Posts by tussock
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Hard News: Time to Vote, in reply to bmk,
In terms of Labour the problem is simply Cunliffe.
I don't think that's true, you know. Cunliffe held the party share of the undecided once he got campaigning, the last six weeks labour held and National lost nearly 10% in the polls. Before then the National Party attack machine was on and anyone would have failed at that.
The mass media (which, BTW, gets millions of views every day, unlike here or any other blog) simply bought into the National-Slater newsfeed like it was a real series of independent leaks. All labour voters saw was this appearance of a deceitful man. The basic idea is they attack them for their strengths, with Shearer they'd have dug up something to ruin his humanitarianism, with Cunliffe they targeted his honesty and policy numbers, with blatant lies that the media simply print en masse, because that's who he is.
Plus, votes aren't counted yet. -
Green voters tend toward affluent, opinionated, educated, and proud of their vote, so they poll really high.
Clutha-Southland has got about 75% turnout, after specials.
Rangitata about the same. The big rural safe national seats are getting a somewhat low turnout and being counted first. It will swing left from here, just a matter of how much. Probably not enough, especially lacking Hone, as National gets one of those seats.
Edit: Invercargil is more like the nationwide balance, but only 74% turnout. If it's low in the big cities National could be in alone. -
Hard News: Time to Vote, in reply to izogi,
The Greens run on party vote. The more electorate candidates they run, the more money they're allowed to spend on hoardings and stuff around the place. It's basically too big a value for them to miss out on anywhere.
They've had two elections where they only made it in by a few hundred votes. It's a big deal, their good speakers at meetings and stuff work really for them.
Most green voters split if there's a chance, but if they go public with an ask then National can respond by asking for splits too, where their voters are both far more numerous and more willing to do as they're told. And everything's democratic so they'd also have to pass it by the membership, which might go down like a lead balloon.
In addition, this would be the first time Labour has actually campaigned with the Greens at all. They've never been in government and no one has ever given them a seat, so the old membership, again, not particularly generous of feeling there. At least, that's my wild speculation. -
In the 50's we went to war in Korea on the promise the Yanks would buy our wool for their military uniforms. The associated wool boom made a lot of people quite wealthy (farmers got £1 per 1 lb. on coarse fibre).
In real terms that's nearly four times the modern price. It largely paid for the modern farm layouts still found in NZ, drainage, fencing, roads, all sorts, at least up to the modern dairy days, which have not yet been paid for at all.
There's similar deals in all our war efforts, butter, lamb, logs, whatever we've over-produced recently. The US simply buys allies for credibility, and we are reasonably cheap. In some cases it's the Aussies buying us for political cover, England in the days of old. -
Early counts are from smaller boxes. The last few boxes counted are from the biggest polling turnouts, which are in the big cities, particularly Auckland. Country towns can skew a long way National, city centres get about 30% Green, 30% Labour, 30% Nat.
Edit: So 28% counted is 28% of polling places. All the small ones first, just a few hundred votes. The big ones get thousands each. Small places are broadly rural, wealthy, isolated, they vote right quite a bit. Fear, innit. -
The rural towns come in first, right? Because yeeesh.
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Celebrating their ... uh, tell you in ten minutes? Hiding from aeroplanes, that's it.
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Good to see everyone not talking politics today, then.
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I've voted. Then I had a hamburger. It was lovely. Very satisfied. Both of them. Enjoy your day, all.
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Hard News: Time to Vote, in reply to David Hood,
http://electionresults.govt.nz/ is pretty good for plain numbers in html.
You can check out previous election data to see how it shows up already.