200 days until NZ Election: Labour, National, ACT, NZF, Greens, Te Pati Māori + TOP predictions
Last election voters were bitter post-covid and turned on Jacinda for having the temerity to save 20 000 lives. These angry voters elected a hard right Government without understanding what that would mean because it was all a grudge fuck against Labour.
The resulting anti-Māori, anti-Treaty, anti-beneficiary, anti-renter, anti-worker, anti-disabled and anti-environment agenda might be fine and dandy for reactionary white voters who despise reading, but for everyone else it’s been a nightmare.
The latest TVNZ Poll tells us it’s all game on.
It’s 200 days until the 2026 election and the latest polls are predicting that this Government would embarrassingly become a 1 term government.
With Trump’s fuel inflation yet to hit and the possibility of 7.5% inflation, no Government can stay in power with that level of economic disharmony.
Nothing is for certain, but watching the train wreck of Luxon’s latest desperate attempt to save his job doesn’t provide much hope for National while ACT sink and NZF stall.
While we can never underestimate the Left’s capacity to devour their own, right now the danger is for National, ACT and NZF.
NATIONAL – prediction 25%
Luxon is so robotic he makes C3-PO look wooden. His lack of empathy, the rich prick smugness and his inability to see anything wrong in his performance are all fine a dandy traits to be inside Trump’s Cabinet, but Kiwis need to see some actual benefit.
Which they are not.
The real achilles heel is National’s economic vandalism. The austerity budgets that have borrowed for tax cuts while hollowing out public services has caused mayhem which wash up on the streets as homelessness, inequality and poverty.
With 600 000 needing food banks monthly, a prediction of 6% unemployment and a Treasury warning of 7.5% inflation, voters will look at claims of ‘growth, growth, growth’ as a nonsense.
I predict they will collapse to 25% because the economy is turning and Luxon is actually getting worse.
LABOUR – prediction 38%
The Labour Wellington Mandarins argue incrementalism is the only way forward. Chippy is less a PM and more an emotional support Labrador for a country freaking out at how cruel this Government became. Labour are promising little more than, ‘we won’t be as cruel as National’, but at a time when people are hurting, that’s enough.
I’m not really looking at Chippy as the great socialist utopia, because that ain’t his bag. Chippy is a decent bloke who wouldn’t have embarked upon the majority of this Governments agenda.
When those doors close and they are all alone making decisions when we can’t see them, Chippy is the sort of guy who will rule for everyone, not just his rich donors.
That decency is what punters are yearning for.
GREENS – 12%
It will be tough going for Greens this election, because they need to target the youth non-vote and the large chunk who have moved to Australia, two groups who are invisible in the current Polls, so Green gains won’t be seen until the Specials come in. Because Labour intend to be so incremental, it will be up to Chloe to really bring the muscle to the negotiations and the success of the next Government will rely on Green Policy to be truely transformative.
NZF – 9%
Back in 2016 when the woke cancel culture Lynch mobs were in full flight, I argued that all the Right needed to do to sink the Left was actually post some of the crazy shit our woke middle class identity politics activists were saying and the shock wave to your average voter would turn them against us.
I think the same dynamic is now at play with NZF. Their online activists are so toxic and so hateful that they themselves are becoming an advert to not vote for NZF.
NZF hate trolls are so radioactive they become the brand and that brand is ugly.
NZF have peaked and as they become less relevant, their toxic supporters will thrash around more and become even uglier.
ACT – 7%
The problem for ACT is that the stoical media hate algorithms have polarised the right wing electorate so much that they want their bigotry full bodied and not the diet version ACT offer.
ACT provide a libertarian fig leaf to the Rights malice, racism and bile but red pilled right wingers want full MAGA not David’s twerking.
As Winston raises the rhetoric, he will attract these voters, not ACT.
TPM – 4 electorates + 2% to create MMP Overhang
TOP – 5%
They offer for blue green urban voters who can’t vote National anymore a way to have a vote. TOP are the antidote to toxic tribalism and bring a dynamic disruptor capacity. Could work well with Labour/Green/TPM.
The Greens need TPM as a united front to negotiate with Labour so as to avoid Labour’s incrementalism trap, because John Tamihere is the kind of hard nosed negotiator that the Greens lack.
For a Labour/Green/TPM Government to actually succeed, it has to implement policy that has a transformative impact on the material well being of voters and for that to happen, Greens + TPM have to stage the greatest negotiations of their lives with Labour’s Incremental Wellington Mandarins.
TOP could gain real policy wins as well and provide Labour with a safety valve if TPM start to implode again.
A Labour/Green/TPM/TOP Government could be as revolutionary as the first Savage Government.
That is worth getting out on the streets to fight for.
We have 200 days!
