NZ Herald

16 Oct, 2023 03:26 AM2 mins to read

Just over 1170 Northland voters backed TV presenter turned anti-vaccination campaigner Liz Gunn’s New Zealand Loyal party, making it the party’s highest electorate vote result so far.

Election results - Figure 1
Photo New Zealand Herald

Coromandel and West Coast Tasman voters came a close second and third respectively, the former giving it 1168 votes and the latter 1156 votes.

However, the party’s results in each of the electorates were dwarfed by National, Labour, Act, New Zealand First and the Green party which all received thousands or in some cases more than 10,000 more than New Zealand Loyal.

The party also didn’t get much love in the Capital, where it received just 48 votes in Wellington Central, 77 in Ōhāriu and 89 in Rongotai.

Although the 26,141 votes the party received is a far cry from the two million Gunn had anticipated receiving, there are still half a million special votes still to count. Just under 880,000 people party voted for National and 606,663 for Labour.

Over the weekend Gunn took to the stage at a New Zealand Loyal event and said society was being ruled by “at the very least utter bullies”.

“People are deriding me for saying two million [would support the party], wouldn’t it be funny if just quietly well over a million have actually voted for us. Let’s see what they do with the numbers.”

There is no evidence to suggest more than a million people voted for New Zealand Loyal.

When Gunn launched the New Zealand Loyal party in June, she asked people via a video to imagine a country where there was “very little state interference in your life”.

“No mandates, no masks, no bullying,” she said.

“Imagine a country where you could create whatever your imagination and your community want because power has gone back to the communities …”

Former broadcaster Liz Gunn. Photo / Mark Mitchell

NewZeal received 12,701 votes and the Aotearoa Legalise Cannabis Party received 8844.

The New Nation Party received the lowest number of votes: 1288.

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