This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 24th, 2010 at 1:00 pm and is filed under labour. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 24th, 2010 at 1:00 pm and is filed under labour. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
He just looks so happy with the 1080 votes majority (don from 6000) that I just gush with joy. I wonder if he has read the Dom Post editorial this morning.
I so hope you invite him in to be a regular blogger on this Blog.
The first thing about Kris is that his grin goes right across his face. Good on yer Kris!
( John Key’s grin seldom reaches his eyes.)
@ Monty, the Dom Post editorial might have some credibility if the writer was named, as with real newspapers overseas. Word on the street is it was big time Tory, Richard Long.
Jennifer – you know that it was an editorial right? They generally dont name the author. Even in the Big overseas papers you infer.
Still keep trying to spin and keep your head in the sand – its funny.
who is the dude next to Mr Faa’foi?
Monty – wow, such bile – Kris’ win (yep, he won, he’s electorate MP for Mana while Hekia isn’t…again!) must have really rankled.
Thanks for the pic Trevor.
Tigger – I am not sure it is the Nats who are rankled at present and given the by-election result – I think you need to look a little closer to home. Reality is that with GST increases and cost of Living being the major platform for labour in this red ribbon seat the majority plumeted 83%. That has to hurt no matter how the left and Goff desperately try to spin it.
Monty – You’re wasting your time trying to pour cold water on this – Kris looks happy and he should be – he kept Parata out of this seat…again. I suggest you go do something useful – like find Pansy Wong…
To suggest that Labour is a party of the people has once again been proved laughable. Another party flunky. Whatever.
Kris got 1080 votes more than the nat wannabe, who actually got 3000 votes less than she did in 2008.
Clearly that is a total rejection of her.
Spin away, Monty. Spin away LOL
Don’t worry Tigger all us righties are disgusted with Wong troughing the system. She is no longer a Minister – but interesting to note that the Wong affair had no tangiable impact on the outcome of Mana which is the subject here.
Interesting comment that “he kept Parata out of the seat”. Damn well should have with such a high level of support in this deeply red and previously safe Labour seat. The fact that there was a 14% swing against Labour as opposition will be a major concern for Labour. All the spin does not change the fact that there was an 83% drop in Labour votes from 6000 to about 1000 majority.
What happens if there is a by-election in one of the marginal labour held seats? Say Chris Carter’s seat?
That’s the way, fella. Lol
Richard Long wouldn’t have ever written an editorial for the Dominion Post. As Editor of the Dominion he would have done a few, but his role with the Dominion Post is purely that of a columnist and they do not write editorials.
David. Columnists do write editorials for the Listener. Joanne Black has.
I’m with the penguin on this. Play a guessing game sometimes – this one looks more like Nick Venter but maybe Sue Carty.
Hey Trev – no point trying to guess who wrote the editorial as all editorials in the papers and other MSM are saying much the same thing.
Your lot are simply failing at present despite your best efforts. Whether it GST saving 13 cents per day, or employer and employees agreeing to a 90 day trial, or tax cuts for everyone, Labour are failing to get any traction out there and no one cares about Labour or their message. No one is listening. You know this is the truth and like Bill English in 2002, Goff is now suffering the same fate.
I think the smile on Kris’s face reflects the relief that he was not beaten by a Hekia in what was one of Labour’s safest seats.
Now all you have to do is teach him to wave
“the nat wannabe, who actually got 3000 votes less than she did in 2008.” Is this true?
Ianmac – magazines are different – columnists are treated as core staff. Columnists on newspapers are outsiders.
I agree with Trevor that Nick Venter is most likely author, as he is a former gallery bureau head for them.
@Tigger LOL
“Wong affair had no tangiable impact on the outcome of Mana which is the subject here” No Monty, she would’ve been running in the Wong seat!
)
(Again not being racist!
Kris looks awesome in this photo and I wish him the best of luck as an MP!
!
Tracey – Re: “the nat wannabe, who actually got 3000 votes less than she did in 2008.” Is this true?
I have read that number on this site, though finding the topic and post to quote is proving elusive, but I have read it off site too.
From electionresults.govt.nz,
2010 PARATA, Hekia NAT 9,317 *prelim result.
2008 PARATA, Hekia NAT 12,701
So it’s actually a drop of 3,384 in the nat vote.
“Never did coming second feel so good” meet Dr Death walking the plank
I went to school before it was gutted out and turned into new age pinko rubbish by chardonnay socialists. Therefore I can count.
And using my wondrous ability to count, I have deduced that from a drastically lower voter turnout, one would naturally expect less votes to be cast for all candidates (stay with me Al1ens, I know this is complex, but if you think really hard you will understand).
So, from lower votes cast, but a much higher percentage of those votes going to Hekia than previously, she has actually increased her vote. Of course, this is getting into complex concepts such as percentages, but I’ll leave that for another day.
“stay with me Al1ens, I know this is complex, but if you think really hard you will understand”
Big laugh at that, thanks.
Drastically reduced voter turnout – That’s what Labour said all along.
Labour’s vote increased from 43.91% to 46.4%. You going to trumpet that as well?
So Hekia, a previous losing candidate, lost again.
Only difference this time was she managed to score less than she did last time.
No big swing there, Jim… Unless it’s her vote ebbing away.
Hardly motivated the electorate did she? When she couldn’t even retain her own numbers.
@ Trevor Mallard and David Farrar (now there’s two names you don’t see linked together every day).
Editorial’s probably by Tracy Watkins. The passage “voters hung up the phone on Labour long before the last election…” is pure Watkins. The very imagery she constantly employed in the run-up to the 2008 General Election.
.
.
.
@ Monty Burns:
“The fact that there was a 14% swing against Labour…”
“All the spin does not change the fact that there was a 83% drop in Labour votes from 6000 to about 1000 majority.”
Don’t give-up your day job, Mr Burns (by the way, how’s Smithers ?). You’ve obviously been reading Audrey Young and Adam Bennett in the Herald, both of whom, tragically, seem to have allowed David Farrar to do their thinking for them.
(1) There was, in fact, no – repeat NO – 14% swing from Labour to National. Kris Fa’afoi’s vote was 6.6 percentage points lower than Winnie Laban’s Candidate-Vote, Parata’s was 6.7 percentage points higher than her own Candidate-Vote in 2008. Rounding up, that’s a 7% swing, 7% not 14%. Comprende ? (using the term “swing” here in the conventional way that everyone – political analysts, commentators, people with an IQ higher than their own age – employ it. Basically, everyone, Monty, except you and apparently one or two journalists).
(2) More importantly, there was no huge swing against “Labour” and “Labour’s” majority did not fall from 6000 to a little over 1000.
Let’s see if we can explain it to you, Monty:
Labour’s 2008 Party-Vote majority (2500 over National) is the true benchmark for comparison, here, not Laban’s 6100 Candidate-Vote majority.
Don’t believe me ? Well, read these words: “The Party-Vote is the best primary indicator of support…”. Who do you think wrote that, Monty ? It was, of course, your head-organ-grinder, Mr David Farrar. His analysis during the run-up to the Mt Albert by-election was entirely grounded in calculations based on the Party-Vote. And he was quite right to do so. He knew then – as I’m sure he knows now – that Helen Clark (like Winnie Laban) gathered a huge personal vote – a sizeable chunk of which had nothing whatsoever to do with political allegiance. Sadly with Mana, he’s gone from honest-broker analysis to National Party spin-doctor, suddenly placing entire analytical emphasis on the 2008 Candidate-Vote as the baseline.
And where Farrar goes, journalists like Young and Bennett will surely follow.
Here are the two key points, Monty:
1. Winnie Laban’s 6100 majority was a personal one. It’s a “Winnie Laban” majority, NOT a “Labour” majority.
How do we know this ? Because her 6100 majority was significantly higher than Labour’s 2500 Party-Vote majority over National in 2008. So, Mana was a “Winnie” stronghold, not a “Labour” stronghold. A huge swathe of her 6100 majority (4500 votes) came from non-Labour people (1100 National voters, 1800 Greens and 1600 minor-party voters). These Nats, Greens and other non-Labour people could happily vote for her because, of course, they had the luxury of a second vote. (Having done their duty by casting their all-important Party-Vote for their preferred party – the party representing their core political allegiance, National, the Greens and so on).
2. A TWO-vote General Election and a ONE-vote By-Election involve completely different underlying dynamics.
In a ONE-vote By-Election, these 4500 non-Labour Winnie-voters – all things being equal – will naturally return to the candidates representing their respective parties (the party they cast their Party-Vote for in 2008).
These voters can’t separate their core political allegiance (as expressed in their 2008 Party-Vote) from their ‘personality contest’ preference (Candidate-Vote) in the way that they can at a two-vote General Election. So, they’re confronted with a choice. And I think it’s reasonable to assume that most of them are going to reaffirm their primary political allegiance – thus most of the 1800 Greens who Party-Voted Green / Candidate-Voted Winnie choosing to remain with their primary party (Green candidate Logie), 1100 Nats who Party-Voted National / Candidate-Voted Winnie sticking with the Nats and so on.
As a result, simply by Greens remaining Green and Nats remaining Nats, the majority Fa’afoi is supposed to inherit from Laban is slashed. And by constantly insisting that this 6100 personal non-Labour majority is a “Labour” one, by treating it as the benchmark by which to judge these By-Election results, and by constantly telling us that Mana is one of “the great Labour strongholds” because Winnie had a 6100 majority, Lead political journalists in the MSM are essentially inferring that these Greens, Nats and minor-party supporters are, in fact, Labour voters swinging to the Nats in droves.
And hence, much MSM and blogosphere analysis has conflated the Party and Candidate votes. It’s Audrey Young who (apparently without knowing it) is “comparing raisons and sheep droppings.”
The reality is that Mana is not a Labour stronghold. Labour won the Party-Vote by 2500. Taking into account the By-Election turnout, we’re talking about a 1700 majority as the benchmark – the majority that, all things being equal, you would expect Fa’afoi to get. That assumes, of course, that turnout is evenly-spread across all parties. If Labour were a little less successful in getting out their vote then the majority will, of course, be less.
Let’s remember, too, that Special votes traditionally tend to disproportionately favour the Labour candidate in Mana. I wouldn’t be entirely surprised if Kris’s majority creeps up to over 1200, perhaps even 1300. On top of that, there’s the fact that a brand new up-market (and strongly National-voting) suburb – Aotea – has emerged between the General and By-Election.
This wasn’t a great result for Labour, but it’s by no means the 6100-to-1100 disaster that Right-leaning bloggers, the MSM and Montgomery Burns would have us believe.
He looks relieved that the parachute has been removed.