Mana by-election: Last word from me on the matter
OK, here goes:
I think Faafoi will win by around 1000 votes. He could lose, depending on turnout in the East and the Bay, by as many as 500. That’s the range, based on my estimate of turnout and the best I can glean from my sources about how the campaign played out.
McCarten has put out a lot of effective literature, although his stunts have been far from cunning. He will do better than I originally thought, but only marginally: 1K or 1,250 if he has a turnout operation (which I have no way of knowing from here).
Of course, Labour has a secret weapon in Auckland regional organiser, Andrew Beyer, who is on the ground in Mana as we speak, although possibly still in bed.
A holdover from the Nordmeyer era, Beyer is a legend in Labour circles. A giant. An icon.
What kind of legend?
A icon symbolising what exactly?
A giant what?
I couldn’t possibly comment.
TheNewTasman.com 
Hi Phil – that seems like a fair commentary, and I can’t really see much to disagree with. But it certainly differs slightly from when you were calling me ‘borderline hysterical’ when I argued for the potentially of McCarten doing better. 😉 Then you seemed adamant that he could only win 200-300 votes at most.
I’m certainly no expert, and I know it’s rather lazy, but I concur with iPredict’s odds: 94% chance of Labour winning; and the party vote is likely to be Labour 45%; National: 36%, others: 15%. Although I still think the “others” could be high as 20% (including 10% for McCarten).
I was more referring to the Manson Family tonal eruption around McCarten’s entry into the race and I later tried to make clear I wasn’t being nasty 🙂 you’re right that I low-balled his vote. 3 mail-outs is two more than I expected.
Yes, some of us get a bit carried away when someone like McCarten jumps into the contest. And your “voice of reason” and doubt was a much needed counter to that.
No nastiness was taken from your comments. I’ve appreciated your astute observations. But nonetheless I’m really hoping that your initial 200-300 prediction is way, way out.
Damn !, given the fundamental importance of the vagaries of turn-out (emphasised today by news that Early voting in the Mana By-Election is, against all expectations, well up on the 2008 Election) I ‘d decided not to make a final prediction.
But now you’ve forced me to go through the whole process against my better judgement, Phil and Bryce.
Playing it safe (with wide parameters), I will predict a Fa’afoi majority of between 600-1800 votes.
More specifically, the result of all my quick, feverish number-crunching over the last 2 hours has resulted in the following:
Fa’afoi (Labour) 11,100 …… (44%)
Parata (National) 9,900 …… (40%)
McCarten (Ind) 1800 ….. (7%)
Logie (Green) 1600 ….. (6%)
All others combined 600 ….. (2%)
Majority for Fa’afoi: 1200
Total Vote: 25,000 (So, I’m assuming that the great number of Early Votes is some sort of quirk and won’t be indicative of a higher-than-2008 turnout).
Compared to my rough estimate in comments on ‘More Matt McCarten Meditation’ (October 30), the 1200 majority’s the same, Logie’s (Green) vote is the same, Fa’afoi and Parata are both down 800 each, McCarten is up 400, and all others combined are up 200 votes. And the Total Vote is down 1000.
25,000 represents 72% of the 2008 turnout. I’m assuming some of McCarten’s vote (a relatively small minority) will be the result of his campaign making some in-roads into the ‘soft’ non-vote (those who vote at General Elections but tend not to at Local and By-Elections), thus increasing turnout by a percentage or so.
The percentages and the overall majority (or at least the ‘playing-it-safe’ range) are probably the key predictions. Raw numbers are likely to change dramatically with much higher or lower than expected turnout.
The only way Fa’afoi can win by a larger majority (say, over 2000) is if – as in Mt Albert – National voters stay at home. Seems unlikely.
Meanwhile, the MSM are still pushing the idea that Laban’s 6100 majority is the benchmark and that anything less for Fa’afoi would signal a clear defeat for Labour. (The Nats are suggesting anything below 3000 would constitute a massive coup for them). Tracy Watkins – strongly influenced by Farrar (half of one of her recent analyses was devoted to uncritically quoting his Kiwiblog utterances) – is suggesting that Laban holds the seat for Labour with “one of the country’s biggest majorities” (in reality, two-thirds of all current Electorate MPs have larger majorities), while Small thinks Fa’afoi is “likely to win because of the massive majority Labour takes into the campaign.” Both describe Mana as “heartland Labour” and a “red-ribbon” seat.
Markus, I admire your rigour enormously. I am riding on gut and a little local knowledge. I think your decision not to read too much into the pre-poll #s is smart. One area where I disagree is McCarten. I am just not convinced he will get quite that number of votes. We shall soon see. I am too deeply ensconced with the Vic election right now! Can you tell me the best way to follow the votes come in?
(1) With McCarten, I’m going out on a limb and guessing that he’ll prove attractive to both NZ First supporters (there is, of course, no NZF candidate) and to people who voted for minor-parties (smaller than NZF and Act) in 2008. I suspect both these groups of voters will be among the least likely to turnout but we’re still talking about a significant number of voters (more than 1000 NZF voters in 2008 and almost 2000 !!! minor-party voters). I can see many of them going for a maverick, outsider, ‘Man of the People’, ‘who tells it like it is’. (there are also far fewer minor-party candidates to vote for, incidently).
And I’ve also gone back to the 1999 results and looked at the Alliance Party-Vote in Mana. Seems to me that possibly up to a third, maybe even more, of the current Green vote could be former Alliance voters (meaning: post-Green split Alliance voters). (accepting, of course, that a decade has passed and hence the electoral population’s not exactly the same). Example: Paekakariki (Mana’s Green stronghold in % terms): 2008 28% Green / 1999 13% Alliance, 13% Green (= 26%).
(2) The preliminary results will become available from 7pm on By-Election night here:
http://www.electionresults.govt.nz/
Targets for release of preliminary results are:
(i) by 7:30pm all advance vote results
(ii) by 9:00pm results from 50% of polling places
(iii) by 10:00pm results from 100% of polling places
(NZ time, of course)
(3) I don’t know if you’ve heard about the amusing sequence of events over the last 10 days regarding Parata endorsements ?
(a) Andrea Vance (‘Nat’s Parata deserves to win in Mana says Porirua Deputy Mayor’, Dominion Post, 12 November) breaks the news that “local leaders” in Mana are backing Parata, seeing Fa’afoi’s lack of experience as a drawback. Apart from Right-leaning Deputy-Mayor and Maori businesswoman, Liz Kelly, Vance mentions only two other “local leaders” – one (City Councillor Wayne Poutoa) favours Fa’afoi (she tells us), while “Samoan community leader” Paula Masoe backs Parata.( so, in fact, evidence of only 2 Nat-leaning “local leaders” against 1 for Labour. And yet we’re being told in the body of the story that “local leaders” in general are backing Parata !!!). Masoe is quoted as saying Parata ” had won over a lot of Pasifika supporters. She’s a hard worker and we respect people who work hard for our community…it’s not time for Kris yet. I don’t want the sweat of our people to be put on someone who’s not ready yet. There was a strong feeling among local voters that Fa’afoi was imposed on the community…”
(b) ‘The Nation’ current affairs programme, (14 November) reports a significant split in the Pasifika vote in Mana. To quote from Farrar’s Kiwiblog (where, of course, much was made of it), “They interviewed Liz Tanielu, the head of the Teaaomanino Trust, which is the biggest Pacific Island service provider in the region. She says she traditionally votes Labour but that Fa’afoi is an outsider and she is angry they could not find a single local to stand, while Hekia has been active for some years in the electorate and “walks the talk” “. So, all we in fact have is Masoe and Tanielu telling the media of this supposed split. Evidence ? Zilch.
(c) A day later, TV 3 News reports that “Labour’s pursuit of the Pacific Islander vote in the Mana by-election has been dealt a blow, with a member of candidate Kris Fa’afoi’s campaign team forced to apologise for calling a National Party rival a “dumb-ass coconut”.”
Porirua City Councillor (and Labour Party member) Litea Ah Hoi (called a “hardcore Labour supporter” on this TV 3 news item) apparently used her Facebook page to make this sarcastic comment about Liz Tanielu (obviously as a result of ‘The Nation’). Tanielu then responds by saying “Labour doesn’t like losing the Pacific vote to Hekia Parata – and bullies anyone who gets out of line.” Manna from heaven for the Farrars of this world.
(d) Meanwhile, I leave a comment about the Andrea Vance story on ‘The Standard’ blog 13 November. I was prompted to do a wee bit of googling by the memory that – in the run-up to the 2008 General Election – similar spurious predictions of some supposedly wholesale Pasifika swing to National were made by one or two National-leaning Pasifika people in South Auckland, backed up by (or should that be “jacked up by”) local Nat Party Electorate officials and loudly, uncritically, broadcast in the media.
In the event, there appears to have been virtually no swing whatsoever by Pasifikas to the Nats in 2008. Roughly a quarter-to-a-third went to Philip Field’s Pacific Party in Mangere, with smaller proportions swinging to the PP in Manurewa and Manukau East (and virtually none in Mana = a mere 189 Party-Votes). But little or no swing to the Nats.
So I had a strong gut feeling Masoe and Tanielu were Tories pretending to speak for the whole of their community, in a pre-arranged, carefully-coordinated piece of spin. My brief bit of googling took me first to a photo of Masoe, Parata and others on Parata’s National Party webpage (though that didn’t prove anything one way or t’other), and second to a series of Wellington Employment Relations Authority reports from 2009/2010 suggesting 10 allegations of “serious misconduct” against Masoe related to “alleged dishonesty, misappropriation of funds…, falsification of records and other serious misconduct.” Masoe, like Tanielu, is a leading light in the Taeomanino Trust. These reports also mentioned that the Ministry of Social Development had put in place a new competitive tender process for the on-going delivery of the sort of ‘Family-Start’ programmes delivered by the Trust. I guessed that the Trust had been successful, received a good deal of dosh, and hence their glowing endorsement of Parata. (Farrar and the media treat Masoe and Tanielu as if they’re two entirely unconnected people who’ve both – by an astonishing coincidence – swung to National at precisely the same time).
(e) On 17 November, Andrea Vance has a front page exclusive: ‘Trust Inquiry as $100,000 goes missing’ (DomPost), in which we learn that Masoe’s husband, Ifopo So’o, who founded the Trust with Masoe, was dismissed last year after more than $100,000 went missing, that Masoe and other senior managers there are facing these serious allegations, that the MoSD commissioned an independent forensic accountant to investigate and, as a consequence, found damming evidence of serious misconduct late last year. And that, despite all this, the Trust was awarded a $500,000 Family-Start contract in the middle of this year and a $ 1 million contract last month. Police are apparently now investigating the allegations after an official complaint was laid.
(f) In precisely the same issue of the DomPost (17 November), Tracy Watkins tells us “National’s expectations appear to have been buoyed by (Parata) winning over some key Pacific Island leaders…” Ah, yeah, Tracy, that would be precisely the same “Pacific Island leaders” who appear on the front page of the same issue of your newspaper, facing very serious allegations.
Remarkably right on the money!
Well called Phil. I had a crack at your first McCarten post. However, you were right. So I guess I will start to subscribe to the blog
Credit where credit is due! Your analysis and predictions proved rather prescient. I look forward to reading your insights during next year’s general election campaign.
(Although I have to say I still have little idea of what you are hinting at with your comments about Labour’s veteran organiser Andrew Beyer….)
Bryce – Andrew Beyer is a head office staffer in Auckland, no one knows what he does and he has been around since Adam got his freak on with Eve. Goff and the leaders office would love to rid the party of his uselessness but they can’t work out how to do it with a big bill.
He’s a typical Party head office staffer – means well but doesnt have a clue what he’s doing.