Firstly, credentials, who is Daniel Stride? He appears to be a student politician and someone who the Otago Daily Times newspaper reports behaved inappropriately.
Daniel Stride, who was forced off the Otago University Students’ Association (OUSA) executive in 2011 after groping an acquaintance, was one of four nominees in a by-election being held this month. He withdrew yesterday evening.
(Bold added).
This fool Daniel Stride appears to be misrepresenting my argument. What I have said is the results of the 2020 New Zealand General Election, especially those in rural blue seats, need to be closely examined, preferably audited. This person takes a huge leap and seems to think I'm making the claim the election was rigged. No, it has the appearance of being rigged. To stop this perception spreading, a close examination of the result needs to occur, not the once over lightly these elections usually receive.
You'll note that I started off with a personal attack on Mr Stride. That's acceptable as he started his piece on me with a similar attack accusing me of failing school, read his nonsense here:
Sad for Stride as I didn't fail school, and I went to a better University. Relevant is my degree in History and Political Science, along with my qualified teacher status and years spent in the classroom shaping young minds. This includes the teaching of Number. And yes, many of my students are now engineers, accountants, financiers and so on, and I've never had negative feedback (quite the opposite in fact).
Right, now to his argument, which falls over at the outset. He says the election wasn't rigged. Hang on, how can he know that? Isn't the question was it or not? By failing to set up his proposition, he's come to his conclusion first, and therefore everything he then says can be dismissed - he's closed-minded.
He makes several assumptions which are simply wrong. He conflates Labour and National voters. They're not the same beast. Throughout his piece he refers to what Labour did, this and that, but we're not interested in that, we need to know why safe rural blue seats returned a National electorate candidate but party voted Labour. It isn't satisfactory to say that Labour voters have shifted to support National at times as they're not the same group of people. They live in different parts of the country and have different ideas. The question remains, whenever have National voters in rural blue areas (excluding the West Coast which is where Labour was born) voted for the Left but not also dumped some of their local National party members of parliament? My guess is never. It's that strange and what needs close examination.
And he mentions plurality, but no, in many cases it is a majority in each rural seat that voted Left (Labour/Greens). When looking at the other side of the equation, National/ACT, they do at times come over the top of the Left, but rarely. The question remains, is it credible to think that rural areas would be happy with their local National MP, but at the same time not want to see them in government by voting Left?
To answer this question, we need not concern ourselves with what Labour voters have done in the past, they're not the same people (someone will undoubtedly point out swing voters switching from Labour to National and then back again, but that's the point, amongst partisan supporters of National this type of voter is pretty rare). The question needs to be put to those voters in the rural blue seats who apparently flipped. Anecdotal admittedly, it is hard to find anyone in these areas admitting to voting Labour in 2020, apart from school teachers and their ilk. This may be buyers remorse, but on such a wide scale?
Mr Stride doesn't understand National voters. He accuses me of not understanding farm workers and the like. Yes I do, and they're often more conservative than their employers, so that one doesn't fly either.
Split voting: it does happen but not the way it did in 2020. Core National voters always party vote National, but then often vote for another electorate candidate, example, Port Hills where National would win the party vote but Ruth Dyson (L) would win the electorate. National voters know it's the party vote that counts. They don't throw that away and vote for a party that has consistently hurt their interests which are usually; farming, business and investment related.
If National's core support do vote for another party, they move to the right, not the left.
There is something else to note; I am NOT saying Labour did not win the election. This appears lost on Stride. When Labour win, their party vote extends in their safe areas, generally cities. Meanwhile, blue electorates go lighter blue. What has the appearance of a contrived outcome is all the rural blue seats going red yet returning a National MP (with 2 exceptions, no Nat candidate in Rangitata and Northland where a strong third candidate split the vote and even then it became a close race won on the night by National).
Stride tries to find a trend to counter my argument and refers to 2002, then admits himself that in that election, National won the party vote in 3 rural electorates. That includes Southland. But hang on, that seat in 2020 party voted Labour, and yet he fails to see the point, he's wilfully myopic. 2002 was the biggest defeat National had ever suffered and yet Southland still held on. But in 2020 Southland party voted Labour, and yet it wasn't National's biggest defeat (this could be boundary changes but I doubt it, the region is that conservative). Had Stride started out by asking the right question he may have actually seen something there worth examination. But no, he's made his mind up already.
The trend he sees actually supports my argument and calls the result into question, it needs to be closely examined.
Then Stride (you can hear the off-key brass band playing when saying his name he's such a pompous twit) goes off on a tangent, saying I'm referring to comments in my comments section, NO Stride, they were different people. I've had several people contact me saying how the process can be corrupted, the servers on which the data is held are not even properly secure. Any tech expert with rudimentary skills could do the hack.
And there is a basic flaw with Stride's arithmetic. It doesn't matter whether aggregates are entered or not. All that may happen is that National party votes are switched to Labour once in the computer. It seems lost on Stride that National batches are unlikely to have Labour votes amongst them. So it is not necessary to even touch every second vote. Simple arithmetic to make the point; 1,000 votes for National, 160 are switched to Labour, done. This would explain the smoothness on results night where there was never any to and fro as results were announced (unlike other elections).
And as for the final count, we have little knowledge of how they do that, it is all secret squirrel stuff. Something they're unlikely to do is count every ballot again. Then, collect their aggregates in pools and separately and on another computer not connected to the internet, total the votes and see if they match the official results announced. Why wouldn't they do this? It would take too much time, that's why. So I feel safe in saying, any later count by the Electoral Commission is once over lightly.
Mr Daniel Stride, go back to school, concentrate this time and stop acting inappropriately, at this rate you're making yourself unemployable everywhere except the Labour party.
(Readers can find my original post by going to my home page, the featured post on the top right is my blog post asking the question, was the 2020 NZ General Election rigged? Interestingly, in just a few weeks this one post has become my fourth most read of all time. Only two abusive comments have been received, which I think is remarkable. This is a subject of deep concern to New Zealanders and not something simply reserved for number nerds.
Regular readers will know I often look at how numbers evolve and how people react to them. I've shown how Lotto has, over the years, taken on the appearance of being rigged. That explains the drop-off in gamblers buying tickets, they don't trust Lotto anymore. The answer for Lotto, they'll have to close the game and start another one. They closed Big Wednesday, the main Lotto draw will be next. My suggestion is to make whatever game they come up with harder to win with much bigger prizes.
Then another exercise; I looked at NBA scores and how regular season games pan out. These scores were of such concern, I went further and followed randomly selected games, taking statistics as the games progressed. In that case I proved NBA regular season games are tacitly rigged. They do this to allow stars of the game to score points, which attracts fans. Simple explanation: stars are allowed open looks, which for players of that calibre is a cardinal sin.
Anyway, I'll continue looking at number patterns and their appearances. NZ Election 2020 needs investigation. Lotto needs to change as that's just the way it ended up looking. NBA games won't change as they need fans to be in awe of high scores and spectacular plays.)
