KEY POINTS:
Aucklanders have swung more heavily to the right than any other part of the country, apparently driven by escalating living costs and crime.
A Herald analysis of election-night results since 2002 shows that the country has moved to the right in two steps, boosting the centre-right share of the total left/right votes by 8.5 per cent in 2005 and by a slightly weaker increase of 7.2 per cent on Saturday.
But in Auckland, the swing has intensified this time, jumping by 9.2 per cent in 2005 and by 9.4 per cent this year, helping National to pick up three Auckland seats from Labour plus the new seat of Botany.
The centre-right share of the total Auckland vote, 56.6 per cent, now equals the traditionally National-voting North Island provincial areas and is higher than all other regions.
National Party campaign chairman - and new MP - Steven Joyce said party polling showed strong concerns in Auckland about high taxes and rising crime.
"I think concerns about lack of reduction of personal taxes resonated particularly strongly in Auckland in 2005 and that has continued strongly since John [Key] has taken over as leader," he said.
"It's only changed recently when the emphasis on tax was replaced by concerns about the world economy and the wider cost of living concerns which that translates into."
A Herald sampling of 600 voters from Cape Reinga to Invercargill just before this year's campaign found living costs and crime were by the far voters' biggest worries, particularly in Auckland where both unaffordable house prices and crime are most acute.
The survey also found that Asians and other non-Pacific immigrants, who are overwhelmingly concentrated in Auckland, were swinging to National at twice the rate of any other group, partly because they paid much higher taxes here than they were used to at home - with much of it going on welfare.
"National is promising to create more jobs and get rid of those that just go on sickness benefits," said Afghan rug trader Hamayun Tajek, 33.
Auckland University political scientist Joe Atkinson said Auckland voters were more volatile than provincial dwellers, swinging to below-average support for National in 2002, when they voted heavily for Act and NZ First, as well as more strongly for National this year.
"It's the character of the people. They are less traditional, more entrepreneurial, more risk-taking than perhaps people are in other parts of the country."
He said Auckland's high proportion of immigrants, accounting for about a third of the population in Auckland compared with a fifth in the country as a whole, accentuated political volatility.
"If you are not inculcated into lifelong family traditions, you are likely to be, at least initially, a more volatile voter," he said.
"Even if they don't understand the details of the New Zealand polity, there does seem to be a slight tendency for Asian cultures to go with the winner."
