Llamas-for-the-poor Civilian Party gets the last laugh - by beating Horan

Ben Uffindell.

The joker in this year's political pack, Ben Uffindell, is claiming success in last weekend's election after his Civilian Party outpolled his "main opposition", Brendan Horan, and also won five times as many votes as the McGillicuddy Serious Party did on debut.

Mr Uffindell's satirical party got 906 votes, coming 13th out of the 15 that contested the election, ahead of Mr Horan's New Zealand Independent Coalition and Focus NZ.

"We beat our main opposition," he told the Weekend Herald yesterday.

"It was a tight race all night. Focus was never really in the running; it was Brendan Horan we were worried about after he got invited to the TV debate, but we beat him by 11 votes, although we are waiting on specials."

Despite that victory, "I'm still waiting for a concession call from him".

Mr Horan, who was yesterday clearing out his parliamentary office before taking a break to surf and fish, said he had no idea who Mr Uffindell was.

Mr Uffindell didn't have the phone numbers for the leaders of most of the other parties, so he gave the Civilian Party's concession personally to Green Party co-leader Metiria Turei.

Ms Turei began her political career in the McGillicuddy Serious Party and Mr Uffindell was yesterday boasting that his party's haul of votes in its first election was way ahead of the 178 the McGillicuddys won in total on debut in 1984, "and they went on to great things", with their vote peaking at 12,177 in 1996.

On a serious note, he said it had proved "really, really hard to get people to vote for a satirical party".

"Most of my friends didn't vote for my party. Most of my party didn't vote for my party. A lot of people who would have voted for us were perhaps more concerned with the actual election and they just felt that if they gave their vote to a satirical party that wasn't going to get into Parliament it wasn't going to do anything."

However, Mr Uffindell said the party's tally of votes wasn't his measure of success.

"I look at the number of people we entertained, which on the internet was a tremendous amount. And we hope that the little air time we were able to buy on TV with the money we were given was enough to entertain enough people."

In a much-criticised decision, the party received $34,000 from the Electoral Commission for campaign advertising.

As a satirical party, "you've got to make it funny and make it worth that money", Mr Uffindell said.

He believed he and his core team of two others had achieved that.

Mr Uffindell said the response to his campaign was generally positive but they were clearly misunderstood early on, despite patently absurd policies such as giving poverty-stricken children llamas as an income source, and raising taxes on the poor.

Mr Uffindell said his appearance on TV3's The Nation political show in May prompted "the biggest outburst of anger and a lot of people didn't realise it was a joke".

"There was a lot of people all over the 3News Facebook page and sending us emails worried about the welfare of the llamas - that they'd be poorly taken care of."

Mr Uffindell said he had little advice for Labour's David Cunliffe, who is facing a leadership challenge.

"I don't think there is a person in New Zealand right now who has good advice for David Cunliffe."