Official results from the 2017 general election are expected to be announced on Saturday, October 7, 2017 at 2pm.
This will cover the 2,563,740 votes cast, a 78.8% voter turnout. That is 6% higher than in the last general election and compares with 2,416,479 votes in 2014 and a 77.7% voter turnout. (New Zealand's population grew by 7.8% over the same time-frame.)
There were 2,169,802 votes counted on election day, leaving 393,938 still to be counted.
In the meantime, coalition negotiations will be carried out. Both the major parties need NZ First to form a government; the Labour Party also needs the Greens.
While this is happening, it is useful to put the 2017 election into perspective compared to past elections.
After the special votes are added to the election night counts, it seems clear that the National Party will have attracted more than 1 million votes for the fourth election in a row.
That level has not been achieved by any other party yet.
The Labour Party vote has recovered from the disastrous results in the past two elections, bouncing back to levels it once attracted regularly from 1999 to 2008.
However, in that time the total number of participating voters has grown 24.1%.
New Zealand First has seen its party leader lose his electorate seat, and its vote fall by 21.7%. But it holds the balance of power.
To form a Government, a coalition needs to have at least 61 votes in Parliament (either by a formal multi-party agreement or via a confidence-and-supply agreement).
We will update these tables when the final official counts are available.
UPDATE:
Here is the final result.
36 Comments
I found the 2014 special results and crunched some numbers. My guess for the final result is
National 56 seats
Labour 46 seats
Greens 8 seats
NZ first 9 seats
Left/right only two seats in it, so little if any moral mandate to go with National, and my suspicion is that he will go left.
If the much higher number of special votes is due to a more highly engaged left vote, then the shift could be greater and if even only one more seat changed, both sides would be equal. Very interesting.
Not sure this is what they campaigned on...
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This is interesting as well for voting patterns. https://thespinoff.co.nz/politics/27-09-2017/interactive-mapping-every-…
I agree nearly 400,000 uncounted special votes in comparison to the biggest voting block being not even 1 million is huge. It is still mathematically possible for instance for the Labour + Greens vote to exceed National party votes.
Because of the nature of special votes -people enrolling late, outside electorates, overseas etc is materially different to ordinary votes -we cannot know for sure what way this vote will split.
So while this information is interesting David Chaston -it is pure speculation on what the 2017 voter wants. We cannot do that analysis until the full count is completed.
It is actually disrespectful to all those people who made an effort to vote, not to wait for all the votes to be counted before pundits, media etc make announcements,analysis etc on what the election means.
It will be fascinating to see how the Greens fare in specials. Will they receive the same drubbing they did at the ballot box? My guess would be that Specials being predominantly overseas voters would mean that they lag NZ a bit in voting trends due to lower media exposure, so could pull Greens down (MeTu scandal) and elevate Labour (Jacindamania). No electorally significant changes either way.
Why is everyone assuming that national will reduce after special votes are counted (It happened earlier does not means for definite that will happen now - though most probably will) and what if they get extra 2 seats (than don't need any support) and what happens if Left gets 1,2 or 3 seats. If 3 seats than both will be on 55 vs 55 and if two seats than 54 vs 56 (Gap reduces).
SO WP is correct in waiting till special votes are counted. Anything and everything is possible as 400000 votes is a good number in NZ.
Bryce Edwards had an interesting perspective on the National vote a couple of days ago. Some food for thought for those who missed it.
There is a strong narrative at the moment that National has received an extraordinary result. But has it really? The vote for centre right parties has actually declined significantly at this election. At the 2014 election, the aggregate vote for National, Act and the Conservatives was over 52 per cent. This year, the final result for those parties is projected to be little more than 45 per cent. What's more the National Party has now lost allies - United Future and the Maori Party are gone from Parliament, and Act's party vote has halved. Basically, National has cannibalised the vote of other rightwing parties. In devouring its coalition partners, National might now look stronger, but in reality, fewer voters are actually supporting parties of the right.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11926305
Apologies if this has already been stated by someone else, but for those pundits calling for a return to FPP and decrying the "failure" of MMP the 2017 results based on FPP are as follows:
(Party / % Vote / % Electorate Seats)
National 46.0% 57.7%
Labour 35.8% 40.8%
NZF 7.5% 0%
Greens 5.9% 0%
ACT 0.5% 1% (i.e. 1 seat)
This says more about NZer's & pundits failure to understand proportional representation after 8 elections....
And for a bit of fun, if we extrapolate the number of ACT voters it would take to capture a majority of electoral seats in our new 71 seat House then the number would be 394,000 out of 2.17 million voters = 18%.
I'll keep MMP thanks, despite the weakening of the minor parties this time around.
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