Will NZ First get over 5%? I’m saying maybe no

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Winston_Peters
The more and more I read, the more and more I suspect that maybe, just maybe, NZ First will not get over 5%.

I’ve given my 5 reasons as to why NZ First won’t get over 5%, they are…

1 – Phil Goff’s candidacy was one of the most wooden in recent political memory. He made C3P-O look like a ballet dancer. Cunliffe’s talent is his oratory, expect Labour to woo back more voters from NZ First than it lost.

2 – This elections Tea Pot Tape scandal will be the Kim Dotcom Town Hall meeting, and there’s nothing in that for energising Winston.

3 – Winston the man himself. At 69, the great campaigner ain’t the boxer he was. One need only reflect on his terrible swing and miss with Judith Collins this year in Parliament to see that Winston is a tad punch drunk. He has set the bar so high in terms of his performances to date, it will be difficult I think for him to match his own high standards.

4 – Lack of a future. Beyond Winston, who does NZ First have? Tracey Martin is the only MP worth keeping, the others contribute little more than Parliamentary Tie updates on twitter. Now if that smart young Curwen Rolinson was in the running to be an MP, you’d have some type of future arrangement, but the cavalcade of stiffs currently crowding NZ First benches looks like it has about as much future direction as the Titanic.

5 – The 5th reason why Winston won’t get over 5% however is the most damaging – Colin Craig and the Conservative Party. Colin’s money has bought top level political strategists (I have my suspicion as to who it is) and those top level strategists have shrewdly concluded NZ First voter profile matches the Conservatives voter profile and the mass copy and paste of NZ First policy by the Conservatives is a very obvious attempt at stealing Winston’s voter base.

Now my learned colleague Curwen Ares Rolinson will argue that NZ First will be back and his eloquence and passion can’t be faulted. The conclusion of his argument however has been made a lot more difficult to accept in the face of a blistering examination of NZ First’s numbers by blogging titan, Gordon Campbell

In 2011, New Zealand First got 6.59 % of the vote, or 147,544 votes nationwide. Given that 2,257,336 votes were cast that year, the 5% threshold was 112,866 – or in other words, NZF has a cushion of 34,678 votes based on the 2011 turnout. If, however, the various voter mobilisation drives now under way around the country bear fruit, everyone will need lift their game to reach 5%. So where does Peters’ strongest support currently lie? No surprise to find that Tauranga – where NZF got 14.9% of the party vote last time round – is its stronghold. Less obviously, Peters could still rely in 2011 at least, on a remarkably loyal following in the Maori seats.

In each of the Maori seats in 2011, NZF’s share of the party vote exceeded the 6.59% it scored nationwide, at times substantially: e.g. Waiariki (10.94%) Tamaki Makaurau (10.45%) Te Tai Tokerau (9.86%) Te Tai Hauauru (7.94%) Te Tai Tonga (8.76%) Ikaroa Rawhiti (8.30%) and Hauraki-Waikato (9.83%) Taken together, the NZF tally in Tauranga and the Maori seats combined was 17,674 votes – or around half of all the votes for NZF above the MMP threshold.

Is that significant? Well, a lot of water has flowed under the bridge since 2011. In Flagship Tauranga, the NZF standard bearer that year was Brendan Horan, who is now not only estranged from Peters, but on the vengeance trail. This time around in the Maori seats, the Mana Party is shaping up as a far more serious contender than it was in 2011 – and not only in the Maori seats, but in seats with a high number of Maori on the general roll. It will be a much harder road for Peters, this time.

…the extra problem for Winston are the millions of dollars the Conservative Party have to spend to get their pound of flesh by taking NZ First policy and splitting the conservative vote in a 2017 strategy as payback for getting tricked in East Coast Bays. If the Labour vote was collapsing as much as satanic jester Matthew Hooton whispers, then NZ First would be hitting 8%, they aren’t, they are barely over 5%.

4 COMMENTS

  1. You have forgotten nat supporters that will walk away from national this election, they will not go to Labour or Colin they will see winnie as the best bet to swing back to supporting national, this election will hinge on percentages being polled in the polls just prior to the election for nat voters, winnie history is if he polls high 4s he gets elected.. i can see winnie getting between 8-10% and then it becomes not who he will work with but who will work with him… the greens ultimately will be the king maker not winnie.. they will have to work with him otherwise the outcome will be certainly him swinging right

    • You are absolutely right, I don’t know how many Natl supporters, some of the regulars, that call into talkback have said they will not vote Natl this year over sales of our land to foreigners. They would have gone to NZ First.
      Sorry guys, but this bloody mess on Youtube with chantings of Fuck John Key has probably sent most of them back to National.
      Good on yer, I thought we might have him on the ropes for a minute or 2 there but you had to go and fuck it up

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