters are in Nouméa alone. For comparison, 64.8% of registered voters for the referendum were in that province, and 69.4% of general list voters in March 2020 were in that province. Only 1,731 voters in the other two provinces, which have overwhelmingly nationalist majorities and a largely Kanak population, were 'excluded' from the referendum list.

Nouméa is the commune with the most excluded voters - 27.1% of those who could vote in March 2020 couldn't last Sunday. The other communes in the Grand Nouméa also have high percentages of excluded voters: 17.3% in Dumbéa, 16.9% in Mont-Dore and 18.9% in Païta. Pouembout, in Province Nord, has the most excluded voters outside of the Nouméa metro at 13.4%. On the other hand, in most overwhelmingly Kanak communes, the percentage of excluded voters is insignificant - below 1% in many cases. Kaala-Gomen (75.9% Yes) even had the same number of registered voters in March and October 2020.