National still in a cosy position
Now the special votes have been counted and the shares of the wasted votes (eg Internet Mana, Conservatives) have been re- apportioned, the next Parliament’s shape has finally become clear.
National has lost its absolute majority, yet Prime Minister John Key can still call on a variety of partners ( Peter Dunne, David Seymour, Te Ururoa Flavell) to get his legislative agenda through the House, and he can mix and match those partners, according to the issues.
If, for example, the Maori Party doesn’t want to dirty its hands with the workplace legislation being proposed by National and abstains, the Act Party and United Future would undoubtedly be happy to oblige the Government.
With the
counting
of
the specials, the Conservatives’ share shrank to 3.97 per cent, which lessens any sense of injustice that Colin Craig and his team may have been feeling since election night.
Even if the MMP threshold had been lowered to the 4 per cent recommended by the Royal Commission, the Conservatives would still have fallen short.
The Greens picked up another MP from the final adjustment, and took their vote from just over 10 per cent on election night to just short of the 11.06 per cent they earned three years ago.
The comparisons with 2011 are fascinating.
For all the talk last year from Labour leader David Cunliffe about mobilising the 800,000 New Zealanders who don’t vote – and despite all the money and effort spent by the centre-left in trying to recruit absentee voters – the ultimate returns were meagre.
Without taking population growth into account, only 160,000 more people voted this time than in 2011.
It is interesting speculating about where their allegiances might have gone.
Clearly, most didn’t vote centreleft.
The Greens vote went up by 10,000 on 2011, and the Labour vote went down by exactly the same amount.
In an election that could well be his swansong, Winston Peters must still be wondering how on earth New Zealand First could have got 61,000 more votes this year than it did in 2011 and still ended up as a mere bystander in the future business of this Government.
For the record, the National vote grew by 72, 865.
So all up, if you regard Winston Peters as a centre-right populist, the centre-right won a whopping 83 per cent of the additional vote at this year’s election.
The centre-left vote grew by only by the 34,000 votes partly earned by Kim Dotcom and his millions – to no positive effect, and with the Mana Party’s demise as a parliamentary presence.
Nationwide, the Act Party vote declined by 31 per cent on what they won in 2011, and they ended up with fewer than half the votes won by Internet Mana.
Regardless, Epsom’s rookie candidate David Seymour is now on a salary of $ 175,000. ( No 90-day trial for him, as he learns the ropes at Parliament.)
Seymour has also been given undersecretary roles in education and regulatory reform across government, and – to boot – has won the leadership of the Act Party.
Meanwhile, National’s run of good fortune has continued.
Since election night, the media’s attention has been focused almost entirely on the Labour Party, which will have no power to affect anyone’s life and wellbeing until 2017 at least.