Specials Scenarios
There were 2,092,787 votes counted on election day. Remaing to be counted are 240,000 special votes, of which around 32,000 are overseas votes.
The current St Lague formula allocation gives us the following placements:
- Quotient 117 – National Seat 57
- Quotient 118 – Labour Seat 43
- Quotient 119 – National Seat 58
- Quotient 120 – National Seat 59
- Quotient 121 – Labour Seat 44
- Quotient 122 – National Seat 60
- Quotient 123 – Labour Seat 45
- Quotient 124 – Green Seat 9
Now if the 240,000 specials follow the pattern of ordinary votes, then there is no change.
The question is how much of a difference is needed for seats to change. We’ll start with the easist change – quotients 120 and 121 to swap places – ie Labour grabs a seat off National.
For Labour to gain a seat off National
If National gets 0.16% less on the specials and Labour 0.16% more on the specials, then Labour get the 120th seat. So if National gets 45.29% on the specials instead of 45.45% and Labour gets 33.93% instead of 33.77%, Labour gain a seat off National.
For Greens to gain a seat off National
If National gets 1.62% less on specials, and Greens 1.62% more, then Greens would get the 120th seat off National. Another scenario is Greens get 1.55% more and National and Labour lose 0.78% each.
For both Labour and Greens to gain a seat, and National lose two seats
If Labour does 2.51% better on specials and Greens 2.10% better, than they will take spots 119 and 120 and knock two seats off National. This would mean National gets only 40.8% of specials, Labour gets 36.3% and Greens get 8.5% for this to happen.
For National to gain a seat
This is all but impossible. National would need to do 7.4% better on specials and Labour 7.4% worse. So unless specials split 52.9% to 26.4%, National can only stay the same or lose seats.
For ACT to lose a seat
ACT are in spot 114. Could they miss out? Well if they only got 1.62% of specials compared to 3.72% on the night, and Labour and National both were 1.05% higher on specials, then ACT would just love spot no 5. Tis looks highly improbable.
Could NZ First make it?
Only if they got 11.9% of the specials, on top of their 4.21% on the night. You can all relax.
I’ll look at how specials can change electorates in a later post.
November 14th, 2008 at 12:55 am
I’ll say that it is highly improbable for ACT to lose a seat. If anything ACT are likely gain a higher percentage of the vote thanks to specials.
November 14th, 2008 at 2:24 am
This is a difficult one to predict. Some NZers overseas would have left NZ when Labour were perceived to be doing OK, and if they havn’t been keeping up with politics over the last year or so, may not have changed their minds along with the rest of NZ. I guess it depends on how much they “get the mood of the people” from blogs or online media.
The Greens traditionally have good overseas support from people who dont follow politics but are proud of NZ’s clean green image & hence don’t care who wins (Nat or Lab) so long as the Greens have a voice. A nice centrist & enviromentally responsible choice you might think, but of course the real policies the Greens promote are non pragmatic and decidedly communist/ anti capitalist (read: anti freedom, anti wealth, anti human, anti christian-values), so this is quite misguided, though well intentioned.
The Maori party may well get more support, particularly in Australia, for the same reasons as the Greens, but less of a misguided vote as the voters are more likely to get what they want.
NZFirst is unlikely to get much of any support overseas. The retirees are in NZ!
On the other side of the coin, Pro National and Act supporters may well have left NZ in a huff over the past 9 years, chasing better opportunities overseas where they are not held down by our low wages, low quality public services, high taxes, and red-tape supressing business growth. One would expect NZers overseas to be successful hardworking people, and will tend to vote right-of-centre. Not sure how this stacks up in practice though.
November 14th, 2008 at 7:10 am
ACT got my overseas vote… as it has for the last three. I’ve had the pleasure of voting from Moscow, Manchester, and San Francisco.
November 14th, 2008 at 7:26 am
Surely ACT’s Party votes must be reflected in the overseas votes
November 14th, 2008 at 8:35 am
Remember overseas votes are only 32,000 of the 240,000
November 14th, 2008 at 8:52 am
I presume there is next to no chance of the overhang changing?
November 14th, 2008 at 9:13 am
OMG…. soz guys and gals, but I couldn’t help posting this after reading the Herald this morning.
Has anyone noticed that this Austrian guy Frtizi, shown here….
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10542991
… looks like our good old guy Garth George, show here, after a bad night of drinking…
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz-election-2008/news/article.cfm?c_id=1502734&objectid=10542700
It must be Friday… and to keep on topic, I predict no change to seats after specials
November 14th, 2008 at 9:18 am
It makes me laugh that there are such a high precentage of Greens living OVERSEAS and not in their clean green homeland. Doesn’t that make you wonder that too? It reminded me of when the Greens told us to save the rail but were flying and driving everywhere!
I was at the Green London election event – terrible turnout, but throughly nice people who didn’t partake in our champagne quaffing!
There were a couple who were absolutely green at the idea that an ACT supporter was in the same room as them – but I had a great time.
November 14th, 2008 at 9:19 am
Graeme – not much as they are in spots 105 and 146. They would need to get 4.6% more on specials and Nat and Labour 2.3% less each. Can’t see them getting 6.84% of specials.
November 14th, 2008 at 9:40 am
DPF – out of interest, what would the make-up of Parliament have been if NZ First had gotten to 5%? Is there any truth to the claims that the centre-right’s victory is narrower than it seems?
Cheers, Sean.
November 14th, 2008 at 10:27 am
There is actually a serious danger that National will lose TWO seats when the special votes are counted.
In 2005 National’s share of the vote declined by .53% after special votes were counted. Labour rose by .36% and the Greens by .23%.
If the count changes by the same amount this year, National would drop to 57 while Labour and the Greens each gain one.
I know that this seems bizarre but this is what the electoral calculator on the elections.govt.nz site shows.
The maths is complex but the analogy goes like this:
As things are now there is a three-way split for the 120th seat. Essentially National is now entitled to 58.34 seats, Labour to 43.33 and the Greens to 8.33. National gets rounded up.
Each about .75% of the vote gets you 1 MP, so losing .53% drops National’s entitlement to about 57.6. Gaining .36 would boost Labour to about 43.75, and gaining .23 would boost the Greens to 8.65. There are two seats to allocate to the fractions, and National misses out.
Note that I am not predicting this will happen, just warning that it might!
November 14th, 2008 at 10:32 am
If NZ First had got 5%, then results would be:
Nat 55 + ACT 5 + UFNZ 1 = 61
Lab 41 + Prog 1 + Green 8 + NZF 6 = 56
Maori 5
So still a National-led Government but one that needs Maori Party support.
November 14th, 2008 at 11:36 am
What about the Electorate seats, as opposed to the List seats. There are 7 seats with a majority of less than 1000. A number of these were maintained by Labout with a huge reduction of their majority. Is we assume the swing continues to a high degree, we may see some rearranging of list seats for National. Rimutaka may be one of those seats.
November 14th, 2008 at 11:46 am
It does not work that way, Right of way is Way of Right. If the specials votes show the same swing then there will be no change. For National to win any of those Labour-retained seats it will have to win a higher proportion of the special votes than it did of the ordinary votes. In the last few elections Labour has done better on specials than on ordinary votes, so that is very unlikely.
The only seat where there is a significant chance of a change on special votes would seem to be New Plymouth, where National won by 314 votes. If this were overturned then Jonathon Young would be out and National would get another list MP, with Harry Duynhoven returning to the Labour caucus at the cost of a list MP. I think the odds are perhaps 60-40 against this happening – the margin is a full one percent – but it might.
November 14th, 2008 at 1:32 pm
There are over 6000 specials votes to be counted in Auckland Central. The majority for Kaye is just over 1100. I would wager that those specials will break left. They will probably not be enough but if I was Kaye I would not be getting a flat in Wellington just yet.