Labour's candidate vote far outstrips its party vote as red seats go blue

Here's an intriguing table put together by Dylan Reeve (one of the presenters of the Discourse podcast), based on Electoral Commission data.

It puts in black-and-white a trend from 2011 that was amplified on Saturday: Labour MP after Labour MP won their electorate but saw the party vote in their constituency go to National — often by a large margin.

Check out the results in Wellington Central, Te Atatu or Mt Roskill or David Cunliffe's New Lynn, to give just a few examples.

The trend was particularly marked in Mt Albert, where David Shearer handily won the seat with 17,933 votes and National's Melissa Lee placed second with 8775 — but National (12,069) got more list votes from Labour (9020).

Click to zoom. Note: Dylan Reeve has now revised this table following a reader pointing out an error with Internet Mana's figures in the spreadsheet that intially appeared with this article (see Comments below).

What's going on here? Did people not understand MMP going into our seventh election under the mixed member system?

The personal popularity of local candidates like Shearer, Phil Goff, Grant Robertson and Phil Twyford will have come into play.

But there's also an element of tactical voting — though to what end I'm not sure.

David Shearer's electorate is typical: Green Party voters seem to have supported him en masse. The Green candidate polled low in the electoral vote (2350), presumably because Greens were casting a tactical ballot to keep Shearer ahead of National's Melisssa Lee. Then Green supporters switched back to their party for their list vote (where the party polled 6205). A similar pattern is repeated in many seats. 

That was a nice result for Shearer, given his party's plummeting support meant no one was guaranteed to get back into Parliament though his party's list — as his National opponent, Melissa Lee duly did. Again.

But what was in the whole exercise for Green voters, given the primacy of the party list? Their tactical voting ensured Shearer held Mt Albert, but did not alter Labour or the Greens' list vote and seat totals a jot.

You could say Labour needs to fear what will happen when candidates with big personal followings like Shearer retire, and their seats surely become vulnerable to National.

But too do so would be to fail to understand MMP. Unless you live in a seat that a minor party candidate has a shot at winning, the list vote is all that matters.

TV profiles of Labour vs National seats like Palmerston North and Christchurch Central helped perpetuate the myth that such electoral battles somehow weigh on the outcome of the election.

Sure it's good to have a talented local looking after your interests in the Beehive. But with the list system, MPs like Julie Ann Genter and Paul Goldsmith are tending to electorate interests without ever winning a local ballot.

It was also good to see Bill English undermine the mythology behind electorate MPs by choosiing to stand as a list-only candidate this time around. It's farcical to think a cabinet minister would have time to be an effective electorate MP — and more so when they don't even live in their seat.

ckeall@nbr.co.nz

Follow @ChrisKeall