Hutt South Result - my feelings
After six months of planning with all those early mornings and all those late nights, we lost Hutt South. I'm not too unhappy about that as I had promised to run the length of High Street in a tutu if we'd won.
On reflection, a lack of credible left-wing candidates cost us any chance of winning - Mallard's vote remained static from last election. If the Greens had stood a sitting MP or a higher profile candidate we may have had an outside chance.
But we had some sucesses - we trimmed Mallard's majority by almost 3000 votes; we almost doubled the party vote; and we had some great fun along the way.
Looking forward to repeating it all again next year. ;-)
On reflection, a lack of credible left-wing candidates cost us any chance of winning - Mallard's vote remained static from last election. If the Greens had stood a sitting MP or a higher profile candidate we may have had an outside chance.
But we had some sucesses - we trimmed Mallard's majority by almost 3000 votes; we almost doubled the party vote; and we had some great fun along the way.
Looking forward to repeating it all again next year. ;-)
posted by Michael at
4:54 PM
4 Comments:
All high profile sitting MP's are difficult to beat so don't take it so hard. You did well to trim the Mallards majority and pluck out a few of his tail feathers!
You have to remember that Wellington (Including Hutt South)is full of public servants who wouldn't be too happy to have National cut deeply into the Public Service. It would be suicide to vote for National in current circumstances. It is a bit like most Maori who while they may have voted Maori Party in the electorate vote made sure they were voting Labour for the party vote as any other vote there would result in a national victory and hence the abolution of the Maori seats. As it is the Maori have been smart and ended up with 2 extra MP's as a result of the overhang. National voters did exactly the same thing in Epsom.
The New Zealand electorate has a few more brain cells than Politicians or political commentators give them credit for!
By
steven, at 11:26 PM
I see that the National candidate did not get any more votes as an individual than the National Party got as a party vote so this indicates either that she did not raise enough of a local profile to get any personal following or that Trevor Mallard actually has a personal following from some people who support national on the party vote.
It's very hard to raise a local profile and door knocking doesn't do it these days.
By
steven, at 3:30 PM
I agree - but she was a first time candidate and her profile in Lower Hutt was not high to start with.
An example of that would be in Nelson, where Nick Smith has a huge majority, but loses the Party Vote by a couple of thousand votes. Also the West Coast, where National won the Party Vote but Labour won the seat.
If she wants another go then she'll have to work on increasing her recognition in Lower Hutt and Wainuiomata.
By
Michael, at 4:55 PM
It's a sad thing but to unseat a sitting candidate you need to benefit from a great nationwide swing or else have a public profile bigger than the local MP. To have that you need a Television profile based on being a colourfull local politician, a famous sportsperson, a media personality etc.
By
steven, at 9:03 PM
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