Tauranga City Council spent more than $135,000 on election marketing. Photo / File
Voter turnout was the hot topic this general election as just two of the region's eight councils attracted a turnout of more than 50 per cent despite spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on advertising. Zizi Sparks finds out who spent what.
Tauranga City Council spent more than $135,000 trying to encourage people to vote — yet less than half of eligible people bothered to have their say.
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Information released to the Bay of Plenty Times under the Local Government Official Information and Meetings Act revealed how much councils in the region spent encouraging people to vote.
Tauranga City Council spent the largest amount out of Bay of Plenty Regional Council, Rotorua Lakes Council, Western Bay of Plenty District Council, Whakatāne District Council, Ōpōtiki District Council, Kawerau District Council, Taupō District Council and Tauranga City Council.
The council spent $155,909.86 encouraging people to vote in the October elections.
This was made up of $91,303.78 on the 24+ Voting Campaign and $44,270.01 on the Outvote Boomers campaign for a combined total of $135,573.79 plus GST.
Outvote Boomers was set up by the Tauranga Youth Advisory Group to make voting appeal to the younger generation.
Tauranga teens Louis Donovan and Sam Taylor were the key drivers behind the project, but when contacted for comment about how they thought the campaign had been, the Bay of Plenty Times was referred to the Tauranga City Council communications team.
In a written response, community services general manager Gareth Wallis said youth voting figures were unavailable but social media figures suggested the campaign was "tremendously successful".
He said more than 52,000 18 to 35-year-olds were reached on social media and the campaign was seen about 400,000 times.
The Outvote Boomers website was visited almost 2000 times.
"Overall, the voter turnout in Tauranga increased by 2 percentage points. This is considered an excellent result, as the long-term trend has been for lower turnouts."
When asked if the council would run the campaign again, Wallis said it was conceived and led by the Youth Advisory Group and it was up to them to decide what type of campaign they wanted to lead in the future.
Wave Design Consultants Limited helped with both the Outvote Boomers and the 24+ campaign and was the only public relations company contracted by Tauranga's council.
The Bay of Plenty Times compared voter turnouts from 2019 and 2016 for all councils.
Tauranga's turnout was up 2.3 percentage points to 40.3 per cent.
Newly elected Tauranga mayor Tenby Powell said he was not involved in the election marketing but it was good the council had encouraged voting.
"It's really important to vote in the local government elections. I can understand why councils would want to market the idea you should vote.
"Some argue that local government is critically important ... The issues we deal with are critical to the city."
Powell said he was pleased to see money had been put into lifting voter turnout and it appeared to have worked.
He said while the Outvote Boomers campaign had been successful in terms of page impressions on social media, it was impossible to know if that resulted in people voting.
Local Government New Zealand senior policy adviser Mike Reid said there was no proven link between advertising spend and turnout.
The costs reflect the size of the place geographically and population.
"Councils are encouraged to look at what they know about their own community. We encourage them to focus on communities that don't tend to participate as much.
"One of those groups is certainly young people. They are frequently flatters moving around and voting papers may not get to them," he said.
"People who vote are usually those who have been living in the same community a long time. They have a sense of belonging and are more likely to be looking at the state of the local park and they are more likely to be thinking about who's on the local authority."
Reid said the amount councils had spent on election campaigns did not surprise him and how much they had spent depended on multiple factors.
"A big part of it is how big a council is. The larger the authority, the more difficult it is to get the message out the more money you have to spend.
"The costs reflect the size of the place geographically and population," he said.
"It depends on communication techniques different councils use and the other factor would be other demands on council budget and the level of priority the council gives to promoting turn out."
Bay of Plenty Regional Council spent $14,783 on its election advertising as of November 7. Three of its seven constituencies were uncontested.
Between September 20 and October 11 the regional council spent $2825 in the Eastern and Kohī constituencies, $7740 on the Western and Mauao constituencies, and $3860 in the Rotorua constituency. A total of $358 was spent on social media.
A number of invoices were yet to be received so the figures show the total budget allocation for the campaign rather than the actual amount paid.
The smaller councils in the region spent up to $10,325.
Taupō and Kawerau spent nothing on advertising.
Rotorua Lakes Council spent the second highest at $129,000.
Kawerau District Council's finance and corporate services manager Peter Christophers said the council did not incur any additional direct costs for encouraging people to vote and did not engage any public relations company of pay any council-controlled organisations.
The council advertised in its monthly newsletter and reminded people to vote on its website and Facebook page.
Whakatāne District Council advertised on behalf of the three eastern Bay of Plenty councils and carried those advertising costs, Christophers said.
Voter turnout in Kawerau was up 3.3 percentage points to 48.9 per cent.
Taupō District Council did not have its own separate marketing campaign but used the information generated by Local Government NZ and the Society of Local Government.
Most of this was through press releases and existing council advertising such as social media.
Despite this, voter turnout rose 2 percentage points to 52.2 per cent.
Ōpōtiki District Council also spent a relatively low amount. As of the end of October, the council had spent $195.50 on print media advertising. It also had orders outstanding for an additional $1,932.00 for print media, digital images and radio advertising. Voter turnout for the district increased 12.2 percentage, from 41.8 per cent in 2016 to 53 per cent in 2019.
Western Bay of Plenty and Whakatāne district councils both spent about $10,000 but had vastly different voter turnout.
In Whakatāne, $9622.80 was spent and the turnout was up 5 per cent to 51 per cent.
In the Western Bay of Plenty, that figure was $10,325 with a turnout drop of 7.1 per cent to 38.8 per cent.
The money was spent between July and August and included $6430 on print advertising, $3205 on display material and $690 on getting that display material translated into six languages.
All spending figures are GST inclusive.
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