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PoliticsNovember 4, 2023

A better visual breakdown of the 2023 election results [updated]

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The usual way electoral results maps are presented can be deceiving, over-emphasising large but sparsely populated rural areas and under-emphasising densely populated ones. Here’s another way to make sense of 2023’s election results.

This analysis was updated on 3 November to reflect the final results, following special votes. 

The above map gives us a better impression of how New Zealand votes than the traditional geographic map does alone, as we showed last election. It is easier to see how our communities are balanced, and how they compare to the country as a whole. 

Before we break down the results, let’s recap how this hexamap adds to our understanding of the political landscape.

The geographic electorate map

We can view the results from election night on the geographic map of New Zealand. This is important for seeing who won which electorates. 

However, it can be misleading: the large rural electorates are visually emphasised, and the densely-populated urban areas are obscured, even though they all contain the same amount of people. For example, all 31 Auckland, Wellington, and Christchurch electorates could comfortably fit into Southland or West Coast-Tasman.

The electorate hexamap

Instead, the map below turns each of the 72 electorates into sets of 5 equally-sized hexagons. By presenting the electorates as the same size, we can get a better sense of proportions. 

This “hexamap reflects the equal power of each electorate, and lets us display the political results more accurately. It retains the general shape of the country, and tries to keep each electorate in a similar position relative to its neighbours. 

To help identify the electorates, I’ve labelled the ones with medium-sized cities, and a few of the Auckland electorates. For example, expanding Auckland (due to its large population) pushes Hamilton further south, and Tauranga east; whereas the sprawling West Coast-Tasman shrinks to the corner of the South Island. 

Electorate hexamap – candidate vote

First, we can colour the hexamap to show the winners in each electorate. (We’ll look at the party vote further below.) 

While the major two parties still won the vast majority of electorates (85% of these seats); this election saw the most electorates won by third parties ever (3 by the Greens, 2 by Act, and 6 by Te Pāti Māori). And it was the first time that any third party won more than a single seat outside the Māori electorates.

While they trailed on election night, Phil Twyford and Rachel Boyack pulled Te Atatū and Nelson back onto Labour’s side by 0.4% and 0.1% (30 votes!), respectively. Helen White also kept Labour’s hold on Mt Albert by 0.1% (20 votes!).

However, special votes also flipped two Labour seats to Te Pāti Māori: Mariameno Kapa-Kingi won Te Tai Tokerau by 1.9%, and Takutai Tarsh Kemp won Tāmaki Makaurau by just 4 votes!

In total, 52% of candidates (37 out of 71*) won with a plurality (<50% of the vote). This includes 13 of the 21 seats flipped by National, and 6 of the 8 seats flipped by the third parties.

*The Port Waikato electorate had no electorate votes counted after a candidate died shortly before the election, which is why that electorate is greyed out. 

Electorate hexamap – party vote (total vote)

Second, we can show the combined votes of the left (Labour, Greens, and Te Pāti Māori) versus those on the right (National, Act and NZ First). This analysis excludes the vote share of other third parties outside parliament. 

In 2020, 62.3% of the vote was won by parties in government (Labour, Green and NZ First), versus 36.2% to the opposition (National, Act and Te Pāti Māori). This count included the NZ First vote as part of the government due to their 2017 coalition agreement, though they fell below the 5% threshold at the 2020 election. 

After the 2023 results were finalised, however, the Left received 44% while the Right got 56%, with NZ First returning to Parliament. This was a significant shift to the Right, with those parties winning more of the collective vote than the Left in 49 out of 72 electorates. 2023 also saw the third highest share of the vote for third parties under MMP (with 35% of voters choosing a party other than National or Labour).

Compared to the initial count, the special votes reduced the Right’s margin by 3%. As a result, National lost 2 seats and Greens picked up a seat, with two overhang seats for Te Pāti Māori (who won 2 electorates seats more than their share of the overall party vote would otherwise entitle them to).

Electorate hexamap – party vote (relative lean)

Finally, we can also use the hexamp to illustrate the political balance of the country. We do this by comparing the combined votes of the left and the right parties to the country as a whole. It’s a similar picture to 2020 (with most changes simply reflecting shifts among the two blocs, such as NZ First’s votes having exited the coalition government with the left parties after 2020). 

Whangaparāoa was the most right-leaning electorate (giving 19.4% more of its votes to parties on the Right compared to the country as a whole); while Māngere was the most left-leaning general electorate (voting 30.3% to the Left), and Ikaroa-Rāwhiti the most left-leaning Māori electorate (47.7% to the Left).

Maungakiekie was the electorate that most closely voted like New Zealand as a whole: it gave about the same level of support to left and right parties as the country did overall. 

Keep going!
Image: Archi Banal
Image: Archi Banal

PoliticsNovember 3, 2023

Thirteen buzzy bits of trivia about the final election results

Image: Archi Banal
Image: Archi Banal

Once you’ve got your head around the top lines, delve into these nifty details from the final count.

1. In the three electorates won by their candidates, the Greens got more party votes than Labour. In Chlöe Swarbrick’s Auckland Central, that was 23.97%, well below National’s 33.13% but a whisker (475 votes, in fact) above Labour’s share. But in Wellington Central and Rongotai, where Tamatha Paul and Julie Anne Genter won seats, the Greens won the party vote – something that’s never happened in any electorate, as far as we can tell. In Rongotai it was close, with just 303 more Green votes than Labour ones, but in Wellington Central the Greens nabbed 37.68% to Labour’s 24.86%. That new door-knocking strategy clearly paid off. (They didn’t beat Labour, but the Greens also did very well in Dunedin, gaining 26.85% of the party vote, a bigger share than National.)

Wellington Central: huge Green energy

2. At 123 seats (after the Port Waikato byelection on November 25), this is the biggest parliament ever. Before now, 2008’s 122-seat parliament had been the largest. Will someone have to drag in a camp chair?

3. National’s Mark Mitchell took the honour of the biggest electorate majority in Whangaparāoa, with a 23,376 margin over the runner-up, Labour’s Estefania Muller Pallarès. Mitchell’s total saw a decent rise from a 19,300 margin in the preliminary results. This tops even Jacinda Ardern’s mammoth majority in Mt Albert in 2020, when the red wave saw the Labour leader romp home with a 21,246 majority over National’s Melissa Lee. 

4. Speaking of which, how things change. While Labour’s Helen White held on to Mt Albert, it really was by the skin of her teeth, with that 21,246 majority shrinking to just 20 over Melissa Lee. Yep, 20 votes. National leader Christopher Luxon has confirmed Lee (who’s in on the list anyway) will be seeking a recount there, as the party will also do in Nelson, where Blair Cameron’s 54-vote majority turned into a 29-vote one for the incumbent, Labour’s Rachel Boyack.

Helen White maintains she is ‘really, really proud’ of her result. (Image: Joel MacManus, Design Archi Banal)

5. That 20-vote margin is not the smallest, however – that honour goes to Takutai Tarsh Kemp of Te Pāti Māori, who has taken Tāmaki Makaurau off Labour’s Peeni Henare with a majority of just four. It remains to be seen if Henare will request a recount – he would still enter parliament on the list.

6. Speaking of the Māori seats, Mariameno Kapa-Kingi of Te Pāti Māori picked up more than 1,000 special votes in Te Tai Tokerau, flipping Kelvin Davis’s 487-vote majority to a 517-majority for herself. Davis will also enter parliament on the list.

7. With the two that flipped today, Labour now holds just one of the Māori seats – Ikaroa-Rāwhiti, which Cushla Tangaere-Manuel took off an incumbent who had defected from Labour to Te Pāti Māori (Meka Whaitiri). It’s the fewest Māori electorates Labour has held since NZ First took all seven in the first MMP election in 1996.

a Māori woman with a red jacket and white shirt and a moko kauae smiling on a funky background
Cushla Tangaere-Manuel (Photo: Supplied; design by Tina Tiller)

8. While Luxon’s 16,337 majority in the Botany electorate doesn’t come close to Mark Mitchell’s in Whangaparāoa (see 3), the new prime minister can boast that National got its biggest share of the party vote on his home turf, with 58.74% voting blue in Botany. But that’s still not as big a share as Labour got in Māngere, where 60.72% of voters ticked Labour. There are anomalous pockets in blue Botany too, which takes in parts of South Auckland. In one voting place in Clover Park, 74% voted for Labour and just 12.7% for National.

9. It’s hard to deny the Auckland-punishing-Labour theory when you look at their share in other electorates, however. While the party managed to top 20% in Botany, no doubt thanks to those aforementioned anomalous pockets, in other Auckland electorates Labour dropped below 15%, even managing to dip lower than their preliminary results. In Epsom and East Coast Bays, Labour managed just 14.62%, while it nudged just above the 15% mark in Whangaparāoa. That’s pretty striking when you consider that in 2020, Labour won the party vote in every single electorate bar Epsom.

10. Three parties in parliament saw their highest-ever results: the Greens (11.60%), Act (8.64%) and Te Pāti Māori (3.08%). We’ve covered the areas where the Greens did well (see 1), but what about the other two? Act had a pretty good showing in the Auckland seats its candidates won – Epsom 12.40% and Tāmaki 12.36% – but it did even better in rural New Zealand. Running Federated Farmers president Andrew Hoggard in the Rangitīkei seat paid off, as Act gained 13.65% of the party vote there. It also got above 13% in Southland, Taranaki King-Country and West Coast-Tasman. No surprises that Te Pāti Māori did well in the Māori electorates, with its best result in Waiariki (37.60%). Labour still won the party vote in all seven Māori seats, however.

Leighton Baker, whose party saw a massive 0.01% surge (Supplied)

11. If there was no 5% threshold, The Opportunities Party would have three seats in parliament, and New Zealand Loyal, NewZeal and Aotearoa Legalise Cannabis would each get one. Speaking of the minnows, the specials gave Aotearoa Legalise Cannabis a 0.06% boost, taking them from 0.39 to 0.45%. New Zealand Loyal also got a wee lift, going from 1.15% to 1.20%. Down at the very bottom of the list, the Leighton Baker Party inched just past the Women’s Rights Party – the pair were tied on 0.08% on the preliminary results, but Leighton and pals nudged up to 0.09% on the specials. New Nation added 328 votes to its haul, but it wasn’t enough to lift it above last place and 0.05% of the vote.*

12. National won the party vote in Hutt South by a slim 685 votes, which continues its streak of picking the winner of the general election for a ninth straight election.

13. The Christchurch electorate of Selwyn saw the highest voter turnout at 85.69%, even though it wasn’t a close race at all – National’s Nicola Grigg won by 19,782 votes. Selwynites must absolutely love democracy, as it had the highest turnout in 2020 too – an impressive 89.39%.

*The week following the release of the special votes, the discovery of Electoral Commission vote-counting errors resulted in the final party totals being revised. The Women’s Rights Party ended up above the Leighton Baker Party, on 0.08%, with LBP on 0.07%.

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Politics