Nelson’s red/blue divide has been laid out more starkly than ever thanks to new voting booth data.
The Nelson Weekly has used data analysis from Chris McDowall to show how Nelsonians voted at the General Election, depending on the location of the polling booth they visited.
Labour overwhelmingly dominated National in the party vote at various polling booths around Nelson. However, the further west you go, the bluer the statistics become.
The analysis also shows the extent by which Labour made ground and National lost it in Nelson’s suburbs.
Labour won the party vote in Nelson with 15,030 votes, or 41.1 per cent, followed closely by National with 14,690 votes, according to preliminary results.
The final numbers will not be known until Saturday.
Labour received just 24.71 per cent of the party votes in 2014, well behind National on 44.43 per cent.
Labour won by more than 50 per cent of the vote at the Victory Community Centre voting booth with 750 votes and at Nelson Intermediate with 220.
National won by more than 50 per cent at Garin College with 402 votes and Brightwater School with 515 votes.
However, even at the voting booths where National won, Labour still had big swings compared to the previous, 2014 general election.
Nick Smith won the Nelson seat receiving 14,956 of the total votes, followed by Labour’s Rachel Boyack who ended up with 10,956 votes, and the Green Party’s Matt Lawrey, with 8324 votes.
Voting booth data for electorate votes will not be available until after Saturday, October 7.
