Electorate Profiles
The Parliamentary Library has just released their latest set of electorate profiles. These are invaluable documents for MPs, candidates and many others.
They are fully updated, being on the 2008 electoral boundaries, and using the latest 2006 census data.
There are many new features, including:
- HTML as well as PDF
- Summary of local schools and education decile rankings
- Socio-economic deprivation decile rankings for suburbs
- A map of decile rankings
- A breakdown of local business types
Each profile is around 20 pages, and it will have been a huge job for the Library to get them all done. One of the very very few things I miss about Parliament is the first class Library service.
One of the most useful aspects of all the data they have in the profiles, is they also give a rank for each statistic from 1 to 63. This means one can see some clear stuff, such as in Auckland Central:
- 29% are aged 20 – 29, ranked 1st in country (ie lots of young voters)
- 6% are over 65, ranked 63rd in country (ie stuff all oldies)
- 56% were born in NZ, ranked 57th (relatively few local born Kiwis)
- 8% have no qualification, ranked 61st (very few have no qualifications)
- Ranked 1st for couple only families, but 63rd for two parent families (people move elsewhere when they have kids)
- Ranked 63rd for married couple (living in sin rules)
- Median family income is 3rd – $81,700 vs $59,000 NZ wide
It is stuff like that which allows you to really get to understand an electorate.
A couple of things to watch out for.
- Election results are on the old boundaries
- With decile rankings a 1 in school decile ranking means the poorest schools, while in socio-economic deciles (done by Wgtn School of Medicine) a 10 is the poorest area.
- The electorate profiles are done on the 63 geographical “general” electorates and include people on the Maori roll as there is no way to exclude individuals from summarised data.
For those who love data, be warned – you can spend days with these profiles!
March 17th, 2008 at 12:30 pm
Fascinating – the three biggest electorates cover (Clutha Southland, West Coast Tasman and Waitaki) cover more than half the South Island.
But the commentary reads as if it’s written by someone who doesn’t know the areas – in Waitaki it names the main communities as Palmerston, Ranfurly, Roxburgh Cromwell Alexandra & Clyde and doesn’t mention Oamaru which is probably twice as big as the largest of these.
March 17th, 2008 at 12:33 pm
Man, those Auckland Central data are fascinating! On income, it’s also worth noting that the largest single band was “100,000+”. And it seems likely that actually marriage will soon account for less than half of all domestic partnerships.
Each profile is around 20 pages, and it will have been a huge job for the Library to get them all done. One of the very very few things I miss about Parliament is the first class Library service.
Would it be rude to point out that the people who did the presentational stuff and published it all on the website are communications staff? Or, as Gerry Brownlee would have it, part of Labour’s army of “spin doctors”?
March 17th, 2008 at 2:09 pm
Don’t be such a tosser all the time, Russell. Your attempt at besmirching the work done by the Parliamentary Library through an obvious threadjack is pathetic.
If it were done by Labour’s communications staff, every one would have had the ubiqitious “What Labour Has Done For [insert electorate name]”
Man, I’m glad we don’t have to pay a licence fee anymore to keep plonkers like you in red T-shirts.
March 17th, 2008 at 2:34 pm
Buggerlugs: I think you could have responded with less expletives.
March 17th, 2008 at 2:41 pm
I could have, but then I would have had to kick the cat. And as I hate cats and don’t own one, I would have had to kick the neighbour’s. And they own firearms.
March 17th, 2008 at 2:44 pm
Back to the point, I’ve been going through the lower SI ones and discovered Invercargill has picked up an extra 20 schools and nearly 6,000 more students since 2004. Given the schools review closed quite a few (eight, I think), I rang Eric Roy’s office to see how many schools he picked up under the boundary changes – and there’s nothing like 20, not even 10, and certainly not 6,000 new bodies.
Another example of the (expletive deleted) Ministry of Education being a (expletive deleted) useless pack of (expletives deleted) who can’t (expletive deleted) count, or an honest typo by the PL?
March 17th, 2008 at 2:44 pm
Dear Mr Brown why does any politician need a “spin doctor” ? Waste of taxpayers money, surely you agree?
March 17th, 2008 at 4:16 pm
So Judy is their logical representative then.
March 17th, 2008 at 4:48 pm
Ele: “But the commentary reads as if it’s written by someone who doesn’t know the areas – in Waitaki it names the main communities as Palmerston, Ranfurly, Roxburgh Cromwell Alexandra & Clyde and doesn’t mention Oamaru which is probably twice as big as the largest of these.”
Where does it say that? I can see where it says, “Palmerston, Ranfurly, Roxburgh, Alexandra, and Clyde are the main communities to the north of its southern border.” Note the last bit.
Strictly speaking, ALL of the communities in the electorate are north of the southern border, and it is not possible for any communities in the electorate to be north of the northern border, so it is probably true that the writer was half asleep when he/she wrote the sentence. But, if you accept that Oamaru is not quite in the “just north of the border”, and that this is what was intended, then it’s correct, as Oamaru is not as close as the other places named.
March 17th, 2008 at 4:50 pm
# David Farrar Add karma Subtract karma +1 Says:
March 17th, 2008 at 2:34 pm
Buggerlugs: I think you could have responded with less expletives.
Do you mean, “fewer expletives”?
March 17th, 2008 at 4:55 pm
Some of the Electorates have had quite large demographic changes with the boundaries while many have not changed.
Ele – some people in Wellington have never heard of Oamaru…and many in Auckland struggle to place even Dunedin on a map. It is a shame but a reality of having the SI declining in importance due to the sheer weight of numbers.
On the 10 SI seats north of the rakaia :
Wigram and the west coast are poorer and more european than I thought. The boundary changes have hardly changed the demographics.
Wigram and Ilam have sizable asian populations.
Selwyn, Ilam and Waimak have high incomes and are older than average (no surprises there)
Chch East and Port Hills are both about average for pretty much everything but both are richer than Rangitata, Nelson, Kaikoura, Wigram, Chch Central and West Coast.
One of the more interesting statistics on this is the proportion of the SI seats with europeans are at >75%, and PIs <5%.
March 17th, 2008 at 5:31 pm
Yes fewer. I do that a lot.
March 17th, 2008 at 6:31 pm
Jafapete: Oamaru, Alexandra and Cromwell are all just south of the 45th parallel so more or less equally north of the southern boundary. Yes it was an oddly worded sentence and I realise Oamaru is either unknown or of little interest to many, but the point is why mention the little towns and not the largest in the electorate?
The interesting, and to me disturbing, fact is the area of the provincial electorates. How can people access their MPs in electorates that cover such large areas and how can MPs hope to service them adequately no matter how good they are and which party they represent. Epsom covers just 23 square kilometres, the three biggest general electorates in the South Island cover more than 30,000 and the fourth (Kaikoura) is 23,706.; and several in the North Island cover more than 10,000.
MMP might have made parliament more representative but it’s given much poorer representation in electorates.
March 17th, 2008 at 7:56 pm
ele Add karma Subtract karma +1 Says:
March 17th, 2008 at 6:31 pm
Jafapete: Oamaru, Alexandra and Cromwell are all just south of the 45th parallel
Yup, ele, but the question is, how far north of the southern border are they? The border moves around quite a lot north-south-wise.
Actually, I enjoyed spending an afternoon in Oamaru, visiting Janet Frame’s house and all.
We need more MPs! It would give us a bigger pool from which to draw for Cabinet, too.
March 17th, 2008 at 8:11 pm
Selwyn is a big electorate now.
March 17th, 2008 at 8:53 pm
david, thanks for this reference, a valuable resource to politicians obviously, but also for anyone needing to understand their community better
March 18th, 2008 at 9:25 am
VERY rude of you Russell…
March 18th, 2008 at 12:51 pm
Buggerlugs.
Regarding Invercargill electorate school rolls: we have looked into this and it seems the increase is due to:
* omissions in the 2005 Invercargill profile’s data – seven Invercargill schools with a combined roll of 3722 are included in the 2007 profile but not the 2005 profile.
* a number of schools gained from Clutha-Southland through boundary changes.
* A remaining increase of around 1,000 in the existing schools
Regards
Brent McIntyre
Parliamentary Library