2020 election winners and losers
So who are the winners and losers of the election. Mostly it is pretty obvious. Here are the winners:
- Jacinda Ardern. She rescued Labour in 2017 and has delivered them the only majority Government in MMP history. Their victory is 99% Jacinda and 1% the others.
- Labour. They won not just 64 seats in the House but 14 net electorate seats. Some (not all) of their new MPs are talented and future Ministers.
- Chloe Swarbrick. Like Sandra Lee in 1993, she won Auckland Central as a third party candidate. An incredible victory which marks her out as a future co-leader.
- ACT and David Seymour. I put them together as up until now they were the same. Seymour not just expanded his caucus, but delivered the best ever result for ACT – 10 MPs. Over six years he has rebuilt ACT and changed its brand and they are now the third highest polling party.
- Greens. They not only exceeded 5%, they got 10 MPs. Not their best result, but one of their better ones. They may get to be part of a pure left Government for the first time ever.
- Rawiri Waititi. Ahead in Wairaiki at this stage and gets the Maori Party back in.
Losers
- NZ First. They are out of Parliament and the party could well not be around in 2023. Winston will be 78. The SFO case is next year, and Shane Jones was a distant third in Northland.
- National. They’re still in Parliament but this is a devastating result. Not just for the overall party vote (which was still poor) but the loss of electorates that were not even thought to be at risk. Losing 15 electorates will hurt National a lot and make 2023 a hard challenge. However worth remembering that in 2002 they did even worse and then three years later they almost won in 2005. I’ll do a seperate post on what were the factors in National’s loss.
- Tamati Coffey. Not a great look to be the only Labour MP to lose their seat, when it is a landslide election for Labour.
Also this sounds cheesy, but is sincere. Democracy is the big winner. We had over 2.5 million people vote with little or no drama. No court cases. No voter suppression. No alleged voter fraud. No massive queues to vote. No chance of a losing party refusing to accept the results.