Party Together

The elec­tion may be done and dus­ted, and a new Par­lia­ment sworn in, but the post mortems will con­tin­ue in many polit­ic­al circles. We now have detailed vot­ing records from every booth in the coun­try, and while some aspects of booth data are prob­lem­at­ic (see the tech­nic­al notes below for some pro­vis­os), it’s the finest level of elect­or­al data we […]

Voting Weather

There are signs that this elec­tion could have a good turnout. Advance vot­ing is about twice what it was at the same stage in the last two elec­tions, and there have been over 35,000 new enrol­ments since I pos­ted about poor enrol­ment fig­ures: nearly 1500 in Wel­ling­ton Cent­ral alone! How­ever, one thing that can still put […]

Elections 2014: Tane Woodley for Ohariu

Who are you and what do you want? I’m Tane Wood­ley, Green party can­did­ate for Ohariu. I want a pint of chocol­ate port­er. Also, a fairer soci­ety, a clean­er envir­on­ment and a smarter eco­nomy. What makes you dif­fer­ent? I’m a human, that makes me dif­fer­ent to every­one. I am a sol­dier in the Greens, so […]

Election 2014: Grant Robertson for Wellington Central

1. Who are you and what do you want? I’m Grant Robertson, MP for Wel­ling­ton Cent­ral. I want a bet­ter New Zea­l­and- and your Party Vote for Labour, and elect­or­ate vote to carry on work­ing for our com­munity. 2. What makes you dif­fer­ent? In terms of being MP my point of dif­fer­ence is that I’m already doing […]

Elections 2014: James Shaw for Wellington Central

1. Who are you and what do you want? I’m an Aro Val­ley nat­ive. I want New Zea­l­and to become an eco­nom­ic­ally, socially and eco­lo­gic­ally sus­tain­able role mod­el for the rest of the world to fol­low. 2. What makes you dif­fer­ent? I’ve had an inter­na­tion­al career in sus­tain­able busi­ness and lead­er­ship devel­op­ment. I’ve worked as […]

Elections 2014: Paul Foster Bell for Wellington Central

1. Who are you and what do you want? I’m Paul Foster-Bell, the Nation­al Can­did­ate for Wel­ling­ton Cent­ral, and I want to keep Wel­ling­ton and NZ mov­ing in the right dir­ec­tion. What makes you dif­fer­ent? I can be a strong voice from with­in the next John Key-led Nation­al Gov­ern­ment. I have use­ful skills gained work­ing with […]

Wellington candidates – we’ve heard from you

We put togeth­er fif­teen ques­tions we wanted answers for from any­one run­ning for Par­lia­ment in the Wel­ling­ton region. Four can­did­ates got back to us before our dead­line. Here’s what they told us. Wel­ling­ton Cent­ral Paul Foster Bell’s answers James Shaw’s Answers Grant Robertson’s answers Ōhāriu Tane Wood­ley’s answers  

Under the Pollsters’ Radar

At this stage of the elec­tion cycle we are drown­ing in polls. While each media out­let treats its own com­mis­sioned research as holy writ, they all have their own strengths and weak­nesses, and it takes some­thing like Danyl McLauch­lan’s track­ing poll charts to smooth out the noise and cal­ib­rate them against actu­al elec­tion res­ults. Even with that, there’s a grow­ing […]

Where the Voters Aren’t

You could be for­giv­en for think­ing that all Wel­ling­to­ni­ans are obsessed with polit­ics. Advance vot­ing star­ted today, and already some voters are proudly sport­ing their “YES I have voted” stick­ers. Yet thou­sands of Wel­ling­to­ni­ans have still not enrolled to vote. Who are these dis­en­fran­chised people, and why have they not enrolled? Luck­ily, the Elect­or­al Com­mis­sion has […]

Release the Political Junkies

Depend­ing on your per­spect­ive the Gen­er­al Elec­tion AKA The big day/big letdown/The little same as it ever was is Septem­ber 20th which is less than a month away – How did that turn up so fast? One minute we were eat­ing our way through Wel­ling­ton on plate at a time and now we have to […]