The final election figures for the most part came out close to where the Poll of Polls trend from 20 August was pointing.
National has ended up with 47.0%, down from 48.1% on election night, repeating its 2011 under-performance on special votes.
John Key on election night. Photo: AFP
The Poll of Polls trend pointed to about 47.5%, which was well within 1% of the out-turn, even given that it included the Fairfax Ipsos polls which consistently recorded much higher figures for National than the other polls.
The trend was accurate for Labour. It pointed to Labour getting about 25%. Labour climbed 0.4% from election night to 25.1%.
David Cunliffe speaks to media after admitting defeat on election night. Photo: RNZ / Kim Baker Wilson
The Poll of Polls overrated the Greens and underrated New Zealand First.
The Poll of Polls trend for the Greens pointed to around 12.5%. The Greens gained 0.7% on the special votes but still finished with only 10.7%, well below where the trend pointed to.
For New Zealand First the trend pointed to around 7.5%. That missed New Zealand First's final figure of 8.7% by more than a percentage point.
The Poll of Polls trends were close to the mark for the Conservatives (the trend pointed to about 4.2%, against their final result of 4.0%), the Maori Party (about 1.2% in the Poll of Polls trend against a 1.3% final vote), Internet Mana (about 1.2% versus a 1.4% out-turn, all of which went into the "wasted vote", thus reducing the percentage vote needed for a majority) and United Future (about 0.2%, the same as the actual).
ACT's trend pointed to about 0.5% versus an out-turn of 0.7%.
Internet Mana trailed the Maori Party by 10.2% to 14.0% in the party vote in the Maori electorates but did better than the Maori Party in the general electorates: 0.8% versus 0.5%.
A clue is its disproportionately higher percentage in "student" general electorates: 1.4%. This may have accounted for part of the Greens' lower vote because those are the electorates where the Greens have done best in recent elections.
