9:57am Sunday With all election night votes counted, National won 76.9% in the by-election with NZ First a very distant second on 15.2%. Animal Justice was fourth with 1.6%.
5:31pm This is likely to be my last article for the year for this site. I will see you next year when the US presidential primaries start in January.
5:15pm Over 6,800 votes have been counted in Port Waikato, and National has over 5,400 or 80%. So this one’s over already. Of the 123 total seats, National will hold 49, and there will be 34 Labour, 15 Greens, 11 ACT, eight NZ First and six Māori. So National and ACT add to 60 seats, two short of the 62 needed for a majority.
Guest post by Adrian Beaumont, who joins us from time to time to provide commentary on elections internationally. Adrian is a paid election analyst for The Conversation. His work for The Conversation can be found here, and his own website is here.
Polls close at 5pm AEDT today for a New Zealand by-election in Port Waikato. A candidate’s death after nominations closed caused the postponement of the Port Waikato election from the October 14 general election. National held this seat at the 2020 Labour landslide, so they are expected to easily win the by-election. National’s only significant opposition will come from NZ First, as none of Labour, the Greens or ACT are contesting.
The winner of this by-election will be seated in addition to the 122 elected on October 14. The October 14 results were 48 National, 34 Labour, 15 Greens, 11 ACT, eight NZ First and six Māori. National and ACT combined had 59 seats, short of the 62 needed for a majority. A National win in the by-election would still leave these two parties two short of a majority. So National needed NZ First as well as ACT to form a government. On Friday, three weeks after election results were finalised, these three parties agreed to form a governing coalition.
For the general election, recounts were conducted in three seats, with the winning candidates unchanged. The most important recount was in a Māori-roll seat, which the Māori party had won by four votes over Labour. On the recount, they extended their winning margin to 42 votes. The overall results of the October 14 election were unchanged, with Māori winning six electorate seats, causing a two-seat “overhang” (as there are 122 total seats, not the normal 120).
Far-right party wins most seats at Dutch election
The 150 members of the Dutch lower house are elected by national proportional representation without a threshold. Wednesday’s election was held over a year early owing to a collapse in the previous governing coalition that was led by the conservative VVD.
The far-right Party for Freedom (PVV) won 37 of the 150 seats (up 20 since the March 2021 election), an alliance between Labour and the Greens 25 seats (up eight), the VVD 24 (down ten), the socially left but anti-immigrant NSC 20 (new), the centrist D66 nine (down 15), the agrarian BBB seven (up six), the Christian Democrats (CDA) five (down ten) and the Socialists five (down four). D66 and the CDA were part of the last government.
While the PVV easily won the most seats, they have under half the requirement for a majority (76 seats). They are not at all guaranteed to be part of the next Dutch government. It took ten months after the 2021 election to get a new government. This is the first time the PVV has won the most seats. There was a surge to the PVV in late polling, but polls still understated them.
Poland, the US, Switzerland and Israel
Polish President Andrzej Duda is aligned with the Law and Justice (PiS) party. He was re-elected in 2020 for a five-year term in a runoff by a 51.0-49.0 margin. By initially selecting the PiS parliamentary leader as PM-designate, Duda delayed the formation of a non-PiS government until early December following the October 15 parliamentary election that PiS lost. Polish presidents can veto legislation, and it requires a 60% majority to override this veto, which the parties opposed to PiS don’t have.
A US by-election occurred last Tuesday in Utah’s second federal House seat. With 83% counted, a Republican held by a 56.9-33.9 margin over a Democrat. In 2020, Donald Trump beat Joe Biden in this seat by a 56.7-39.5 margin. The previous Republican member won by 59.7-34.0 in 2022.
I previously covered the October 22 Swiss election, in which the right-wing SVP gained nine lower house seats at the expense of the Greens and Green Liberals. After November runoffs, results for the malapportioned upper house are 15 of 46 seats for the conservative Centre (up two since 2019), 11 Liberals (down one), nine Social Democrats (steady), six SVP (steady), three Greens (down two) and one Green Liberal (up one).
Since the current war began, support for Israel’s right-wing government has crashed into the low-40s out of 120 Knesset seats, down from the mid-50s before the war and 64 seats at the 2022 election. But the next election isn’t due until late 2026.
The Dutch election result is quite extraordinary. Kurt Wilders presents as an intelligent and coherent racist with some level of charisma. WE are very lucky in this country that our extreme righties are almost always unelectable morons!
There is a gradual swing in Europe (and the US) towards right wing populism. It is very 1939 and we should be very afraid.
Dutch election aftermath: VVD unwilling to cooperate with PVV
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/11/24/2207859/-Dutch-election-aftermath-VVD-unwilling-to-cooperate-with-PVV?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=trending&pm_medium=web
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https://www.ft.com/content/c4557342-afec-456e-b93b-22ad4a64ceb9
Far-right leader Geert Wilders’ attempt to form a government in the Netherlands suffered a setback on Friday, as the business community warned against political instability scaring off investors.Dilan Yeşilgöz, leader of the right-leaning liberal VVD party, said she would not form a coalition with Wilders. However, the outgoing justice minister said she could support a centre-right cabinet from outside, without clarifying whether Wilders’ anti-Islam Freedom party could be defined as centre-right.”
The far-right can probably be described as PVV (37 seats), FvD (3) and JA21 (1), so 41 out of 150. Take them out, and you’re left trying to find a sane coalition of at least 76 seats out of 109. One hell of a rainbow coalition. (I’m not sure where you’d classify the BBB – add their 7 seats to the far-right pile and the arithmetic gets even tighter.)
3.3% and 5 seats for the CDA is shocking. They’re not the only party who had a bad night, but they were the largest party in parliament with over 40 seats as recently as the 2006 election. Now they’re seventh, behind two parties that didn’t even exist five years ago. NSC, formed by a CDA defector, has four times as many seats and will very likely end up in government. Ouch.
Thanks for your good work, Adrian.
Mostly unacknowledged but appreciated!
See you next year.
“3.3% and 5 seats for the CDA is shocking. They’re not the only party who had a bad night, but they were the largest party in parliament with over 40 seats as recently as the 2006 election. Now they’re seventh,”
This is something we in Australia need to reflect on. We have always operated on the assumption that we will always be locked in to a two party system. Broadly we have two ‘sides’ but the lines are being blurred.
We now have several major blocks in Australia:
ALP
Greens
Teals
Liberals
LNP
National Party
And several numpty racist righty parties.
We will be looking at rainbow coalitions in Australia in the not too distant future – Thank goodness!
“3.3% and 5 seats for the CDA is shocking. They’re not the only party who had a bad night, but they were the largest party in parliament with over 40 seats as recently as the 2006 election. Now they’re seventh,”
This is something we in Australia need to reflect on. We have always operated on the assumption that we will always be locked in to a two party system. Broadly we have two ‘sides’ but the lines are being blurred.
We now have several major blocks in Australia:
ALP
Greens
Teals
Liberals
LNP
National Party
And several numpty racist righty parties.
We will be looking at rainbow coalitions in Australia in the not too distant future – Thank goodness!
And thank you to the whole PollBludger team…. including BK –
Thanks for the global election commentary Adrian!
Look forward to your continuing posts next year.
The Dutch will most likely be going back to the polls after many months of not forming a new government. The four parties that did poorly in this election were the four that made up the most recent Rutte government (VVD, Democrats 66, CDA and CU). Their votes mostly went to either the PVV (far right), BBB (farmers party) or NSC – the new party started by an ex-member of the CDA.
Most of the parties have ruled out working with the PVV, so they their path to forming government is very narrow. As there are also parties on the left that would be unacceptable to the centre as well (DENK for example) so the only other alternative is some form of board church government and nobody is really keen for that at this stage.
The way the media breathlessly reported the Netherlands election you would think that Geert Wilders’ PVV won with a Tony Blair (or at the very least a Jacinda Ardern) type landslide. The reality is somewhat underwhelming – 76.4% of voters did not vote for him and his party.
I follow German politics reasonably closely and am similarly amused at the gasps when at the last election AfD (Alternative for Germany – best not ask what that ‘alternative’ is!) got 10.3% of the vote, which was down from 12.6% at the previous election. Their vote is more like 20% in the areas that were the old East Germany, but they are similarly not about to lead a national government any time soon.
Rocket Rocket
I too found it quite ironic that landslide-like terms were used to describe Geert Wilders’ election win, compared to say Poland where the PiS were significantly the largest party with c. 37% of the vote yet were widely reported to have ‘lost’ because of the likelihood they would no longer be in government.
But all things are relative and this is Holland. In times past single parties did better than PVV in 2023, but tbf PVV did beat the polls handily and they were a long way ahead of the 2nd placed party.
It was assumed prior to the election that they would be brushed aside in coalition discussions as usual, but then the result meant that the voters had placed them handily 1st and they are too fair-minded there not to allow them the chance to try and form a government.
Probably the most proportional – and consequently the most messy – system of forming governments in the world. If you can get minimum 0.67% of the vote (100% divided by 150 seats), your party gets 1 seat and you could be kingmaker.
Adrian
Ditto earlier comments by others. Appreciate your posts, and look forward to more in 2024.
Regular live updates through the evenings of counting, for the Republican primary elections, would be great please. 🙂
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