New Zealand Election 2017

[mileslunn]

I think part of Labour's "collapse" is people who were saying they were voting to Labour are now convinced that they'll be close enough that they just need the Greens and/or Maori to form a government, and are now backing one of those two parties.

True enough as much of the drop in Labour support has been offset in rising Green support.  That being said National has gone up a bit so the question is did the undecided voters from earlier break heavily thus why National is pulled ahead or is it amongst progressive voters many went into the undecided column and then once they decide they will go Labour or Green.  While I know we should avoid bringing cross country comparisons, in 2015 here in Canada, the Tories pulled ahead in late September as up until then most progressives were backing the NDP, but when the NDP started to fall behind and Liberals grow much of the progressive vote went into the undecided column thus allowing the Tories to shoot up in poll numbers even though they didn't pick up any support, but later one when it became clear the Liberals were the best vehicle they moved into that category thus they pulled ahead.  So if that is the case good news for Labour, but I am a bit skeptical, I tend to think more some who maybe liked Jacinda Ardern personally but still think the current government is doing a good job have decided to stick with what they know.  Even if Ardern doesn't become PM, she will probably get another kick at the can.

[Polkergeist]

Final advance voting statistics are in.

http://www.elections.org.nz/events/2017-general-election/advance-voting-statistics

Total votes cast: 1,240,740
Voters on roll: 3,252,269
Advance votes cast as share of total roll: 38.15%

I expect given the tight contest that total turnout of enrolled voters should be 80%.

So advance voting has come close to but not exceeded 50% of all votes cast for the election

In terms of advance votes counted for tonight, I understand that special votes (people who enrolled when voting) will not be counted. 

At previous elections 85-87% of advance votes were able to be counted for the night, so I'd expect an advance count of about 1.05 million or about 40% of votes cast at the election

[Polkergeist]

To provide a bit of context to the early advance vote results I will be posting projections of the final result based on the early advance vote.

I have put together a model based on an adjusted advance vote for each electorate, a 50-50 combination of the 2014 advance vote and the 2014 non-advance vote. The adjustment is designed to reflect the increased advance vote at this election which has effectively doubled. 

The 2017 advance vote will be compared with the combined adjusted advance vote of the electorates which have reported. From this we can get a swing to apply to the final 2014 results to give a projection of the final 2017 result.

These are my projections and should not be confused with the official results of media projections.
 
If for some other reason the advance vote is different to the overall results (energised left-leaning voters, late swing), then the projection will reflect this and will be off from the final results

Even though at the last election the advance vote was close to the final result, in a close result I would wait until election day votes are in by sufficient numbers to call the result.

Based on 2014, this projection should be of most use the first hour of the count.

I hope this is of use to readers.

[MAINEiac4434]

The polls close in 30 minutes. Radio New Zealand will have YouTube coverage, but I'm unsure if it'll be available abroad.

[Polkergeist]

Usually TVNZ streams its coverage and I have viewed it in Australia in the past.

[JerryArkansas]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A-XwG7YJe3g
News channel link on youtube.

[Double Carpet]

Jerry, if that works, you're an absolute ledge.

Have got it open and waiting for the countdown clock to finish - fingers crossed!

Thanks

[Double Carpet]

This is also working:

http://www.newshub.co.nz/home/election/2017/09/livestream-watch-newshub-s-election-special.html

Official results:

http://www.electionresults.govt.nz/

[Polkergeist]

Polkergeist Projection

NAT   46.3%   56
LAB   36.5%   45
GRN   8.4%   10
NZF   6.3%   8
MRI   0.4%   2
ACT   0.4%   1
OTH   2.0%   0

Advance vote reported in 26 of 71 seats      

[Tender Branson]

Looks like the final polls got it right.

#JacindaDerailed
#CantKillTheBill

[Tender Branson]

NZ Outdoors Party.

That sounds like my party.

Can anyone tell me more about them ?

[Polkergeist]

Polkergeist Projection #2

NAT   46.5%   57
LAB   36.8%   45
GRN   5.7%   7
NZF   7.2%   9
MRI   0.6%   2
ACT   0.5%   1
OTH   2.7%   0

Advance vote reported in 48 of 71 seats   

I'm with Tender, the final polls are pretty much it at the moment, although NZF is outpolling the Greens

[Polkergeist]

Winston is leading in Northland

http://electionresults.govt.nz/electorate-details-35.html

[Polkergeist]

Also Labour is leading in all 7 of the Maori seats, even in the one seat the Maori Party holds Waiariki

http://electionresults.govt.nz/electorate-details-71.html

[Tender Branson]

Polkergeist, did you spot turnout figures on that NZ election page yet ?

[Polkergeist]

The raw figures are from http://www.elections.org.nz/events/2017-general-election/advance-voting-statistics

The 80% turnout was my estimate.

[Polkergeist]

At this point the raw figures are as good as any as all seats have reported.

http://electionresults.govt.nz/index.html

Currently in terms of seats NAT 57 LAB 45 NZF 9 Grn 8 ACT 1

It's looking like Maori party are out. Their closest seat is Te Tai Hauāuru where they are running Rugby League player Howie Tamati

Winston has fallen behind National in Northland

[Bakersfield Uber Alles]

Can't say I expected the Māori Party to be doing so poorly.

[IceAgeComing]

A couple of things to consider - the vast, vast majority of the vote that we have in at the moment is advanced polls which might not be entirely representative (the trend in the past always was for the Nationals to start high and drop off through the night, but that didn't happen last time and you'd think that the spike in the number of advanced votes ought to make the results from it more representative) and a chunk of that early vote (TVNZ are saying 6%) is special votes mostly from people registering to vote and voting at the same time and that won't be counted until next week.  That's unlikely to dramatically swing the overall result from tonight but - last time on election night it looked like the National Party had an overall majority; but then they dropped a seat after the special vote was counted.  That usually favours Labour and the Greens and might be important - especially if the Maori Party manage to win an electorate and possibly also even a list seat if their percentage ticks up ever so slightly and the results tonight end up suggesting that the Nationals+ACT+Maori barely got 61 seats.

I'm pretty sure that the Maori Party won't get in though so that's not entirely worth thinking about; the result won't be clear tonight other than the National Party clearly being the biggest single party.

[Polkergeist]

Matt McCarten just said Maori Party was out, but the panel is hailing his "bias". So I don't know what to make of that...

Even if Maori Party pull it out of the fire and win two seats. They can only be of help to National to form a Government if National win two more party seats than they are right now.

That would require a lift in the National party vote from here to about 47.5% which is a bit of an ask.

[Tender Branson]

For my prediction, I hope Labour can catch up once the election day results come in.

Currently it is only advance votes that are being counted.

[Polkergeist]

National flirting with a 58th seat at the expense of Labour or the Greens with the first election day votes coming in from small mostly rural booths. I wouldn't call a significant difference in election day votes vs advance votes just yet.

[Polkergeist]

Nats have hit 59 seats on the raw results but One News says their computer projection has National on 56 seats and Labour on 46 seats.

At the moment the election day votes (about 330k)  are Nat 49.7% Lab 32.4%

[Polkergeist]

Nats back to 58 seats on the raw vote

Election day votes have started to drift back to advance votes/polls levels,

At 546k ed votes, Nat are 48.5%, Lab at 33.3%, NZF at 7.9%, Grn at 5.4%

Interestingly, the Opportunities Party is at 2.5% on ed votes.

[Polkergeist]

With about 950k advance votes counted and 700k election day votes counted, here is the comparison of the advance vs election day vote shares for each party

(advance vs election day)

National (45.6% vs 47.7%)

Labour (36.7% vs 34.0%)

NZF (7.1% vs 7.9%)

Greens (6.2% vs 5.4%)