Election 2020: The Five Fascinating Special Voting Facts You May Have Missed

Special votes in the New Zealand election have always had the potential to be a wild card; this election was certainly no exception.

It was good news for people like the Maori Party and Labor, who brought in new MPs.

But it was bad news for National, which saw three seats turned over to Labor and the party lost two of its MPs.

The specials also notably narrowed the gap between the “yes” and “no” vote in the cannabis referendum, but ultimately did not change the overall result of no.

But the influx of uncounted votes on Election Day also tells a host of other stories that many people might have missed.

Here are five fascinating facts about special voting.

1) The election result got worse for National

The final tally meant that National’s total vote fell from 26.8% to 25.6%, which is the second-worst defeat for the party in its history.

Even before the specials were counted, National has lost the party vote to nearly every elector in the country.

There were only four seats in the country where more people gave National their party vote than Labor: Taranaki-King Country, Waikato, Tāmaki and Epsom.

But after the specials were tallied, National’s lead in three of those seats slipped behind Labor, meaning that when the election dust settled, there was only one seat in the country where National had the most votes of. Match that Labor: Epsom.

The final margin in that electorate was less than 600.

2) Special votes from the Maori electorate show overwhelming support for the legalization of cannabis

There was a clear majority of people voting in New Zealand’s seven Maori seats who thought recreational cannabis use should be legalized, far more than most other electorates in the country.

Of the special votes, the median percentage of “yes” votes was nearly 79 percent, well above the national average among non-Maori seats, which was just over 58 percent, according to the special votes.

At 82 percent, Te Tai Tonga had the highest percentage of “yes” voters, followed by Te Tai Hauāuru who had 80 percent.

Returning to consider non-Maori seats, Takanini had the lowest percentage of “yes” voters in specials, at 42 percent.

As electoral commission data groups Maori election results with non-Maori geographic electorates for non-special votes (e.g. Auckland Central and Tāmaki Makaurau were counted together), a breakdown of how these numbers compare to the total vote. it cannot be done precisely.

3) David Seymour probably lost National Whangarei

In the middle of the campaign, Act produced a quick one. The party put forward David Seymour as a candidate in Whangārei, not David Seymour, the party leader, but another man with the same name.

Senior Law party officials believe that introducing someone with the same name as their leader in the seat could have misled a number of potential Law voters into casting their electorate vote, as well as their party vote, to act.

The result? The Seymour who ran in Whangārei received 2,153 votes, the fourth highest received by any candidate for the Law, including the leader Seymour, and much higher than most candidates for the Law nationwide.

After the stages were counted, Reti lost the seat by 431 votes.

4) The Greens surpass Act as the third largest political party

It’s fair to say that Act had a meteoric rise in this election. The party went from having a single deputy in Parliament to having 10.

There are a number of things that contributed to the success of the Act in this election. But most likely the main reason is because National did poorly.

Before the 2017 elections, when the Labor Party was voting between 20 and 20 years, the Greens saw an increase in support and at one point they were voting at 15 percent.

It’s a similar story with Act in this election – it seemed like it got the support of disgruntled domestic voters who still wanted to place a right-wing vote.

On election night, Act won 8 percent of the total vote ahead of the Greens with 7.6 percent.

But after the special votes were counted, the Greens gained 0.3 percentage points, while the Law fell 0.4. That means that at 7.9 percent, the Greens are New Zealand’s third-largest political party.

5) Jacinda Ardern is officially New Zealand’s most popular MP … but only

Believe it or not, on election night, Jacinda Ardern was not New Zealand’s most popular MP.

She was criticized by her then Health Minister Chris Hipkins, who won 24,911 votes in Remutaka’s electorate.

Ardern was second, winning 16,577, although Remutaka is a larger electorate than Ardern’s Mt Albert.

But when the special votes were added, Ardern had pushed Hipkins off his throne … simply.

The final tally shows that Ardern won 29,238 votes on Mt Albert compared to 29,217 for Hipkins, a margin of 21 votes.