The electorate battles

Many interesting electorate battles. Few seats actually change hands though. National won two seats off Labour and NZ First and Labour won three seats off National, United Future and the Maori Party. The rest were status quo. But still some interesting results.

• Auckland Central. Nikki Kaye did incredibly well to increase her majority to 1,519 after almost the smallest majority in the country in 2011 and 2014. She’s now won the formerly safe Labour seat four times. The collapse of the Greens made it dangerous for her as most of their support then goes to Labour, but her hard work paid off.
• Christchurch Central. A good win by Duncan Webb. Nicky Wagner did so well to win it in 2011 and retain it in 2014 but the traditionally safe Labour seat returned home for two reasons. One was a general trend away from National in Christchurch, but the other was Webb was a strong candidate for Labour with a pre-existing high profile. Will be one of their stronger new MPs.
• Hutt South. An amazing and deserved result by Chris Bishop gaining a majority of over 2,000. Winning a formerly safe Labour seat is an achievement in itself. To do it in your third going for fourth term of Government is pretty unheard of. This is the election when the Government should only be losing seats. I’ve blogged before about Chris’ amazing work ethic but also sheer effectiveness. He makes things happen. National should make Chris responsible for training all new MPs about how to be a good Electorate MP, even if they are a List MP. Labour threw everything they had at Chris, and even concluded their Jacinda campaign there but he came through. So delighted. And the result shows why Trevor Mallard bailed on the seat – he knew he would lose to Chris also.
• Maungakiekie. A seat Labour may have won. A traditional swing seat, partially in South Auckland. The Labour candidate was one of their stars so Denise Lee did very well in holding the seat with a 2,000 or so majority.
• Nelson. Nick Smith has a reasonable majority of 4,010 but got a much smaller percentage of the electorate vote. He got 15,000 voters, the Labour candidate 11,000 and Greens 8,000. They could have beaten him if they had co-operated.
• New Lynn. This should not be a marginal seat. This is a safe Labour seat that they have held since 1963. Their majority is only 1,886 now. So what happened? Both Labour and National had strong candidates (Deborah Russell and Paulo Garcia), so it wasn’t that. I think we are seeing the impact of Labour’s Chinese surnames fiasco. Labour is losing its grip with both working class Westies and new immigrants.
• Northland. Great effort by Matt King in winning this off Winston Peters despite the huge profile Peters has, and all the massive bribes he was promising. King won party because he campaigned well, partly because Winston is not as popular as he thinks and partly because Labour’s revival took votes off Peters. I had thought for a couple of months that King was likely to win and went out of my way not to say anything publicly so it would be a nice surprise on the night. Winston has now been kicked out of three seats – Hunua, Tauranga and Northland.
• Ohariu. No surprise that Greg O’Connor won this seat. I like Greg. He is a good guy. I think he’ll be miserable as a Labour Party backbencher, but I hope for his sake I’m wrong. What is impressive is that Brett Hudson got within 700 votes of Greg despite having only four weeks to campaign. If Peter Dunne had decided a month earlier to step down, this could have gone to the wire.
• Te Atatu. Again this is a previously safe West Auckland seat for Labour held by them since 1978 (except 1990 to 1993). And despite the high profile Phil Twyford being the Labour MP, his majority shrank to 2,055. Why? Well his own fault – his disastrous Chinese surnames fiasco. Twyford may have alienated a generation of immigrants from Labour.
• Tukituki. Labour’s Anna Lorck stood in 2014, ran a three year campaign for the seat and had a high profile with a weekly column and her PR business. With Craig Foss retiring she had a very good chance against Lawrence Yule – the popular Mayor, who did have the water issue to contend with. So a good result for Lawrence to hold on with a 2,757 majority.
• Wairarapa. This should be a safe National seat but there was concern Labour’s Kieran McAnulty could win it. Kieran is a popular local who had stood before. National’s Alastair Scott faced criticism for not living within the electorate and you also had Ron Mark as a wildcard factor. So a good result for Alastair to hold on with 2,746 majority but if Kieran stands again in 2020, it will be a battle.
• Whanganui. Another seat Labour may have won as the popular Chester Borrows was retiring. A good result by Harete Hipanago to hold off Steph Lewis by 1,841. Another that will be close in 2020.
• Whangarei. Despite the hype, not even close. A margin of over 10,000 for Shane Reti and Shane Jones continues his streak of never ever winning a seat.  NZ First must be worried about Shane’s ability to keep NZ First in Parliament if he does become leader.
• Waiariki. A resounding win for Tamati Coffey in beating the popular Te Ururoa Flavell by 1,300 votes. Coffey obviously ran a strong campaign, and was assisted by the much increased vote for Labour across the board due to Jacinda becoming leader.