NZ General Election

Election day is a strange sort of a day in this country. There's a tremendous campaign waged with maximum attention focussed on politics for a solid month, the next day more intense than the last, and then election day itself is calm and quiet and peaceful, with barely a hint of politics as all the hoardings and posters have been removed and all the ads on the TV and radio and in the papers aren't there. Just orange signs here and there pointing towards a polling station.

The election law has a strict ban on anything likely to influence a voter on the day of the election itself which includes the sort of partisanship of - for example, saying:

Vote Mana

or

The Mana Party is a movement of the people dedicated to raising living standards, creating jobs, a fairer tax system and independence.

So tomorrow, Saturday 26 November 2011, until polls close there will be no partisan or election related blogging and comments will be turned off for this period.

And then at 7pm it goes straight back to maximum impact, high velocity, winner take all, make or break politics as the results start to come out. I will try to cover the Waiariki electorate as best I can as I suspect there will be an upset here that the other pundits are late to see and still aren't crediting. I hope to bring rolling results as I did last time, but we'll see how it goes - it's election night and anything can happen.

NZ General Election links:

Official electoral information, polling booths, enrolment, referendum information etc. elections.org.nz.

Polling booths open 9am - 7pm

Official results from electionresults.govt.nz:

Targets for release of the preliminary election results are:
● by 8.30pm all advance vote results, including the Referendum on the Voting System
● by 10.00pm General Election results from 50% of polling places
● by 11.30pm General Election results from 100% of polling places

Twitter: Follow #votenz. Also TUMEKE_blog.