Also people will be interested in a draft of an article on how the Electoral Finance Act impacted on third parties last year.

How well were electronic forms of politics utilised in last year’s general election? How effectively did the political parties and electorate candidates use websites, email, social networking in their campaigning? What about bloggers and the mainstream media? These questions are addressed in a chapter by Peter John Chen about ‘the role, use and impact of online media in New Zealand’s 2008 election’, published in Informing Voters? Politics, Media and the New Zealand Election 2008 (edited by Chris Rudd, Janine Hayward and Geoff Craig of the University of Otago Politics department). This blog post is the fourth of a series of explorations of the chapters from the new book (which I also have a chapter in).

Most of the focus is on how parties and candidates used online media, rather than the role of blogs by non candidates. Still very interesting. Labour gets caned for their 2008 e-campaign. No surprise as they had three different websites running.

They also reveal Labour spent around 10% of its advertising budget online and National spent zero.

1. Labour got $431,917 in big donations. Their biggest individual donor was the Vela Family who gave them $100k. The unions gave $117,500 and individuals (mainly from arts/culture sector) gave $134,830. Also a total of $60,000 from corporates and lobby groups, $10,587 from Helen Clark and $9,000 anonymously through the Electoral Commission.
2. ACT got $315,906 in big donations. John Boscawen gave $101,000, Alan Gibbs $200,000 and $14,906 from Virtual Bucket Ltd!
3. National got less than half as much as Labour in big donations. They got $207,001. John Key put in $30,000, some other individuals $30,001, $70,000 from corporates and a lobby group, and $77,000 anonymously through the Electoral Commission.
4. Greens were 4th largest for total big donations on $184,693. These were all individual donations with MPs putting in 70,725 and others $114,238.
5. NZ First got (assuming this return is accurate – the last three years were not) $111,999. The Velas gave $100,000 to their favourite boy and Sir Patrick Hogan also gave his thanks with $11,999.
6. The Family Party had $88,044. Destiny Church handed over $10,926, Paul Adams $41,037 and an Elias Kanaris $36,081

National’s level of “big” donations is very small. Part of that will be that some gave in 2007 (2011 will be interesting) but part is that the vast majority of National’s revenue comes from smaller donations. The members alone contribute between $1.5 and $2.0 million a year in small donations I would estimate.

Also somewhat amusingly, NZ First broke the law – again! They received a $2,190 donation from a foreigner on 22 October 2008. As it exceeds $1,000 it has to be paid to the Electoral Commission within 20 working days. They only paid it over on 12 December 2008.

Labour also received an overseas donations in excess of $1,000. They got $10,000 which they had to give up.

• Total candidate expenditure is $2.26m
• Total disclosed donations to candidates is $1.26m
• Average spent for a winning candidate is $12,836
• In only 38 out of 70 (54%) electorates, did the candidate spending the most money win!!
• The top five spending candidates all lost – Russell Fairbrother, Paul Adams, Nicky Wagner, Ron Mark and Stephen Franks
• Only 2 of the top ten winning candidates won their seats, and only seven of the top 20.

Bryce also has calculated the average spending per candidate for each party.

The amount spent by candidates on Internet advertising was interesting for me. The top spenders:

1. Charles Chauvel $5,551
2. Jills Angus Burney $2,658
3. Brendon Burns $2,250
4. Pita Sharples $,2000
5. Aaron Gilmore $1,318

What did Charles spend $5,551 on?

The study is based on an analysis of the leading New Zealand newspapers and television news programmes (TV1 and TV3 evening news) over an eight-week time period. The final results are uploaded here as a pdf – new-zealands-media-coverage-of-the-2008-election-study-final-results

The results:

Overall Media coverage:

Labour 38%, National 34%, Maori 8%, Greens 7%, NZF 6%, ACT 4%, UFNZ 2% and Progressive 1%

Negative Media Coverage

1. National 38%
2. NZ First 37%
3. Labour 36%
4. Progressive 31%
5. ACT 26%
6. United Future 21%
7. Greens 18%
8. Maori 17%

So National had a higher proportion of negative stories than NZ First!

Net Positive less Negative Coverage

1. Greens +14%
2. Maori +13%
3. United Future +1%
4. ACT -2%
5. Labour – 10%
6. Progressive – 12%
7. National – 16%
8. NZ First – 16%

This suggests to me the Greens and Maori Party were not held to the same level of scrutiny as other parties.

What I found interesting was the further breakdown that found news stories were more negative on National, but analysis stories more negative on Labour.

They also compared total media coverage to the result a party got at the election. The difference between the two was:

1. Maori +6%
2. Labour +4%
3. NZ First +3%
4. United Future +2%
5. Greens +1%
6. Progressive 0%
7. ACT -0%
8. National – 11%

Then we have the tone of media coverage of the leaders. And the net positive over negative was:

1. Anderton +14%
2. Turia/Sharples +9%
3. Dunne +5%
4. Clark +3%
5. Fitzsimons/Norman -4%
6. Key – 7%
7. Hide – 15%
8. Peters -19%

In the preliminary report, Key and Hide had more net negative coverage than Winston. The re-emergence of the Owen Glenn affair obviously resulted in a change for the last two weeks.

A breakdown by media, finds that Key got much more negative coverage on TV than Helen Clark.

In terms of issues, the major ones were:

• Economy 28%
• Law & Order 10%
• Tax 9%
• Maori Issues 7%
• Education 7%
• Immigration 6%
• Health 6%
• KiwiSaver/Super 6%

A very interesting, easy to read report.

2008-final-election-results

The file is around 3 MB and in MS Word. Almost every piece of data you can want is in there. I have not yet added on the split voting statistics though.

Apart from the detailed results per polling place, they have the vote splitting statistics. The summary tells us 70.4% did not split their votes and 29.6% did split. Of the larger parties, these were the percentage who split their votes (voted for a different electorate candidate to their party vote):

1. National 14.5%
2. Labour 22.5%
3. Maori 39.3%
4. Green 66.7%
5. United Future 75.8%
6. Progressive 77.6%
7. NZ First 81.9%
8. ACT 83.6%

National’s low level of vote splitting will help explain why they won so many more electorate seats than Labour. Now let us look at how those who split their votes, did so:

1. ACT – 72.6% voted for the National candidate, 4.9% Labour cand, 16.4% ACT cand
2. Green – 10.5% National cand, 47.2% Labour, 33.3% Green
3. Progressive – 16.8% National, 43.3% Labour, 22.4% Progressive
4. Labour – 5.0% National, 77.5% Labour, 6.1% Green
5. Maori – 6.5% National, 18.7% Labour, 60.7% Maori
6. National – 85.5% National, 3.5% Labour, 4.2% ACT
7. NZ First – 20.1% National, 43.2% Labour, 18.1% NZ First
8. United Future – 50.1% National, 12.3% Labour, 24.2% United Future

With the two largest minor parties (in Parliament) we see that 73% of ACT voters voted for the National candidate while only 47% of Green voters voted for the Labour candidate.

We also saw twice as many NZ First voters voted for a Labour candidate than a National candidate.

Also most importantly 86% of National voters supported the National candidate, while only 78% of Labour voters supported the Labour candidate. Even if you exclude the Maori seats this only increases to 79.6%.

One can also look at the split voting in each electorate. A few interesting ones:

• In Epsom, Rodney Hide got 89% of the ACT voters, 16% of the Greens, 21% of Progressives, 16% of Labour, 33% of Maori Party and 70% of National – over 15,000 National Party voters voted for Rodney.
• In Mangere 73% of Labour voters voted Sua, and 15% Field.
• In Nelson Nick Smith got 95% of the National voters, 22% of Labour voters and 19% of Green voters
• In New Plymouth Harry Duynhoven narrowly lost despite getting 94% of Labour voters, 13% of National voters, 19% of ACT voters and 80% of Green voters.
• In Ohariu Peter Dunne got 91% of United voters, 44% of National voters and 16% of Labour voters. In 2005 he got 34% of Labour voters.
• Otaki was a hard fought battle. Nathan Guy got 92% of the National vote and 4% of the Labour vote. Darren Hughes got 91% of the Labour vote and 6% of the National vote.
• In Tauranga Peters got 90% fo the NZ First voters but only 6% of the National voters and 46% of Labour voters. Sime Bridges got 88% of National voters and 11% of Labour voters plus even 5% of NZ First voters. He even got 27% of Green voters – double what the Labour cand got. Simon also got 30% of the Maori Party voters.
• In Wellington Central Stephen Franks got 84% of National voters, 77% of ACT, 4% of Labour and 6% of Greens. Robertson triumphed because on top of his 76% of Labour voters he got 57% of Green voters.  A quite large 16% of Labour voters chose Kedgley over Robertson.
• In WIgram Jim Anderton get 86% of Progressive voters, 58% of Labour voters and 21% of National voters.

It’s great fun analysing these statistics. Now if only we could get split voting stats per polling place!

The MPs will be sworn in on Monday 8 December.

And those who want a smaller Parliament will be delighted with the results – a Parliament of only 107 MPs!

How is this possible? It is an obscure feature called underhang – the opposite of overhang. Let us look at the results:

1. National 28.4%, 36 seats, 29 elects, 7 list
2. Labour 25.0%, 32 seats, 16 elects, 16 list
3. Bill and Ben Party 11.7%, 15 seats, 0 elects, 15 list
4. Greens 11.2%, 14 seats, 0 elects, 14 list
5. Legalise Cannabis 10.5%, 13 seats, 0 elects, 13 list
6. Maori Party 4.9%, 6 seats, 6 elects, 0 list
7. ACT 1.9%, 2 seats, 1 elect, 1 list
8. NZF 1.0%, 1 seat, 1 elect, 0 list
9. United Future 0.7%, 1 seat, 1 elect, 0 list

Now the Bill and Ben Party only had two candidates (Bill and Ben!) on their party list, so there would be an underhang of 13 MPs for a Parliament of 107. This means to form a Government you need 54 votes. So what would the Government be?

You could do National 36 + ALCP 13 + Maori 6 = 55

More likely is Labour 32 + Greens 14 + ALCP 13 = 59

The electorate seat won by NZ First was actually in Tamaki, so their sole MP would be a Doug Nabbs.

They have given results for each electorate also. Below are the seats where a different party would have won the electorate vote if the kids were the real electors:

1. Auckland Central – Labour
2. Bay of Plenty – Labour
3. Dunedin North – National
4. Invercargill – Labour
5. New Lynn – National
6. Rimutaka – National
7. Tamaki – NZ First
8. West Coast-Tasman – Labour
9. Whanganui – Labour
10. Wigram – National
11. Ikaroa-Rawhiti – Maori

It is great to see the kids encouraged to take part in mock elections and vote. The results do show though why the Greens are bonkers with their campaign to lower the voting age to include 16 and 17 year old schoold students.

The Greens did exceptionally well in Wellington achieving 20.6% in Wellington Central and 17.0% in Rongotai. Also above 15% was Dunedin North and Auckland Central.

In eight seats they got over 10%, and in 23 seats, over 7%.

Their median seat was Wairarapa on 5.7%. This is less than their average of 6.7% so their strong seats drags them up considerably.

Their worst seats were Manukau East and Mangere.

On a percentage basis Helensville had the best party vote for National at 63.7% followed by Epsom and East Coast Bays.

Six electorates got over 60% party vote, and 28 electorates got over 50% party vote. 49 electorates got over 40% party vote.

Waimakariri in 30th place was the highest polling seat of those National did not win but contested. Auckland Central in 49th place had the lowest party vote percentage of the seats National did win.

The median electorate is Napier on 47.3%.

Apart from the Maori seats Mangere, Manukau East and Dunedin North were worse for National on 16.4%, 24.2% and 29.4%.

National is I think the first party to ever get more than one million votes – around 164,000 more than in 2005. Labour got around 138,000 fewer votes than in 2008. The Greens got 37,000 more than 2005 but their percentage of the votes is less than what they got in 2002.

There was a very large 6.6% wasted vote. This saw National’s 44.9% of the total vote become 48.1% of the effective vote, and hence they got 58 seats.

The Bill & Ben Party beat all the other non parliamentary parties, except NZ First. Neither Kiwi, Family nor Pacific make 1%, let alone close to 5%.

You can see above that National climbed 5.8% above its 2005 party vote and Labour dropped 7.11%.

Overall the right vote went up 8.0% and the left dropped 5.9%. Also the vote for centre parties that made the threshold dropped 7.3%.

So overall the right vote went from 7.0% behind in 2005 to 7.0% ahead in 2008.

National has lost one seat to the Greens, so Cam Calder becomes MP in Waiting and Kennedy Graham joins the House. He is the brother of Sir Douglas Graham, and this may be a record for siblings to represent different parties.

Those who followed my advice on iPredict that the National to lose one seat stock was under-priced, should be happy today.

The final (and provisional) results are:

1. National 44.93% (45.45%) – 58 (59) seats
2. Labour 33.99% (33.77%) – 43 seats
3. Green 6.72% (6.43%) – 9 (8) seats
4. ACT 3.65% (3.72%) – 5 seats
5. Maori 2.39% (2.24%) – 3 seats + 2 overhang
6. Progressive 0.91% (0.93%) – 1 seat
7. United Future 0.87% (0.89%) – 1 seats
8. NZ First 4.07% (4.21%) – 0 seats

There were 2,103,842 votes counted on election night the final count is 2,356,536 – so an increase of 252,694.

Lots more analysis to come.

UPDATE: Have just applied the St Lague formula. National was at massive risk of losing a second seat as they hold Spot 120.  Labour are in 121. National’s quotient is 9160.0 while Labour’s quotient is 9159.5.

If Labour had 40 more voters turn up (that is less than one voter per seat), then Damien O’Connor would be back in Parliament and Aaron Gilmore would have missed out. Or if 22 people who voted National had voted Labour, then Labour would have 44 seats and National 57.

That is about as close as it can get. National could still pass laws with either Maori or ACT on 57 or 58 seats, so wouldn’t have changed the dynamics.

The fact the newspaper can publish this the day before the Chief Electoral Office publishes all the final results, shows how wrong their policy is to keep all the final results secret until the last one is done. Election results should be disclosed the moment they have been certifed and checked as correct. There is no redeeeming value in having the Chief Electoral Office keep them secret so it can release all 70 of them at the same time.

Each electorate gets through its final count at a different pace. Once the final count has been certified, and sent to Wellington, then it should be published as soon as possible after the Chief Electoral Officer has verified it.

By delaying the final counts, you get two classes of citizens. People like me have had progress reports from people on the ground scrutineering at some of the counts. So I know stuff such as the fact the majority in one marginal seat has grown to almost 1,500, not shrunk. But this should be public to everyone – not just a few insiders.

It would also allow those three candidates affected by the party vote count (National’s Cam Calder, Labour’s Damien O’Connor and the Greens Kennedy Graham) to have a pretty good idea by now of whether any of them are in or out.  Why keep them waiting another day just for the sake of a stage managed announcement?

I’ll be adding to my list of desired electoral law changes, that the Chief Electoral Office should release all results the moment they are certified correct, and not hold them back for one big announcement.