It’s the electoral system’s fault we have a new Mayor: Kerry

The good thing about the STV electoral system is that you can vote for people, but you can also vote against people. In other words if you really want someone to win, you`ll rank them first, and if you really want them to lose, you`ll rank them last.

But the news that Kerry Prendergast is blaming the democratically chosen electoral system for her loss even before the result was announced was a little preemptive and rather bitter. STV is more democratic and fairer than FPP, but of course if you are likely to win with as few votes as possible you would pine for FPP.

It was Wellingtonians who wanted STV, it wasn’t thrust on them. And it was Wellingtonians who appeared to understand STV enough to rank Kerry Prendergast near the bottom and many of them did. One thing that stopped her from dropping out earlier is that 3300 more ranked her at the top of the list than any other candidate. She got more top rankings, and a higher percentage, than she did in 2007. But of course there we five more candidates in 2007 so that would have had some bearing.

In the end it was a 176 vote margin to Celia Wade-Brown.

According to the results, Mansell dropped out first with 535 votes with twice as many going to Celia than Kerry. Then Bernard dropped out second with 1161 votes – twice as many gong to Celia than Kerry. Brian dropped out third with 5891 votes with Celia getting nearly three times the number of votes than Kerry. Jack Yan dropped out fourth with 7,341 votes. Celia got nearly twice as many votes as Kerry.

There were 2,140 people who voted for Jack Yan but did not give either Kerry or Celia a preference. Celia won, so it means that more people support her than Kerry, including those who supported other candidates but would not have also been able to rank Kerry or Celia under FPP.