My election summary

Saturday 17 September was the big day - General Election Day here in New Zealand. I stayed up past midnight watching the election coverage on TV. It was looking good for National at the start of the night, but then Labour caught up and overtook National. Here's the percentage of votes on the night:

Labour 40.7%
National 39.6%
New Zealand First 5.8%
Greens 5.1%
United Future 2.7%
Maori Party 2.0%
ACT 1.5%
Progressives 1.2%

Labour as you can see got the most votes (just) but of course not enough for a majority. So they have the first opportunity to try and form a coalitiongovernment.

I think the losers on the night were NZ First, United Future, ACT, and the Progressives. NZ First lost a few seats including Winston Peter's seat of Tauranga (who he lost to Bob the testicle man). United Future lost quite a few seats but fortunately Peter Dunne won Ohariu-Belmont which allows them to get back in. And ACT were huge losers. If it wasn't for Rodney Hide winning Epsom they would have been out of there! And of course Jim Anderton got back in in Wigram, but he's the only one from his party now.

The winners on the night were National and the Maori Party. National doubled their party vote from last election, and the Maori Party increased from 1 to 4 seats.

Labour stayed about the same as last time, and the Greens only lost a little. However, the Greens are just hovering above the 5% threshold and there are still the special votes to count. The special votes make up about 10% of the votes so there may be some changes. We'll just have to wait until October 1st to find out the final result of the election and who the new government will be!