Split Voting

The Chief Electoral Officer has published the E9, which has the official statistics from the election. You used to have to wait months for this to be published. I think it must be a record to have it out within just a week of the final results.

Apart from the detailed results per polling place, they have the vote splitting statistics. The summary tells us 70.4% did not split their votes and 29.6% did split. Of the larger parties, these were the percentage who split their votes (voted for a different electorate candidate to their party vote):

1. National 14.5%
2. Labour 22.5%
3. Maori 39.3%
4. Green 66.7%
5. United Future 75.8%
6. Progressive 77.6%
7. NZ First 81.9%
8. ACT 83.6%

National’s low level of vote splitting will help explain why they won so many more electorate seats than Labour. Now let us look at how those who split their votes, did so:

1. ACT – 72.6% voted for the National candidate, 4.9% Labour cand, 16.4% ACT cand
2. Green – 10.5% National cand, 47.2% Labour, 33.3% Green
3. Progressive – 16.8% National, 43.3% Labour, 22.4% Progressive
4. Labour – 5.0% National, 77.5% Labour, 6.1% Green
5. Maori – 6.5% National, 18.7% Labour, 60.7% Maori
6. National – 85.5% National, 3.5% Labour, 4.2% ACT
7. NZ First – 20.1% National, 43.2% Labour, 18.1% NZ First
8. United Future – 50.1% National, 12.3% Labour, 24.2% United Future

With the two largest minor parties (in Parliament) we see that 73% of ACT voters voted for the National candidate while only 47% of Green voters voted for the Labour candidate.

We also saw twice as many NZ First voters voted for a Labour candidate than a National candidate.

Also most importantly 86% of National voters supported the National candidate, while only 78% of Labour voters supported the Labour candidate. Even if you exclude the Maori seats this only increases to 79.6%.

One can also look at the split voting in each electorate. A few interesting ones:

• In Epsom, Rodney Hide got 89% of the ACT voters, 16% of the Greens, 21% of Progressives, 16% of Labour, 33% of Maori Party and 70% of National – over 15,000 National Party voters voted for Rodney.
• In Mangere 73% of Labour voters voted Sua, and 15% Field.
• In Nelson Nick Smith got 95% of the National voters, 22% of Labour voters and 19% of Green voters
• In New Plymouth Harry Duynhoven narrowly lost despite getting 94% of Labour voters, 13% of National voters, 19% of ACT voters and 80% of Green voters.
• In Ohariu Peter Dunne got 91% of United voters, 44% of National voters and 16% of Labour voters. In 2005 he got 34% of Labour voters.
• Otaki was a hard fought battle. Nathan Guy got 92% of the National vote and 4% of the Labour vote. Darren Hughes got 91% of the Labour vote and 6% of the National vote.
• In Tauranga Peters got 90% fo the NZ First voters but only 6% of the National voters and 46% of Labour voters. Sime Bridges got 88% of National voters and 11% of Labour voters plus even 5% of NZ First voters. He even got 27% of Green voters – double what the Labour cand got. Simon also got 30% of the Maori Party voters.
• In Wellington Central Stephen Franks got 84% of National voters, 77% of ACT, 4% of Labour and 6% of Greens. Robertson triumphed because on top of his 76% of Labour voters he got 57% of Green voters.  A quite large 16% of Labour voters chose Kedgley over Robertson.
• In WIgram Jim Anderton get 86% of Progressive voters, 58% of Labour voters and 21% of National voters.

It’s great fun analysing these statistics. Now if only we could get split voting stats per polling place!