Super City Election Results

As of now we’re about 40 minutes away from midday, when voting will close in the election of the first Super City. Most of the votes have been counted already – so I assume that unlike general elections when the results trickle in throughout the evening, this will be a big “bang” of results. I will (hopefully) update regularly in the next short while. Remember it’s not only the Mayoral battle that matters, but also how the numbers lie in terms of elected councillors.

Picks welcome!

Voting return information (that is, how many people and what percentage of people that have voted) from yesterday is available to view here. The number of votes added yesterday was relatively low, as I think most people had already posted in to be counted on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday.

12.02 – still no results

12.05 – NZ Herald is saying provisional results will be available around 2pm. Gah – I’m impatient.

1.08 – Less than an hour away from having results announced.

1.09 – Cancel that. Herald says Len Brown has won. With almost 95 per cent of the votes counted, Len Brown has won the Auckland mayoralty. Mr Brown has approximately 221,000 votes to Mr Banks’ 161,000.

1.12 – That’s a pretty massive win, by around 60,000 votes. Interestingly, third place Colin Craig polled at around 40,000 votes. More here.

1.13 – No word yet on council ward results.

1.29 – I must say I’m pretty happy with the result. I just couldn’t see John Banks taking on central government’s transport policy and demanding a better deal for public transport. While the Mayor of the Super City has more powers than previous Mayors did, they are still very reliant on the make-up of the council to support them. The details of who has won the council seats will be very important – and hopefully will be released soon.

1.53 – Council results should come in soon.

2.06 – Council results are available here. Mike Lee has won Waitemata, which is great news.

2.07 – Cameron Brewer has won Orakei ward, winning over the Citizens and Ratepayers candidate Doug Armstrong in the C & R heartland.

2.11 – A lot of the two member wards are splitting one each to the left and right. That’s the case in North Shore (George Wood & Ann Hartley), Eden-Albert Roskill (Christine Fletcher & Cathy Casey). Penny Hulse and Sandra Coney win out west. Looking good for a centre-left majority, as we haven’t seen results from the south yet.

2.20 – Interesting results in Albany Ward, with Michael Goudie (Independent) and Wayne Walker (Putting People First) winning the council seats. I know Mr Walker through work and he’s a thoroughly decent guy. It will be interesting to see where these two vote on issues.

2.23 – Out in Howick ward the two seats go to Sharon Stewart (Independent) and Jamie Lee-Ross (Citizens and Ratepayers). I am guessing that C & R will be pretty gutted not to have won both those seats.

2.30 – The 20 councillors are: Michael Goudie, Wayne Walker, George Wood, Ann Hartley, Penny Hulse, Sandra Coney, Mike Lee, Noelene Raffills, Cathy Casey, Christine Fletcher, Cameron Brewer, Richard Northey, Jami-Lee Ross, Sharon Stewart, Penny Webster, Calum Penrose, John Walker, Des Morrison, Arthur Anae, Alf Filipaina. Plenty of independents in there, so I don’t think we really know for sure where the political balance of power will lie.

Update: Here are the details of the Mayoral results – interesting to see how utterly terribly Andrew Williams did: Even if all of Colin Craig’s votes had gone to John Banks, Len Brown would have still won. 60,000 votes is a pretty massive win.

Council Ward Results

Here are the results for Albany Ward – I can see why both the winners were fairly random, the vote got split many many many different ways. Nine candidates got between 5000 votes and the 8500 votes that Michael Goudie got. Wayne Walker is still around 1000 votes ahead of the next candidate, so I don’t think anything will change on special votes. In the Eden-Albert-Roskill ward, the four main candidates really stand head and shoulders above the rest. In the end it’s probably a fair result that one from Citizens and Ratepayers and one from City Vision got in. Christine Fletcher is potentially a candidate for deputy mayor I think. In Franklin, it was pretty much a two-horse race between Des Morrison and Dianne Glenn, with Mr Morrison pulling through by about a thousand. This is a bit unfortunate in my opinion as Ms Glenn has been a good ARC councillor over the past few years. Here are the details: In the Howick Ward there were three main contenders – independent Sharon Stewart (who I must confess I have never heard of) and the two C&R candidates: Jamie-Lee Ross and Dick Quax. Quax has missed out, although he’s not that far behind his compatriot. As I noted above, I think C&R would be disappointed here and would have been eyeing up both seats: In Manukau, there’s a clear win to Labour candidate Alf Filipaina, with Independent Arthur Anae coming in second – and therefore also getting a seat. Mr Anae used to be a National MP, so it will be interesting to see where his loyalties lie: A really tough three-into-two race in Manurewa-Papakura has result in former Manukau City mayor Sir Barry Curtis missing out on a place – in favour of Papakura Mayor Calum Penrose, and former Olympic gold medallist Sir John Walker: In Maungakiekie-Tamaki ward, former Labour MP Richard Northey has won reasonably comfortably. In the North Shore ward, we saw probably the biggest battle between high quality candidates. There were no fewer than eight current councillors (six from North Shore City, two from the ARC) and one former Mayor (George Wood) that squared off for a mere two seats. In the end we see one councillor from the centre-left (former Labour MP Ann Hartley) and one from the centre-right (George Wood). I think it’s unfortunate that Joel Cayford and Chris Darby missed out, but this was a real tough one. In the “true-blue” Orakei ward, we perhaps saw one of the most interesting results of the whole election – with Newmarket Business Association CEO Cameron Brewer beating out Citizens and Ratepayers stalwart Doug Armstrong. If there was ever a vote of no confidence in the “old boys club”, this was it: The Rodney ward result is probably the one I feel saddest about, with the ARC’s excellent Transport Chairperson Christine Rose missing out to holiday highway cheerleader Penny Webster. It seems like Christine’s vote got split by independent Tom Ashton. Another really difficult battle was out west, for seats in the Waitakere ward. I’m happy with both the winners (particularly Sandra Coney), but at the same time I’m pretty gutted that Paul Walbran has missed out – as he has been an excellent chairperson of the ARC’s Planning and Strategy Committee. In Waitemata Ward, we see the great result that Mike Lee has won the seat easily. While Tenby Powell probably split a little bit of the vote off Alex Swney, even if you add both of their vote totals together you get nowhere near the amount that Mike got. Mike is perhaps another candidate for deputy mayor – or alternatively a seat on the Transport CCO board. And finally, in the Whau Ward we see that Noelene Raffills won in a reasonably close race, just 400 votes ahead. This was not really a surprise: As I noted earlier in this post, it will be interesting to see where the independents sit on various issues – particularly those in Albany Ward and those in the south. One would imagine that the vote for Len Brown in the south was pretty strong, and therefore the councillors are likely to be expected to support him and his policies.

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