My Election Theories

The Labour party will be dismayed at how few electorates still have a list vote lead for Labour. An alarming number of Labour-held electorates had National ahead on the party vote. This includes not only New Lynn but also Mt Roskill. In almost all Labour-held seats the MP is more popular than the party.

Since it is the home town, lets look at the Christchurch list votes. Increasingly rural Waimakariri looks like a safe National seat. There was just enough personal vote for Clayton Cosgrove for him to barely hold it. Christchurch Central was a very narrow win for Labour on both MP and list vote so you should think of that as a marginal(!) Labour seat. Port Hills looks marginal National and Wigram(!) looks to be only marginal for Labour. Only Christchurch East still looks like a pretty comfortable Labour seat. That's not the electoral map that I grew up with to say the least.

Oh and I almost forgot Ilam is still a National safe seat.

We were told by Mike Williams on election night that the get out the vote efforts developed in South Auckland last election were implemented nation wide this election.

Indeed I myself was prevailed upon to go door to door encouraging people to vote in Mana and there were certainly many Labour people out on the streets of Wellington Central getting out the vote. Based on experiences in Porirua I can only agree with the Labour leadership, many heartland Labour voters are still remarkably positive about the party.

Clearly though the get out the vote efforts were not as successful as might have been hoped, particularly in Auckland but in other centers also.

Here's my working theory.

There is a difference between knowing in principle how to organise the party vote, and having enough enthusiastic volunteers to execute.

Were Labour party operatives really working that hard on Saturday?

A question for an investigative journalist?