Category: International Politics

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.

Live Commentary

9:42pm Nat and ACT combined have dropped to 61 of the 121 seats with 93% counted. “Special votes” that are counted in the three weeks after the election night count is complete will favour the left and probably cost the right a majority, meaning they will need NZ First to govern. Also Maori is just behind Labour in two seats; if they won both there would be a bigger overhang. But Nat will almost certainly win a by-election that was postponed from Saturday after a candidate died.

9:16pm Had to work on the Voice article. With 88% counted in NZ, National and ACT are down to 62 of the 121 seats. The election day vote has been worse for National than the advance vote.

7:11pm National may be doing worse on election day votes than advance, and have dropped back to 52 seats, with Nat and ACT at a combined 64 of 123 with 38.0% overall counted including 86.4% of advance votes.

6:15pm Nat and ACT keep climbing and are now at 65 of the 123 seats with 27% of overall votes and 73.5% of advance votes counted. It’s looking like the late polls badly understated the right this time after understating the left in 2020.

6:02pm With 66% of advance votes and 24% overall counted, Nat and ACT are now up to 64 of the 122 total seats.

5:50pm With 56% of advance votes counted and 21% overall, Nat and ACT combined are still holding at 63 of the current 122 seats.

5:35pm Maori now winning just three electorate seats, down from six previously. That means total number of seats falls back to 120, and Nat and ACT are currently winning 63 combined.

5:28pm Results so far reflect advance or pre-poll votes, of which 32% has been counted. Percentage counted is of the total number of polling places, so the left parties will hope the current count is skewed to smaller booths that count quickly in rural areas.

5:18pm With 5% counted, Maori party is winning six electorate seats, causing a three-seat overhang. However, Nat and ACT are still winning 63 of the 123 new total seats.

5:11pm First results, with 2% counted, would give the right 63 of the 120 seats.

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 for the New Zealand election. As in Australia, early voting has been available since October 2. However, I believe early votes are counted in NZ on election day, and so they will be released fairly quickly. Results from the NZ Electoral Commission will be available here.

I had a final preview for The Conversation on the NZ election on Thursday. There was a late Morgan poll, conducted September 5 to October 8, that showed the left parties (Labour, Greens and Māori) leading the right parties (National and ACT) by two points, but with 7.5% for NZ First it would make NZ First the kingmaker. 

In other news, it may well be the case that no Republican candidate for US House Speaker can win the 217 Republican votes needed to become Speaker without any Democratic support. It’s now ten days since Kevin McCarthy was ousted, and there’s no resolution in sight.

I will be writing about the Voice and the NZ election for The Conversation, so I won’t be following the NZ election throughout the night.

Tomorrow is election day in New Zealand, with the conservative National Party under Christopher Luxon favourites to depose a two-term Labour government that Chris Hipkins has led since succeeding Jacinda Ardern in January. Polls suggest the best Labour can hope for is a balance of power position for populist veteran Winston Peters and his New Zealand First party, between Labour and the Green Party on the left and National and Act New Zealand on the right. This would replicate the situation when Peters unexpectedly threw in his lot with Jacinda Ardern and Labour after the 2017 election. Labour’s landslide re-election under Ardern in October 2020 decimated National and evicted New Zealand First altogether, but National has enjoyed a recovery under Luxon’s leadership while Peters has benefited from a familiar wave of anti-major party sentiment.

Labour has been a been a long slide in the polls ever since, which appeared to be briefly arrested when Hipkins came to the leadership in January but resumed thereafter. However, polls from the last week have recorded movement back to the left: Reid Research has National down from 39.1% to 34.5% since mid-September and Act steady on 8.8%, with Labour up from 26.5% to 27.5% and Green up from 14.2% to 14.9%; 1News-Verian had Labour up two from a week previous to 26% and Green up one to 14%, with National up one to 37% and ACT down one to 9%; and an Essential Research poll for The Guardian had Labour up from 26.9% to 30.3% since a month and Green down from 11% to 10.6%, with National down from 34.5% to 34% and ACT down from 10.3% to 7.9%.

New Zealand First has consistently been polling in the range of 6% to 8%, putting them over the threshold of 5% that entitles parties to shares of the 120-or-so seats in parliament proportionate to their share of the vote. That would leave the party blocs of left and right needing upwards of 46% to secure a majority of seats without help from New Zealand First, which would come down to about 43% if New Zealand First failed to clear the bar, putting a vote share of nearly 5% out of contention. The latest polls generally have both blocs short of the former figure, although National and ACT are at 46% between them in 1News-Verian. A caveat in all this is that the pollsters had a bigger failure in 2020 than the one they had suffered in Australia the previous year, though because the winner was called correctly it attracted notice. Three final week polls gave Labour an average lead over National of 46.3% to 31.4%, when the actual result turned out at 50.0% to 25.6%.

Poll Bludger contributor Adrian Beaumont, who has been following the campaign more closely than I have, had an update yesterday in The Conversation that offered the following on what to expect from the count:

We’ll only have a clearer picture once polling booths close at 7pm (5pm AEDT) on Saturday, when all ordinary votes cast at early voting centres or on election day will begin to be counted. There are also “special votes”, usually cast by voters outside their home electorate (similar to absent votes in Australia). In the past, these have benefited parties on the left, which can take another one or two seats over the preliminary results. If past practice is a guide, however, there will be no updates to the published results after election night until the official results (which include special votes) are released on November 3.