October 11, 2010 1:00pm by David Farrar

Celia favoured to win

Kerry Prendergast’s tenuous hold on the Wellington mayoralty is likely to be undone by a wave of Green special votes, analysts predict.

Her political future hangs on a knife edge, with 40 votes separating her from rival Celia Wade-Brown and more than 900 special votes still to be counted.

Special votes, which have historically favoured left-wing challengers, could lead to victory for Green Party member Ms Wade-Brown. ….

Ms Wade-Brown said she had reviewed figures from the last election, which showed that, of the 800 valid special votes, 265 went to Ms Prendergast while 409 went to the second and third-placed candidates.

I’m glad I managed to squeak my vote in at 11.53 am on Saturday, as if Kerry lost by one vote I’d be very upset.

I agree that Celia is favoured to win on the specials. Graeme Edgeler pointed out that in 2007 Kerry got 12% fewer first preferences in the specials, than amongst ordinary votes.

Celia needs to win 52% of the specials to become Mayor. In this context “win” means be ranked higher than Kerry.

Wellington has not had a National MP elected since 1993. Despite that it has had centre-right Mayors for the last 15 years. But STV has made it even harder as all the votes against you tend to accumulate. I will be interested to see the vote iterations when they are published.