- Labour Party Mayor of the Supercity with a clear centre left majority. Key’s nightmare.
- National Mayor of Hamilton given the boot. Martin Gallagher top polling for council.
- Harry Duynhoven Mayor of New Plymouth
- Laws team routed in Whanganui with a left leaning Mayor.
- Act Mayor of Hutt City given the boot.
- Prendergast National Mayor of Wellington ahead by 40 with 1,000 specials to count. Her Wellington supermayorlty dreams in tatters.
- Tony Ryall’s bette noir Richard Thompson tops the poll for Dunedin City.
- One of Wellington’s best analysts David Choat got elected to the DHB.
I’ve been at a Labour fundraiser tonight – plenty added to the war chest – so my look at results has been cursory.
What these results show is that when people actually cast their votes they are rejecting the right wing approach of Key and those who support him.
Just had a look at Kiwiblog – even the National Party cheerleader isn’t even pretending there was any real good news for National yesterday.
And yet Left’s Jim Anderton got the boot in Christchurch with Right-leaning Bob Parker re-elected. Stop trying to kid yourself. The left-right proportions of NZ, and in fact most countries, will nearly always be evenly balanced. This is blog post is what you call the ramblings of a sore loser (i.e. the Labour Party).
Trev you certainly are absolutely positively left and correct.
With a bit of luck the globetrotting developer team will out of office in the capital.
Paul Henry next in line to go. Phone, txt, email, snail mail your votes into TVNZ now.
hey what about Dunedin? How come nobodies talking about there? I looked it up some guy called Dave Cull won it what’s he like?
Generally brilliant news. But I have a horrible feeling Thatcherite, developer-friendly Prenders will just squeak back in here in Wellington. 40 vote margin may be just too much.
Wellington’s a centre-left city, but if Labour voters stay home (or can’t be bothered to fill out a voting form and post it) then we’ll continue to have a right-wing Mayor and right-leaning Council.
Ooops ! Maybe I should take that back. I’ve just seen Graeme Edgeler’s expert comments (on DPF’s ToryKiwiBlog) regarding first preferences in the Wellington Mayoral election 2007. He argues that Prenders received far fewer first preferences on the Specials in 07. Could be Wade-Brown afterall.
Apart from Chch, things are looking damned good !!! (and even there, Anderton, I think, did better than expected given the impossible circs).
yes it really shows up the parliamentary party performance, including your own Trevor
What these results show is that when people actually cast their votes they are rejecting the right wing approach of Key and those who support him.
That’s 100% correct, Trevor. So can you please draw the obvious conclusion? It’s staring Labour MPs in the face, and we’re just waiting for you guys to “get it”.
The centre-left wins, when people get out and vote.
That means people need something to vote FOR. So Labour need to run a positive campaign, and stop aiming the gun at the foot.
Politics really isn’t complicated. Go negative, and the voters go negative on you. It’s not too late for Labour to understand this.
I’m just grateful that Len Brown isn’t slapping his own face again!
Yee haa –
!!!!!!
that was one of the campaign highlights for me spud. i wish i’d thought of that one the last time i did a pr video.
Still quite a few tory types on the smaller councils though, Trevor.
Good to see Harry in NP – Whacking out John Rae (who came third) who was going sell libarary books to fund his American car festival.
Nope, about 70% to 80% of people are left leaning. The only way the political right get in is by pretending to be Labour. Unfortunately, even Labour is pretending to be Labour these days.
It’s a good result for FPP elections. Now we need to see the percentage breakdown. Thinking about that, Auckland’s probably large enough to run MMP style elections for it’s council.
And, as sammy says, we need to get more people to vote. Find a way for them to be actively participating in governing their city/country and you’ll probably see more people doing so.
Wrong Draco.
Len Brown: said he was an “independent” Mayor. Said he would represent ALL Auckland. Wasn’t the Labour Candidate. Labour candidates and city vision candidates got dumped in Auckland. City Vision did worse than CitRats. If Trevor wants to claim credit for Len Brown then he should also claim responsibility for Andrew Williams, who has always been a Labour Party man.
Hamilton’s new mayor: not left wing. Martin Gallagher was to the right of the Labour Party and social conservative.
New Plymouth: Duynhoven’s as far to the right of the Labour Party as it comes. Social conservative.
Trevor can cherry pick all he likes, but he forgot that Labour endorsed candidate Jim Anderton’s hopes of a retirement job got dumped on. Labour’s rising star Marcus Ganley couldn’t make it onto Council (Wellington still has a right leaning council).
Provincial NZ is run by small council social conservatives. In the cities it’s a mixed bag. Wellington and Christchurch right wing mayors, Auckland a left winger who says he’s all inclusive and independent.
@
“Provincial NZ is run by small council social conservatives. ”
lol Do you you even know where ‘provincial’ NZ, is your high rise apartment not high enough to see that far.
Most small councils aren’t run by social conservatives!! They run by pragmatic people who keep ideologue/beliefs back at home. If these ‘social conservatives’ where to a make noise’s about there beliefs and put them into practice. They would soon find themselves out back on the street.
They are actually economically conservative and not in the Neo-liberal sense either!
*@smhead the post before hand
Sanity has prevaled.. Doesn’t bode well for Mr Key ‘n co.
With the exception of the Christchurch mayoralty, Labour doubled their seats on the council, as well as taking the Spreydon – Heathcote community Board, the Riccarton – Wigram community board, the Burwood – Pegasus community board, and seats on other boards. And who said they were trounced in ChCh???
The Nat Party should be helping Mr Key prepare his exit plan.
I hope Wade-Brown manages to squeak in! It’s times like these which prove every vote truly does count.
Whatever way you want to ‘spin’ it – its a sign of the times. People are slowly and surely getting fed up with selling off the silver and treating those who are not silver spoon coated like they are worthless and stupid – case in point – Henrys comments, and Banks claiming Len would turn north shore into a south auckland slum. How insulting to all kiwis. A clear message was sent yesterday to Banks/Key and co – grow up, be inclusive or sod off. However, this said, we do not need to be complacent – there is work to do. I hope that Labour can learn from Lens campaign – get out, be seen, be heard and be focussed on the future while showing why the right is wrong.
In terms of how Len ran the campaign, I liked that Len claimed independence – but I like that he is left wing even more. Sometimes you do not have to flatly spell out which side of the bed you lie on – its the way you treat people, the way you do things and the vision you seek that lets people know where you stand – len did this well. He deserved to win.
As for chch – boy can parker spin the media. I just hope he remembers how close he got to losing it – because if the earthquake had not happened, people would not have forgotten how he undermined democracy.
Can you imagaine what Len would’ve done to himself had he lost?
He would’ve punched his face black ‘n’ blue! 
Spud
He probably would have turned red first.
Cool, he’d be like one of those hypercolour T shirts
Most inner city suburbs vote left in general elections… The high voter turnout just assures this…
I think that’s rubbish, Australia has compulsary voting and yet the Liberals have been in power the majority of the time it has been in place… National has been in power about 70% of the time since 1949…
You conveniently leave out between 1935 and 1949 JMH when Labour was in power. To be precise it was a coalition government during the war years, but it was a coalition dominated by Labour with a Labour PM.
I left it out because National wasn’t formed till part way through tthat government…
If you look at the amount of time right/centre-right governments have been in power since Labour was formed in 1914ish (?) the percentage is about the same…
spud you keep giving me good ideas for my next video.. keep this up i’m gonna end up in a body cast.!!
Update: Richard Thomson highest polling candidate for Southern District Health Board (merger of Otago and Southland). Interesting, given he was given the boot as chair of the DHB earlier this year by Health Minister Tony Ryall.
Thomson also polled tops at the DCC. Probably could rule the region if he chose.
Take note Ryall
“I left it out because National wasn’t formed till part way through tthat government… ”
Don’t accept that JMH because it was, in practise, only a name change from Liberal to National. In my view modern political NZ started in 1935 with the election of the Savage Labour govt.
Guess we’ll have to agree to differ on this one.
What video?
I think there are copyright issues here…
@Anne I think it was a mix between Liberals and the Reform party
@ Dylan
From memory (admittedly tarnished with time but no I wasn’t born) the Reform party was the rural rump and the two together still represented no more than a name change.
National was a combination of two existing parties that suddenly found themselves being out voted by Labour…
I expect when ACT dies at the next election (or the one after) the new right wing party will be called the Liberals…
I ask again what video??????????????????????
Excellent result for the DHB to have Dave Choat on it.
I expect when ACT dies at the next election (or the one after) the new right wing party will be called the Liberals
Interesting idea Jeremy, but I doubt that if ACT desolves in the next election, or the one after that, and merged with the National party, that the National party would change its brand to include a reference to them. Although it may well take in number of ACT’s former MPs, as it did with Stephen Franks.
I’m not going to hear about the video am I
In terms of this wee skirmish above regarding New Zealand electoral history: Modern Labour Party formed in 1916 (though there were various labour, socialist and social democrat proto-type parties before that).
Two Right-of-Centre parties, Reform and United (the latter emerging in 1928 from the defunct Liberals) formed a Coalition party for the 1931 General Election, generally known as ‘The National Coalition’. They then formalised the arrangement in 1936 with the new National Party.
Labour were in government 1935-1949, 1957-1960, 1972-1975, 1984-1990, 1999-2008. Important to remember that Labour received more votes but less seats than National in 1978 and 1981 and that less than 1 % separated them at the 1954 and 1969 elections.(National won all of these last 4). It’s possible, then, to exaggerate Tory popularity by looking solely at who won government over these years.
What video?????????
swordfish: what are you doing polluting these discussions with facts
At least swordfish isn’t making some mystery video!
sorry spud.. got called away… i’m trying to get a video done for a song contest in dunedin… i will happily give you credits if i use your imagery.
I don’t blog here so that people can rip off my ideas, you’d better give me credits.