Final 2008 Election Results
The Chief Electoral Officer has published the final results of the 2008 election.
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:
- National 44.93% (45.45%) – 58 (59) seats
- Labour 33.99% (33.77%) – 43 seats
- Green 6.72% (6.43%) – 9 (8) seats
- ACT 3.65% (3.72%) – 5 seats
- Maori 2.39% (2.24%) – 3 seats + 2 overhang
- Progressive 0.91% (0.93%) – 1 seat
- United Future 0.87% (0.89%) – 1 seats
- 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.