How did each party go?

Labour – from 41.3% to 40.7%. Pretty good for a second term Government. However don’t think this means they held all their own vote. Many 2002 Labour voters voted National I am sure – the loss of electorate seats reflects this also. Labour replaced those voters with voters from the Greens and NZ First and to a degree United Future.

National – from 20.9% to 39.6%. A remarkable result, despite the agony of not quite being enough. Once upon a time increasing your vote by 5% was seen as a landslide gain. And the ten extra electorate seats will make a huge difference.

NZ First – almost destroyed themselves with the smears against Clarkson, and ran an awful campaign. For a while looked to be getting 12% to 15% but in the end lost their only electorate seat and vote fell from 10.4% to 5.8%. Unless Peters wins Tauranga on specials or an electoral petition triggered by-election, they will have to be very careful about how they behave or it is outski in 2008.

Greens – vote dropped from 7.0% to 5.1%. Did nothing wrong, but nothing too great either. They will be gutted at loss of Nandor and hoping he makes it on specials.

Maori Party – got 2.0% which must be a disappointment for them as it represents less than 20% of Maori voters. Howevr they will feel pleased to have won a majority of the Maori seats, and may be in a position of considerable influence.

United Future – common sense says going from 6.7% to 2.7% is a bad result, however they will be relieved at least they got higher than the 1% some polls had them at. Worth noting Outdoor Recreation got 1.3% last time and thet merged with UFNZ.

ACT – no-one can claim going from 7.1% to 1.5% is anything other than an awful result, but full kudos to Rodney for keeping ACT in Parliament. And I am delighted Heather Roy stays on also. Commisserations to the other MPs who are out, especially Stephen Franks whose abilities will be missed by Parliament.

Jim Anderton’s Progressive – have to firstly note it was hilarious their abbreviation was JAP, and John Campbell and others had to ask who the Japs are :-), anyway they went from 1.7% to 1.2%, and will be disappointed to lose Matt Robson as it means the party has no purpose now other than to save Jim from attending Labour Caucus meetings. However they have a chance to get Matt back on specials and will have a big celebration if they do.

Destiny – 0.6%. Piss off Brian.

Legalise Cannabis – down from 0.6% to 0.2%. I think all the pot smokers now vote Green.

Christian Heritage – down from 1.35% to 0.12% which is great. Still concerned 2,495 people had God tell them to vote for CHP. Hopefully this means they will now give it up.

Alliance – down from 1.27% to 0.07%. Sorry Spanner but game over.

Libertarianz – 0.05% and 926 votes. Almost enough for a breakaway island 🙂

And finally need to note that you need 500 members to get registered, yet the OneNZ Party and Republic of NZ Party only got 465 votes and 449 votes respectively. Makes those memberships look rather dodgy!