Electorate Profiles
The Parliamentary Library has just released their latest set of electorate profiles. These are invaluable documents for MPs, candidates and many others.
They are fully updated, being on the 2008 electoral boundaries, and using the latest 2006 census data.
There are many new features, including:
- HTML as well as PDF
- Summary of local schools and education decile rankings
- Socio-economic deprivation decile rankings for suburbs
- A map of decile rankings
- A breakdown of local business types
Each profile is around 20 pages, and it will have been a huge job for the Library to get them all done. One of the very very few things I miss about Parliament is the first class Library service.
One of the most useful aspects of all the data they have in the profiles, is they also give a rank for each statistic from 1 to 63. This means one can see some clear stuff, such as in Auckland Central:
- 29% are aged 20 – 29, ranked 1st in country (ie lots of young voters)
- 6% are over 65, ranked 63rd in country (ie stuff all oldies)
- 56% were born in NZ, ranked 57th (relatively few local born Kiwis)
- 8% have no qualification, ranked 61st (very few have no qualifications)
- Ranked 1st for couple only families, but 63rd for two parent families (people move elsewhere when they have kids)
- Ranked 63rd for married couple (living in sin rules)
- Median family income is 3rd – $81,700 vs $59,000 NZ wide
It is stuff like that which allows you to really get to understand an electorate.
A couple of things to watch out for.
- Election results are on the old boundaries
- With decile rankings a 1 in school decile ranking means the poorest schools, while in socio-economic deciles (done by Wgtn School of Medicine) a 10 is the poorest area.
- The electorate profiles are done on the 63 geographical “general” electorates and include people on the Maori roll as there is no way to exclude individuals from summarised data.
For those who love data, be warned – you can spend days with these profiles!