A silly story

The Herald reports:

Prime Minister John Key slotted in his first campaign visit to the Epsom electorate yesterday and found not everybody was willing to go along with his instructions to vote for Act’s David Seymour.

Firstly it wasn’t an instruction. The PM said:

For the electorate vote, we will encourage National party supporters to give their electorate vote to the ACT candidate in Epsom

Secondly of course not everyone will vote for Seymour instead of Goldsmith. It isn’t an electorate of lemmings. People make up their own mind, and leaving a National candidate on the ballot paper means they have the choice.

Among those he met on his walkabout with Epsom candidate Paul Goldsmith was Rob Hunt, who is Goldsmith’s former Japanese teacher from Auckland Grammar.

Hunt, who is former Labour MP Jonathan Hunt’s brother, said he was voting for Goldsmith. “He knows the area, he grew up here. Everyone should vote for him.” His response to the voting instruction was: “Good Lord – there’s nothing there.”

Possibly not surprising that Goldie’s former teacher (and the brother of a Labour candidate) is going to vote for him!

Many he met were willing to split their vote as ordered. Husband and wife Dennis Mahony and Diane Howe ran into Key on their way to cast an early vote. Both were splitting their vote National/Seymour.

What would have been interesting is what were the relative proportions of people splitting their vote and not splitting? Did anyone apart from Rob Hunt say they would not split their vote?

Goldsmith did have two other votes in the bag: Key, an Epsom voter, said he will vote for Goldsmith. Goldsmith was also breaking the Prime Minister’s instructions by voting for himself.

Again it was not an instruction.