Saturday 8 November 2008

Half-alive blogging on election night

I'll be actually live-blogging over at The Standard -I figured while we do write about NZ politics here most of the election stuff won't be particularly feministy so it'd be better to keep it over there.

But hopefully if time allows I will pop in here from time to time to semi-live-blog about some of the key electorate races featuring women. There are a few Labour seats held by women or with a female candidate, that could go to National men or women (Auckland Central,Maungakiekie, Waitakere, Rotorua) , and there's also the possibility of Act's Kenneth Wang beating out National's Pansy Wong for the new seat of Botany. Plus National women might unseat Labour men in Taupo or Christchurch Central, and then there are two Maori electorates in play where female candidates are involved - Te Tai Tonga (Reid Katene might beat Okeroa) and Hauraki-Waikato (Mahuta versus Greensill).

Of all these my thinking is that only Auckland Central, Maungakiekie, Taupo and Rotorua are truly marginal, but we shall see!

I'll be popping back to update this post if and when time allows. Please feel free to comment and let me know someone is out there, if you wish!

9pm
Auckland Central - Kaye is a bit ahead, pulling further ahead I think.
Maungakiekie - Very marginal, back and forth.
Rotorua -Chadwick well behind, looks like Todd McClay (National) will definitely supplant her.
Taupo - Lousie Upston (National) significantly ahead of Mark Burton (Labour).
Waitakere - Bennett ahead of Pillay, but not a long way.
Botany - Wong well ahead, Wang not even coming second last I looked.
Christchurch Central - very close.
Te Tai Tonga - Reid Katene is ahead of Okeroa by around 200, with over 40% counted.
Hauraki-Waikato - Mahuta and Greensill still very close too.

10pm
Auckland Central - Kaye still ahead, still quite close.
Maungakiekie - argh, still very tight, Lotu-Iiga ahead.
Waitakere - Pillay back in front, seems to be pulling away?
Chch Central - Burns in front of Wagner, but still close.

Ok I think I am going to give up on trying to track all of this and keep doing The Standard stuff, sorry!

2 comments:

Tui said...

Burns stuck CHCH Central - thank goodness! That one was an absolute nailbiter (I'm CHCH young Labour so we're close to Central - really going to miss Tim, but Brendan's great.) Less than 900 votes in it. (And, gosh, now that I look Clayton in Waimakariri was really close - the two electorates that I volunteered for today. Obviously time well spent!)

Julie said...

Thanks Tui, it was quite lovely to have this comment come through at that time, as I was still online and finishing up at The Standard. I'll do a proper post on this at some point, not sure whether it'll be today or not, but I wonder how many of these seats like Chch Cen could change on specials... Eeek!

The surprise of the night for me was New Plymouth, it just came out of nowhere, although I can understand how and why in hindsight. I'm also surprised that Winston was so gracious about being out, and that he didn't start talking lawyers.

It's going to be a very different Parliament from here on in, not just a different Govt, that's for sure.