2020 New Zealand general election & referendums (17 October)

[Pericles]

1. Mangere has a lot of working class Pacific Islander immigrants I assume?

2. What is the other electorate just below Otaki in the age graph and why are the two of them so significantly older than all the others? Big retirement communities à la The Villages, FL?

1. Yes, it is 59.7% Pacific Islander.

2. It's Coromandel. Actually I got it wrong, Otaki is the second oldest and Coromandel is the oldest with 28.4% being 65 and older. As you can see, it had a slightly above average swing, but is still held by National. I don't think there's anything quite on the scale of The Villages though.

[Pericles]

I just saw the Wikipedia article has been updated. Labour received 48.07% of the electorate vote to 34.13% for National. There was a 10.06% swing from National to Labour in that vote, compared to a 15.99% National-Labour party vote swing. National's electorate vote was 8.55% higher than its party vote. It's the third largest gap between the electorate and party vote for one of the main parties, with Labour 2014 being second and National 2002 being first still. The difference between Labour's margin in the party vote and its margin in the electorate vote does seem to be the largest ever though.


This is what I expected, given how National only won the party vote in one electorate that they don't even hold.

[Pericles]

I did some more calculations, this time on the difference in between National's electorate vote and its party vote in all the seats it won in 2017.
Auckland Central-6.1% (Open)
Bay of Plenty-11.9%
Botany-13.8% (Open)
Coromandel-12.3%
East Coast-8.9% (Open)
East Coast Bays-15.5%
Hamilton East-12.2%
Hamilton West-11.1%
Hutt South-19.2%
Ilam-8.2%
Invercargill-15.0%(Open)
Kaikoura-12.0%
Kaipara ki Mahurangi-11.0%
Maungakiekie-16.1%
Nelson-17.3%
New Plymouth-11.7%
North Shore-11.5% (Open)
Northcote-13.9%
Northland-9.9%
Otaki-14.9% (Open)
Pakuranga-19.6%
Papakura-12.1%
Port Waikato-2.5%
Rangitata-8.0% (Open)
Rangitikei-14.6%
Rotorua-14.0%
Selwyn-15.0% (Open)
Southland-14.8% (Open)
Tamaki-14.8%
Taranaki-King Country-9.8%
Taupo-15.4%
Tauranga-10.3%
Tukituki-12.1%
Upper Harbour-6.5% (Open)
Waikato-13.3%
Waimakariri-17.7%
Wairarapa-5.3% (Open)
Waitaki-13.3%
Whanganui-8.2%
Whangaparoa-15.8%
Whangarei-13.3%

So National did better in all of its 2017 electorates with the electorate vote than the party vote, and the average difference was 12.4%. There seems to have been a marginally worse performance in seats where an incumbent was not standing. Seats like Upper Harbour and Rangitata would have been won if they weren't open (well if Andrew Falloon hadn't disgraced himself), while it's possible National could have won in East Coast and Wairarapa. The result there does show that Kieran McAnulty was a strong candidate for Labour, since National didn't seem to make any special errors there. Port Waiikato stands out as an underperformance, especially since Andrew Bayly is now number 3 on their frontbench as treasurer, but it seems a right-wing splinter party randomly got 21% of the vote there. Gerry Brownlee's loss may also have been especially avoidable as his overperformance was below average, perhaps he was a weak incumbent for his electorate (and his vague Covid conspiracy theories were unhelpful). The standout performances are Chris Bishop in Hutt South and Simeon Brown in Pakuranga. Bishop lost anyway because his electorate is Labour-leaning. Simeon Brown is interesting because he is a social conservative, and from what I've seen he has a reputation for making gaffes (he also looks a bit like an even more baby-faced Pete Buttigieg imo, take a look). Despite that (or maybe Pakuranga is into social conservatism), he actually has the largest majority of any National MP now.

[Pericles]

There has been some funny news related to the 2020 election. Somehow, Judith Collins is still National leader (probably because nobody else wants the job quite yet), and the election review she promised has finally been completed. National is not actually giving its MPs a copy lol, and is claiming that the review is property of the party board and MPs get a sanitised version without the 'gory details'. They don't plan on making either version public, which is disappointing since I wanted to read it, but I'm optimistic that a version will get leaked. Clearly they still aren't a strong team.
https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/politics/2021/03/national-creates-two-versions-of-election-review-one-with-gory-details-taken-out-shared-with-mps.html