The impact of voter turnout
Did low voter turnout cost Efeso Collins the election? The answer is no.
The city average was 35.3 per cent, with the highest area (Great Barrier) at 56.6 per cent and the lowest
(O¯ tara) at 22 per cent. Economist Brian Easton has looked at what would have happened if all areas had a response as good as Great Barrier’s.
He assumes the gap between the two candidates would have stayed proportionately the same in each voting area.
This is a way of measuring Labour’s voter deficit. How many votes does it lose simply because its base is less motivated to vote than National’s?
Easton did his calculations for the Herald using voting data from Auckland Council for the areas covered by the local boards and their subdivisions.
He says that because the Collins campaign “failed to get its people out”, it “lost 4 percentage points of the vote”.
If that hadn’t happened, Brown would still have won, but with 40.8 per cent of the vote, not 44.9. Collins would have got 35.1 per cent instead of the 30.9 he ended up with.
That same 4 per cent deficit in a general election, says Easton, “would cost Labour five seats in Parliament”.