Well the election is over, I have very mixed feelings about the result I am very happy with the Green party result, very surprised by NZ First and very disappointed about what looks like being the next government.
Personally I am holding out hope for the specials delivering the Greens another seat at National’s expense and turning Peter Dunne into an overhang MP, if that happens there is a decent chance that we can take the hard edge of some of National’s policies. I’m also waiting on the specials in Hamilton East, it will only take a few more votes for me before we get my candidate fee back, which would be nice.
In Hamilton East we managed 11.3% of the vote which is certainly not a number to be sneezed at. Of course very little of this is down to me and I would like to thank a few people, firstly D. (I decided not mention people’s names in case they do not want the world to know them) for co-coordinating our leaflet delivery and all the people who went out delivering them. L. who organised the sign waving on the sides of the road, sorry I couldn’t be there for more of them but a big thank you to everyone that did make it. Then there is Ms. J. Who organised the putting up and taking down of billboards and again a large number of people who did the putting up and taking down. A really, really big thank you to C. for her awesome fundraising efforts, I feel that fundraising was one of our success stories in Hamilton this election and I have to thank everyone who came to one of our events and gave us even a little bit of money, every single cent was well used. GoC as a whole also deserves a big thankyou for getting out and doing so much as well as trying to engage with student population throughout the year at a variety of events and stalls, keep up the good work guys. M.R. also deserves a thankyou for organising the scrutineers, I am sorry that I threw it upon you at the last-minute but I am glad that you managed to make everything go really smoothly, at that point in the campaign I simply didn’t have the time or energy to organise much of anything. And again the scrutineers need to be thanked.
Finally I have to thank S. my campaign manager who was absolutely exceptional, I really could not have done it without her, for the last week and a half of the campaign we were both putting in 18 hour days and it doesn’t matter how hard I am willing to work I can not make a day 36 hours long. So a big thank you to S. she is at least as deserving of any credit for our success as me.
I’m sure I have forgotten some people, but I am just so grateful to so many people and I still have a massive headache from stress and lack of sleep so you will have to forgive me. I would also like to thank the Hamilton Greens for their present to me, Mr Greenheart (pictured) and a book, with a lot of very lovely comments in it.
Now on to my favourite bit, the number crunching. I set as my personal target 20% of the vote in South-East Hamilton, I felt that if we could get this sort of result then we might be able to get 10% of the party vote across the Waikato. Unfortunately I fell a bit short, the Green party managed 17% of the vote south of Boundary road, which while not quite as high as I was hoping for is still a significant improvement from the 10.9% in that area in 2008.And for those interested the Waikato wide party vote was 8.3%
For those interested the vote in Claudelands went from 9.3% to 14%, Hamilton East 11.4% to 18%, Hillcrest 11.4% to 19% and Silverdale from 11.5% to 16%. Interestingly this difference broadly follows the areas I doorknocked, I put the most effort into Hillcrest, then Hamilton East, Claudelands and in Silverdale I talked to comparatively few people. I was afraid that my doorknocking would work to get me votes but not my party but it seems like this was not the case.
I think this is a great platform to build on for the next three years, I have a few idea on how to go about building from here but they can wait for another day…
