Posts Tagged ‘Mt Albert’

Mt Albert by-election results

(Preliminary results, Source)

Nobody believed Nats would actually win this seat, but last night's result was still a surprise for me. Shearer did not just win the seat, but with a huge 63%:17% margin. Percentage wise, Shearer beat his predecessor, former PM Helen Clark and even Labour's performance in safe seats like Mangere.

However, this is not a serious set back for National as well. First Mt Albert has always been a red seat, secondly, the turnout was less than 50%, it appears that many right wing votes chose not bother to vote, as the result is inevitable. Lee's blunder to blunder performance and media stir up also contributed to this. If this was a general election, I believe the result would be quite different, Labour would still win, but with a smaller margin.

There were only two races last night, first was the race between Melissa Lee and Green's Russel Norman. As previous polls suggested, Green may have chance to beat National, so I was really wondering whether Mt Albert can humiliate National further by place Lee on the third place. However, it didn't happen though, but the margin between the two is very small, about 5%.

Another surprise race emerged from last night's result, the race between United Future's former deputy leader, Judy Turner, and candidates from other small parties.  Although Turner herself is not in the parliament, but as a member of a parliamentary party, being beaten by Bill and Ben and Legalise Cannabis should be something she didn't expect.

Mt Albert By-election

Local issues tend to get magnified in by-elections, but I cannot see that in this election yet. All two major parties have announce its candidate for the by-election, but non of them really know the area well - Labour''s David Shearer was a International aid worker; National's Melissa Lee, there's very little known about her stand on local issues.

This is more of a party contest now.

Unlike a lot of tories dreaming of getting an extra seat but have no vote in this, I happen to actually live in the electorate. You have to admit this is a very red seat, National never took it before, the last close call I could remember was in the 1990 election, but Clark still managed to hold on the seat despite Labour's poor showing nation-wide. If this is a National-Labour contest, I could see no chance for National.

But this is more than a two party contest, so National may got a chance, but just. It will depend on:

• Performance of Russell Norman, his ability to split hard left votes.
• How successful Nats could brand Shearer as the "national-lite".
• Turn out rate.
• Development of the supercity proposal.

It's still too early to call but I understand Labour does felt a bit nervous right now, many of residents got Labour polling phone calls recently, but that's understandable, given that the party has just lost an election, and Shearer is a relatively new face, therefore there are a lot of uncertainties.

For me, I do admire Shearer's career as a international aid worker, for that, I think he deserves this seat, as his skills of managing refugee camps would come quite handy as some parts of this electorate do give you a refugee camp kind of feeling. Although Clark was a successful Prime Minister, I do feel she owes quite a lot to her electorates, some areas didn't gain a lot from the economic development in the last few years.