Wednesday, October 01, 2014

Will Mallard hold my electorate?

I have been musing since election day that while I might have 'wasted' my party vote on ACT it was an acknowledged gamble. My electorate vote might yet prove useful if Trevor Mallard ends up losing the seat.

While I gambled with my votes,  2693 other voters simply threw theirs straight down the dunnie by giving their electorate vote to Green candidate Holly Walker who had stated prior to the election SHE  WOULD NOT RETURN TO PARLIAMENT. What were they thinking? Were they thinking? I am assuming that most were two ticks Green voters wanting a change of government. In which case, surely the best option was to split their votes between the Greens and Labour? Had more of them voted tactically Mallard wouldn't now be sitting on a knife edge.

Waiting on the specials he must be reflecting that the traditionally high overseas Green vote may also follow this pattern - no tick for him. Then by nature of the economic bias towards the more prosperous being more likely to vote National, and the more prosperous likely to be travelling or reside internationally, his prospects dwindle further (that's not to say some National voters won't have given centrist and slighty conservative Mallard their candidate vote.)

According to this news report:

It was a nail-biting night for Trevor Mallard, but he's holding on to his Hutt South seat for now.
The Labour veteran is ahead of National's Chris Bishop by just a few hundred votes, with more than 3000 special votes still to be counted.

378 to be precise.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

just goes to show why Labour can't "rejuvenate" by forcing the ABC / Clarkist old warhorses to resign.

Mt Roskill, Mt Albert, Rimutaka, Rongotai, Port Hills - force 'em out and National picks up the electorates.

Wellington Central - the greens pick it up,

Psycho Milt said...

I am assuming that most were two ticks Green voters wanting a change of government. In which case, surely the best option was to split their votes between the Greens and Labour?

Outside of instances in which the weird MMP rules make the electorate significant (eg Epsom, Ohariu, Te Tai Tokerau and Waiariki in the recent election), the electorate vote is irrelevant. If you're a Green voter, you might as well give your electorate vote to a candidate who isn't standing, because it's an irrelevant vote (that is, unless you have strong feelings about whether Trevor Mallard or Chris Bishop would make a better local MP, but I'm assuming Green voters aren't likely to see much to choose between them).

If any Green voters did consider using their electorate vote to help Labour, they'd have voted for Bishop - kicking Mallard out would have helped Labour significantly.