The slaughter in Labour’s seats
The table below shows the size of the slaughter in the 46 seats Labour held. At this stage they lose a massive 28 seats, and only retained 18. And in three seats the change in majority was greater than 20,000. Of their five safest seats, they lost two to the Greens and are only 106 votes ahead in Mt Albert, previously their safest seat.
In 26 seats they lost majorities or had swings of over 10,000.
While Labour have gained more List MPs than they expected, the lack of electorate MPs will hurt them. Electorate MPs are seen to represent the community. They get consulted more by local government, they are more prominent, they get more resources etc.
Labour now only hold seats in a few areas – Wellington, Christchurch and Dunedin. They only hold five out of 22 seats in Auckland and the only area they hold outside the four big cities is Palmerston North.
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