Tuesday, September 30, 2008



The Progressive List

The Progressives have released their party list. The most obvious point is that they are living up to their name on gender, with a 50% ratio in their top 8 candidates (which is probably as far as we need to look), and 12 13 women out of 27. However, they have gone backwards on diversity. Last election, the Progressives were the diversity party, with candidates from the Tongan, Cambodian and Bangladeshi communities in the top ten. This time round, that diversity has been pushed well down the list, and the top spots are all Pakeha. Given that relative list ordering has generally been retained from last time, part of the reason is obviously that those candidates have found other things to do with their lives - but given the Progressives' willingness to parachute a candidate into their top three, and their access to strong candidates from diverse communities, they could surely have done better.

As with other parties, I've done a table showing the top candidates relative placements with last time.

2008 RankName2005 RankDifference
1Jim Anderton10
2Matt Robson20
3Josie Pagani----
4Paula Gillon13+9
5Phil Clearwater14+9
6Viv Shepherd7+1
7Trevor Barnard15+8
8Brenda Hill17+9
9Craig Hutchinson----
10Justin Robson----
11Jeffrey Ly----
12Suki Amirapu27+15
13Somnath Bagchi----
14Sukhdev Bains29+15
15Racheal Cheam----
16Mohammad Kazemi-Yazdi22+8
17Debbie Lucas----
18Claire Main35+17
19Phillipa Main36+17
20John Maurice21+1
21Jacqui McAlpine37+16
22Dawn Patchett41+19
23Tala Po'e42+19
24Pavitra Roy43+19
25Elspeth Sandys44+19
26David Somerset48+22
27Ralph Taylor----

Further details of their top five candidates can be found here.

Correction (1/10/2008): Corrected number of women candidates; The Hand Mirror has the gender analysis here.