Election 2020: a large increase in first votes could mean an early indication of the election result

The rise in popularity of early voting means there could be a good indication of the overall election result within an hour or so after the polls close at 7pm on Saturday.

But voting results in highly controversial and potentially key constituencies will take a few more hours, and the preliminary results of the two referendums will not be released until October 30.

Under New Zealand’s mixed proportional system of members, where the party’s vote decides how many seats each party gets, the trends that show up fairly early during vote counting tend to give a good idea of ​​the balance of power in Parliament.

But the number of seats won by each party may still change until the official results of both the election and the referendums are released on November 6. In a close election, that can be significant.

READ MORE:
* Election 2020 – This seemingly eternal campaign is now everywhere except the screaming
* ‘You don’t celebrate until you cross the finish line’: the last days of a campaign
* Election 2020: Early voting reaches one million after the largest early voting day on Saturday
* Election 2020: Maori Party ‘more likely to enter parliament than NZ First’

There is also the peculiarity that parties must meet the threshold of 5 percent of the votes to obtain a deputy, unless they win a seat in the electorate, in which case there is no threshold.

That could possibly be important for New Zealand First, which has been below the 5% threshold in polls, although its numbers have shown some improvement.

If it ends up below the threshold, New Zealand First will need an electorate seat to remain in Parliament. He had some hopes that Shane Jones would take Northland, but conversations about that possibility seem to have gotten quieter.

Labor has a strong lead in the polls, and some have indicated it could rule alone.

There is talk that the Maori Party could end a MP or two by loosening the Labor Party’s hold on the seven Maori electorates.

At one point, some polls suggested the Greens might not reach the 5 percent threshold, but the party has been stronger more recently.

And polls indicate ACT has a good chance of crossing the 5 percent threshold, which would give the party leader, and Epsom MP David Seymour, a squad of MPs for a change.

With the election during the Covid-19 pandemic and the apparent satisfaction of many voters with the way the government handled it, National’s vote is likely to be seriously affected.

The first votes will be counted on Election Day and the results of the count will be released sometime after the polls close at 7pm.

By the end of Thursday, 1.74 million people had voted early. That’s 50.7 percent of all registered voters, and half a million more than the number who voted early overall in 2017.

Elections Commission voting services manager Graeme Astle said he would expect the results of early voting to “come in pretty quickly” probably around 7:30 pm or 8:00 pm on Saturday.

“Each of the electorates will have to count a lot during the day. There is a lot to classify and there is a lot of shared vote, which means that many electorates are voting for other electorates, ”Astle told Radio NZ.

“So it’s a matter of all those counts being accurate and correct, and then we have to enter them into our electoral management system.”

The Electoral Commission aims for the preliminary results of 50 percent of polling places to be published before 10 p.m. and 95 percent of polling places before 11:30 p.m.

The number of electorates in the 2020 elections increased by one from 2017, to 72, and the new Takanini electorate in South Auckland was added. That brings the number of general electorates to 49, while the number of Maori electorates remains unchanged at seven.