This has been one of the quietest by elections I have ever witnessed.
Normally by elections are rather dramatic things with quirks and strange events. This one has none of those features despite a host of fringe and weird candidates. They almost inevitably go against the Government. And Labour has not won this seat since 1935.
I expect that National will cruise home and if it does not then this will be significant. Labour will not do as well as it did in 2020 when Jan Tinetti came within 1,857 votes of beating Simon Bridges for the seat.
I expect the result to be similar but worse to 2017 when Bridges won 54% of the candidate vote as opposed to Tinetti’s 26% with the rest being shared amongst the minor candidates.
Which makes the Q & A Kantar poll last week so interesting. It had National’s Sam Uffindell on 45% and Tinetti on 35%. If this is the result I personally will celebrate this as a win.
My impression of the candidates is that Uffindell has been wooden and talks mostly in slogans. His raison d’etre is to build more roads. He is typically National.
Tinetti is well respected and her promotion into Cabinet underlies her expertise in the Education area.
And for the dumbest take about the by election Josie Pagani has criticized Labour for not performing a similar stunt in the UK where she claims Boris Johnson released the inhumane Rwanda extradition for refugee candidates in order to take the attention off the Tory who resigned after he was discovered watching porn in Parliament.
This post will be updated as results come in.
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