As most of you should know yesterday was election day. Despite essentially the most unusual, dirtiest and weirdest campaign in New Zealand the results become almost a reflection of polls months before all the scandal. National won 61 seats, Labour couldn’t even hit 25% of the party votes, Greens hoped and failed to meet their goal of 15% and overall the results of the election didn’t change much from the current situation. The biggest part of the evening however was the change in the Maori Electorate Te Tai Tokerau. Hone Harawira lead a close race for most of the night but however was beaten by Labour’s Kelvin Davis. Harawira therefore lost his seat and his party essentially did not make it into the seats of parliament. However, the most interesting part of the night went to the strange scatter of party votes labour electorate voters sent out.
Early on in the night it was easily seen that labour would not make it’s way out out of the 20s in percent of the party vote. However, a trend started to occur within labour electorates. They simply were not turning out party votes in favour of Labour. This occured frequently through out many electorates. Labour was just not pulling out party votes in their own electorates. I’ve seen and read a vast amount of different opinions around this, some saying it was down to leadership and the lack of from David Cunliffe. I don’t believe this is entirely so. David Cunliffe still held his electorate. Also what has to be taken into consideration is that Cunliffe has only been leading for around a year, he’s still new. However that is also part of the issue, Labour isn’t a solid stable party this election. David Cunliffe did do the best with what he had and campaign better than expected in this election. As the votes say though is that they still held a strong loss in faith of Labour as a party not simply David Cunliffe as a leader. This was not a leader problem but more so a party problem. Labour voters were happy to vote for an MP they know and they trust but they were not happy to vote for a party they still felt uneasy with and who holds a relatively new leader. Many of Labour voters then typically went for Greens or National. National has constantly appeared strong and a collective who overall supports one another despite all the drama which could be the factor as to why these voters moved to National.
In total, the voting trend around Labour was incredibly strange but has clearly highlighted to the party that they are doing something incredibly wrong. After this election the party will now have to sit down and find a way to reinvent themselves, come together as a collective strong party and win back their voters.
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