What might happen on specials?
I’ve just plugged the provisional count numbers into the St Lague formula. The allocation is:
- National 59
- Labour 43
- Greens 8
- Maori 3 (+2 overhang)
- United Future 1
- ACT 5
Now who is most at risk from specials? They are the party that is in List Spot 120. And that is National.
The quotient for National is 951145/117 = 8129.4. And who is in spot 121? Labour with 706666/87 = 8122.6.
Very roughly if Labour pick up 600 more votes relative to National, then they get one more List MP, and National loses one. That is not at all impossible.
But could someone else grab it off National. The Greens have spot 124, being 134622/17 = 7918.9. They would need to gain an extra 3,600 votes (on top of their existing proportion of votes) from specials. That is a bit of an ask, but they have done well on special traditionally.
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Tags: Election 2008, special votes
November 9th, 2008 at 9:20 am
I heard on the radio that there are 200,000 specials – is that right? You list did not include the Progressives. It is remarkable how accurate the polls were – even more accurate probably if you ignore the unreliable morgan poll.
November 9th, 2008 at 9:32 am
Thanks for that analysis! I was just about to get out my calculator and plug into the elections website calculator myself.
For the record, the 2005 election night results and gain loss on specials were:
Labour: 40.74 – gained .36 to get 41.10
National: 39.63 – lost .53 to get 39.10
NZF: 5.84 lost .12 to get 5.72
Greens: 5.07 gained .23 to get 5.30
UnitedFuture: 2.72 lost .05 to get 2.67
Maori: 1.98 gained .14 to get 2.12
Act 1.52 lost 0.01 to get 1.51
Progressive: 1.21 lost .05 to get 1.16
November 9th, 2008 at 9:36 am
The Progs are in places 50 and 149 so most unlikely to get a second MP.
November 9th, 2008 at 9:48 am
UPDATE:
If the 2008 results were to change by the same absolute percentages as the 2005 result we would get
Party / e-night / change / final / electorates / total
N / 45.45 / -.53 / 44.92 / 41 / 57
L / 33.77 /+.36 / 34.13 / 21 / 44
G / 6.43 / +.23 / 6.66 / 0 / 9
A / 3.72 / +.01 / 3.73 / 5/ 5
M / 2.24 / +.14 / 2.38 / 5 / 5
P / 0.93 / -.05 / 0.88 / 1 / 1
U / 0.89 / -.05 / 0.84 / 1 / 1
NZF 4.21 -.12 4.09 0 0
National would actually lose 2 seats, while Labour and the Greens gain one each. However, National?Act?UF would still have 63 of 122 seats – a majority of 4 over all others.
November 9th, 2008 at 10:17 am
Surely ACTS spectacular success must carry over to the special votes. Let’s look at 6 seats for ACT
November 9th, 2008 at 11:11 am
If the swing to National is reflected in the specials, then history may not be that relevant.
November 9th, 2008 at 11:45 am
How close is ACT to losing their number 5? Hope it doesn’t happen, David Garrett is excellent.
November 9th, 2008 at 12:19 pm
Sorry Frank, but there is really no chance of a sixth seat for Act. To get six MPs they would probably need 4.3 per cent of the vote. Specials are only about 10% of the total vote, so for them to boost Act up to 4.3 per cent in total Act would need to get about 10% of the special votes.
Dropping back to 4 MPs is more likely, but still unlikely. If it happened though, it would remove the danger of National dropping to 57. So the centre-right majority is safe.
November 9th, 2008 at 2:52 pm
What party is second closest to loosing a seat?
November 9th, 2008 at 3:56 pm
On other points about the transition, see:
> LAWS179: “Election 08 – constitutional transition”
November 9th, 2008 at 4:43 pm
How come National would lose two seats if they drop .5% as 100%/120 is about .83%?
November 9th, 2008 at 5:11 pm
From my rough spreadsheet using the S/L formula, showing where the last seat was awarded to each party, the next spot for each party, and the last 10 and next 10 around the 120 cutoff. Hopefully this formats right.
Seat 49 19536 PRG 1
Seat 54 18629 UTF 1
Seat 105 9378.8 MAO 3
—————————————-
Seat 111 8889.21 NAT 54
Seat 112 8726.1 NAT 55
Seat 113 8724.27 LAB 41
Seat 114 8649.22 ACT 5
Seat 115 8568.87 NAT 56
Seat 116 8514.05 LAB 42
Seat 117 8417.21 NAT 57
Seat 118 8313.72 LAB 43
Seat 119 8270.83 NAT 58
Seat 120 8129.44 NAT 59
—————————————-
Spot 121 8122.6 LAB 44
Spot 122 7992.82 NAT 60
Spot 123 7940.07 LAB 45
Spot 124 7918.94 GRF 9
Spot 125 7860.7 NAT 61
—————————————–
Spot 138 7076.64 ACT 6
Spot 146 6699.14 MAO 4
Spot 150 6512 PRG 2
Spot 159 6209.67 UTF 2
November 9th, 2008 at 5:14 pm
Oops, and the last awarded Green seat
Spot 109 8974.8 GRF 8
November 9th, 2008 at 7:46 pm
Seats are allocated using the St. Lauge formula. Which is explained here: http://www.elections.org.nz/voting/mmp/sainte-lague.html
At the moment (using the calculator) here is how the final ten seats have been allocated (and are the most vunerable):
111: National
112: National
113: Labour
114: ACT
115: National
116: Labour
117: National
118: Labour
119: National
120: National
So, since National occupies the bottom two positions. If Labour and Green can lift their vote sufficiently in the Specials then they could knock out two National seats. We could be saying goodbye already to Cam Calder and Aaron Gilmore. But of course we’ll have to wait a little while yet.
November 9th, 2008 at 7:58 pm
“We could be saying goodbye already to Cam Calder and Aaron Gilmore.”
No great loss there. Gilmore is awful. Can’t understand why Stephen Franks was down so far, below a number of muppets.
With Garrett sitting at 114 I would be a little worried if I were him. Specials might not be so good for ACT.
November 9th, 2008 at 11:24 pm
Guys – I am so confused. How come National is being hit with the specials? Is there any way National can increase the MPs to 60 at all? What happens if the special votes also approximately follow the election night percentage split and National gets the most votes? What happens in that scenario? Is there any chance of National taking an extra seat from Labour?
November 10th, 2008 at 8:11 am
Is there any chance of National taking an extra seat from Labour?”
Almost certainly not. They already hold the 119 and 120 positions, so they can’t “gain” them, only lose them. In order to gain another seat, they would have to pick up the 118 position – which would mean that they’d probably lose the 120 position.
November 10th, 2008 at 10:19 am
I must say i find these special votes very confusing as well. A few of the media stories about specials refer to “The deadline for special votes to be in the hands of returning officers is 10 days after election day.” What the f??? I assume this is to allow overseas votes to arrive, but does this mean that you could actually cast your vote AFTER the election? Perhaps if you were registered overseas and you had forgotten, could you could send your vote by courier, 10 days is after all more than enough time to get to NZ from anywhere? One would hope that a ballot must be postmarked before the election date. If this was the case and I was the Greens I would do a massive push among London expats to hoover up the ones who have not voted.