The Greens got lucky with the timing of the vote. It was swiftly overtaken by the Sam Uffindell scandal in National, the Gaurav Sharma scandal for Labour and then a surprise change of Head of State swept the contest redux from the headlines.
It's tempting to think then, that Shaw's co-leadership merry-go-round was all for nothing. The process, which the Greens describe with the verb " to RON" (after "Reopen Nominations - the process that triggered Shaw's ouster) has more or less changed nothing.
For Shaw, it has settled a few questions.
Since the Greens entered government in 2017, the party has been dogged by the questions over whether its membership was becoming disenfranchised by the compromises necessary for government.
That question was never put to a vote until this week, when it appears that the membership is overwhelmingly happy with the direction the party is taking.
While the membership might not be happy with the compromises that are made, they believe they are justified under the circumstances.
The question of whether this is different today than it was six weeks ago is difficult to answer conclusively. They were two different votes, conducted in different circumstances using different rules.
Six weeks ago, there were questions over whether Shaw himself needed to pivot further to the left to meet the demands of his membership - Shaw's ouster was, by this reckoning, his own fault. The theory goes that Shaw became detached from the membership's politics and the membership voted to get rid of him (a majority of members - 70 per cent - voted to keep him in that first vote, but the vote against him was strong enough to trigger the RON process).
There was another theory that ran in the opposite direction, which suggested that a small group of anti-Shaw delegates had leveraged their power to oust him against the will of the membership.
Speaking to media on Saturday, Shaw appears to think the issue was one of communication, rather than policy. When Davidson and Shaw took over the co-leadership pairing in 2018, Davidson was out of government looking after the party while Shaw was a minister.
Shaw said this system had worked quite well, but it had not been adjusted when Davidson joined the Government after the 2020 election. With both co-leaders as ministers, there was no dedicated leader looking after the membership. This problem was exacerbated by the fact that Covid-19 made it impossible to meet many members in person.
Shaw said the last few weeks of campaigning have involved "deep dialogue" with members.
"I don't want that to end today," he said.
But it appears the main concern was not one of policy, it was one of communicating that policy to members.
The only real debate, he said, was "about what is your theory of change".
"It is a good question" - he should always be asking that question, Shaw said.
Shaw appears to have been proved right that he is vastly more popular with members than delegates.
This second vote was conducted along slightly different rules to the first.
The first vote was a truly secret ballot. Delegates were obliged to vote in line with the wishes from the members of their branches, but there was no way of knowing for sure whether they actually did.
The second vote required each vote to be witnessed by multiple branch members, meaning there was no way of voting against the wishes of a branch. This means that the 97 per cent support registered in the second vote can be said to reasonably express the will of the membership in a way the first vote perhaps did not.
It could also be true that delegates who voted against Shaw in the first round switched votes to back him in the second round after no other candidate emerged, or because they were impressed with his listening exercise.
New rules agreed to at the party AGM also took effect that changed the distribution of delegates.
Generally, pro-Shaw parts of the country like Wellington got more delegate votes, potentially at the expense of anti-Shaw parts.
Turnout was also far higher, with only eight delegates not voting.
The vote did what it needed to do.
After an embarrassing few weeks, first for Shaw, then the party at large, he was re-elected with an overwhelming mandate - one that should be enough to dispel any fears of another contest at next year's pre-election AGM, or worse-still for the Greens, one that would allow National and Act to seed doubt in the party's ability to keep it together during the next parliamentary term.
An avoidable and embarrassing six weeks then, but one which Shaw and the party have wisely chosen to learn from.
They should take comfort. As far as instability goes - it could have been a lot worse.
