In the Red Corner - Election Night Live Blog 2011

Tonight I'll be live-blogging from Labour's Mt Roskill headquarters, which is at the Mt Roskill War Memorial Hall on May Rd.

Sorry I disappeared after 10pm - I wasn't in a corner crying, but did end up lending my laptop to another and doing stuff that wasn't commensurate with live blogging (largely running numbers and the projection of the results onto a screen). No tears for me on the night, although a few shed the next day for Carol and Carmel in particular, as well as the policy implications. 

10.02pm  The figures being run here now are not so much about which new MPs Labour will get as how many current MPs will be back in.  Still surprisingly upbeat mood here given the political reality of this situation.  

10pm  Carmel 468 ahead in Waitakere, huge cheer here, Jackie singing "ding dong the witch is dead".  

9.57pm  Jackie has noted lots of vote splitting in Te Atatu, largely benefiting NZF at the expense of Labour it appears.

9.54pm  Labour is slowly slowly edging up. but so so slowly.  

9.48pm  On current numbers we are looking at a big loss of Labour MPs - with only 10 in off the List but Cosgrove looking shakey in Waimakariri that would mean probably last one in for Labour at this stage would be Moana Mackey or Rajen Prasad.  Losing Carol Beaumont (who is 12 on the effective list) would be a huge blow for the women's caucus and the union affiliates.

9.47pm  Big cheer here as Phil Goff's majority with 60% counted is announced to the crowd.   Goff hasn't arrived yet and will be waiting until the result is clearer apparently.

9.44pm  With nearly 80% counted it's looking like National won't make 50% (currently falling from 49%) but Labour is struggling to rise above 26%. 

9.42pm  Winston on two screens simultaneously, with screens within screens behind that.  Somehow fitting for his return. 

9.41pm  Scube is confused about why ALCP isn't doing better in the party vote in Waitakere.

9.38pm  The man whose chair I stole never came back to claim it. 

9.34pm  As Cosgrove is 8th on the Labour list, if he loses Waimakariri he will still be there.  Hipkins is looking safe in Rimutaka now.  

9.31pm  Bennett ahead now in Waitakere, and Wilkinson in Waimakariri.  Labour currently looking like 32 seats - 10 list - and National 61 - 19 list.  

9.27pm  The room here is packed, with many people using their phones to check various things.   Banks ahead in Epsom but the count there seems to be incredibly slow.

9.24pm  Informals on the second part of the MMP referendum show the lack of understanding of the fact people were allowed to do the second vote even if they voted to keep MMP.  Looking like MMP is a reasonable margin ahead with 95% of the advance votes counted - it hasn't moved from 95% for a while so I'm going to stop looking at that - we won't know for real until Dec 10th anyway, but yay MMP!

9.22pm  Lots of people taking photographs of those us pouring over the laptops and running the projectors and the numbers - Scube is doing the laptop with the projector, stef is trying to get her laptop to work, Jackie is providing moral support and trying to work out how to take photos.

9.16pm  Big cheer here for Carmel Sepuloni as she is just ahead in Waitakere.  Just been looking at Auckland Central in a bit more depth - very close, with almost no votes going to other candidates than Kaye and Ardern - Denise Roche (Greens) has under 1000 with over 2365 for their party vote.

9.13pm  Alright I am back up, and so is the live projection of the results here at Labour HQ.  There was an insufficiently large cheer imho.

8.41pm  Quite close in Ohariu and Maungakiekie.  OK, I have to go again, hopefully back in another half hour.

8.38pm  Now, on the radio before I heard Pete Hodgson doing some extrapolating from Advance votes, based on how they worked out last time, and he said iirc something like 46% for National, 30% for Labour, 11% for the Greens and 6% for NZF.  Someone who was actually listening properly may wish to comment with more precision.

8.34pm  Ok, that took longer than expected, sorry.  Currently O'Connor ahead in  WCT, Sepuloni ahead in Waitakere, Kaye ahead in Auckland Central.  Young well ahead in New Plymouth.  Mood here is quite god, lots of people here and they're all quietly watching the various screens - we've got TV3 and TVNZ with a massive flat screen each showing their channel and now, just now, we have up a projector screen showing results from electionresults.org.nz and basically responding to requests from the crowd to look at various electorate results.  Lots of tense waiting, it's incredibly warm with all these ridiculous media lights. 

7.24pm  In terms of results to date, looking like MMP may be safe, if the 150,000 advance votes are extrapolated - 54% to keep, 42% to change last I checked.  We won't know for sure until 10th December.

 7.21pm  Well I'm live now, for a brief period, then I'm going to run away to pick up something forgotten and be back by 8pm I hope.  The Labour HQ is probably going to lack space and be very hot by the end of the night - the media are taking up an enormous amount of the available space, setting up their live cross thingies, and insisting on media tables that must NOT be moved as apparently everyone is about to go live, or something.  I feel positively low impact as a lowly blogger sitting here at a table tapping away.  Anyway, the feeling here is tense, as you'd expect, surprisingly upbeat, as you might not, and I really love the dress the TV3 reporter is wearing.  Certainly a very diverse crowd so far - Pakeha in a minority

What follows is a little bit I've prepared in advance, to go up at 7.01pm.

 Mt Roskill is a safe Labour seat, and the electorate of the Labour leader, Phil Goff.  In the interests of disclaimer and context, I am on the Puketapapa Local Board, along with my partner, which covers most of the electorate of Mt Roskill.  I was elected to this role on a Labour/Greens/Alliance affiliated ! ticket which also features independent lefties such as myself.  My aforementioned partner is a Labour list candidate, at no. 32, and part of the nail biting this evening will be in regard to whether or not he gets in.  

What I'm hoping to cover tonight is the key events and feel here at Labour HQ, as well as some of the progress of the voting results through-out the night.  I'll be keeping my eye on a number of electorates - ones of particular interest to me are Auckland Central, Epsom, West Coast-Tasman, Ohariu, Maungakiekie, Te Tai Tonga, Hunua, Waikato, Waitakere.  Some because they have broader political implications (e.g. Epsom), others because I have friends standing in them.  Jordan Carter was my little light of happiness in the gloom of 2008, beating Roger Douglas to a strong second in Hunua, and this election I'll no doubt grasp something else as a similar touchstone. 

I'm going to have some mates around me, whose witticisms and observations may make it onto the web, and I'll try to give them nicknames so that there is some form of credit going their way.  Hopefully one or two of them might be familiar to you from past endeavours...

Okay, back to actual live blogging now, as interesting things happen, here in the Red Corner.