Key pushes the minor party vote at the expense of National candidates

Last week there was a rumour that Phil Goff asked his front bench if he should resign as leader. Goff has denied this and said today ”I think you`ll find that that spin has its origins in the National Party”.

Earlier today John Key emphatically denied that this came from the National Party, saying that National has “no interest in the Labour leadership”.

However, while Key is interested in speaking at conferences of minor parties – fronting to Maori Party and Act conferences, and, today, the United Future conference, he has no interest in debating their leaders on TV, but wants at least two of them to win their seats - in Ohariu-Belmont and Epsom - and is therefore encouraging supporters to list vote National – but split their vote.

While some New Zealanders what to be informed on minor party policies, Key thinks that this should not happen while he shares the TV screen, saying today “it wouldn’t do a lot about informing New Zealanders”.

So informing New Zealanders about minor parties is somewhat pointless to Key. Does he expect National to govern alone? The TV3 poll came out today showing the Greens on their highest ever polling of 9.3 percent - in fact their polling is way higher than NZ First, United Future, Act, Mana and Maori parties combined. The Greens would have nearly a third of the number of seats that Labour would have, and Labour just under half what National would have. Labour would likely lose six seats if the election were held today. Mana would get two seats if they win an electorate seat. National could govern alone – but may choose to include Peter Dunne as part of the government, if he wins his seat, as is likely.

Will Kerry be Wellington’s mayor?

While Porirua and the Hutt have new mayors, Nick Leggatt and Ray Wallace respectively - the biggest question on everybody’s lips is will Celia Wade-Brown be Wellington’s new mayor. Currently she is trailing Kerry Prendergast by just 40 votes, and the Council tells me that nearly 1000 special votes will be counted on Monday.

The announcement of the results was woeful.Apparently Dunedin City Council had an announcement on its website that Wellington would not be announcing preliminary results before 6pm, but noone in Wellington knew about this until candidates were phoned this afternoon. The media reported the results before the Council even had the results on its website. Perhaps the council was trying to work out what to say. Under s85 of the Local Electoral Act it had to say something – in fact it had to make announcement of preliminary results. Trouble was, that announcement said that based on preliminary results, Prendergast had been elected.

She hadn’t been elected. She was in the lead, with Wade-Brown equally in the running due to a slim margin. And if Celia Wade-Brown wins about 52% of the specials – under STV – Prendergast won’t be elected. If the margin holds she will be elected.

It was good to see Justin Lester top the Northern Ward, getting more votes than Ngaire Best and Helene Ritchie and ousting Hayley Wain, who will now have to apply for a job. Paul Eagle and Swampy Marsh also got elected, and Rob Goulden got the boot.

Had to laugh when I saw Thomas Morgan’s result. He specialises in coming last in his ward, but he got the lowest vote of everyone in all wards - just 96 votes.

Scoop’s Alastair Thompson thinks that Celia Wade-Brown should demand a full recount of all votes to check the redistribution of mayoral votes.

Finally just a note about STV. It is important to have ranked everyone, particularly candidates you don’t like. Say, in a six candidate ticket with four getting elected, you ranked a candidate a 6 because you couldn’t stand them – and others did that too , but only ranked three other candidates as 1,2, and 3, - and many other did the same thing too with the same candidates - it could well be that the candidates you would have ranked 4th and 5th may well have got fewer votes than your most hated candidate, and therefore may have been eliminated earlier- purely because they weren’t ranked at all and the redistributed votes were primarily among the candidates most ranked in the top three. And if you wanted Kerry Prendergast for Mayor, you would have done well to rank all candidates, putting Celia Wade Brown at the bottom. If you ranked Prendergast at 1 and Wade Brown at 2 instead, with no other rankings, you have merely given the latter more of a chance of being mayor.

And due to the above workings of STV, this is one reason why Celia Wade-Brown may well be mayor after special votes have been counted. In the 2007 election, Kerry Prendergast got 34.9% of first preference votes overall, but only 25.8% of first preference votes on the specials.

Election coverage

Here's live election coverage Have taken the coverage down as it it has now finished.
update( 12:30am As far as the results go , if overall percentages equated to seats, Conservatives would have 235, Labour 189 and Lib Dems 149. Instead the tally is Conservative, 298 (with 36.2% of vote), Labour 253( 29.2%), and Lib Dems 54( 22.9%). Labour has less than 7% more votes than the Lib Dems but nearly 500% more seats.

Greens got 200k votes and 1 seat. Lib Dems 112k votes per seat. Conservatives 34k per seat. If the Sex Pistols were still around they`d be writing a song called "MMP for the UK".

And...if the Conservatives and Lib Dems form a coalition, the UK will be a Con Dem Nation!

Final results later.

Uh-oh - that's no way to announce an election

Labour's chief whip in the UK is Nick Brown. Austin Mitchell is a Labour MP and a former whip. They are discussing the UK election, which apparently may be in a few weeks after a new speaker is appointed. The current speaker was forced out earlier this week. Brown's Twitter has been deleted, after earlier being restricted. That's what you get when the whip tells MPs - via Twitter - when the election may be.

Gordon Brown didn't use Twitter to clarify things.
hattipvia Kester Brewin

NewstalkZB a bit behind the 8-ball on election date

NewstalkZB breathlessly reports that it thinks the election will be on November 8.

I picked November 8 as a date some time back.

Problem for NewstalkZB is that an election date that is not on a holiday weekend cannot possibly be before or after November 8, given that there is no way an election would be held on Labour Weekend - or after November 15 which is Canterbury Anniversary weekend. The ODT has already explained why some time back.

Most Pacific Islanders and young people don`t know 2008 is an election year - but many know about a smacking petition, apparently

A survey by the Electoral Commission found that 55% of Pacific people, 45% of Asians and 41% of Maori don`t know 2008 is an election year.

Nearly 240,000 people are not even enrolled to vote. I wonder how many of these people signed the Citizens Initiated Referenda on the smacking petition, given that you have to be on the roll to have a valid signature.