TVNZ Poll – NZ at a Political crossroads – Culture war grievance & revisionist history vs hope & progress

What a fascinating poll from TVNZ that truly highlights where we are as a country right now.

After a year of this terrible hard right, racist, climate denying, beneficiary bashing, disabled abusing Government and National are barely impacted, getting 1 percent less than they did on Election night! Despite all the criticism, National cling on, even with a self entitled rich prick (who bewilderingly can’t help but rub his money in your face any time he gets challenged) as a Leader defies political gravity. National will be celebrating and praying to the Golden Cow of the Dairy Gods that all the mass immigration is finally turning the NZ electorate conservative by importing more conservative cultures into NZ to prop up our low wage economy. Cheap Labour for cheap milk powder plus cheap reactionary votes, it’s a win, win, win for National.

Labour continue to drown in their own mediocrity and inability to get the Public Service to do anything more than re-arrange bureaucratic structures and pretend that’s equality. They won 26% on election night and have clawed back 29% in this Poll. People want to believe in Labour again, desperately, fervently, hungrily want more from Labour and yet Labour still can’t deliver anything more than a cold sausage roll.

The Greens manage to shake off the bloody Darleen Tana nonsense (just vote her out already!) and are threatening to be half of Labour’s vote if they work their shit out. The Greens should be taking over Auckland, but they are not. The middle class suburbs that incubated many Labour Leaders voted Green because the Green Wealth Tax was intellectually far more significant than the cold sausage roll Chippy was offering. The Greens are not capitalising on this because they are consumed with fighting the They/Thems. Greens scored 11% on election night and limp to 12% a year on. Luckily for Labour, the Greens have all the offensive capacity of moss. Golriz popping back up in the media wanting to challenge her VERY fair sentencing won’t help. Meanwhile the Planet burns.

ACT will be disappointed by 8%. They got 8.6% on Election Night, the level of mainstream media attention Seymour has managed in the last 12months has been remarkable and yet ACT are lower than they were on Election Night. The cross burning, redneck culture war jamboree excites the social media hate algorithms but they leave many Kiwis cold. ACT mistake enormous social media interaction driven by a global audience rather than a domestic one for their stat success and confuse that with electoral excitement for race wars. This nothing no where result after dominating the news cycle for 12months should worry ACT.

NZF will be similarly worried. Shane Jones’s hot mess culture war social media feed reads like a 19year old Incel who hasn’t masturbated  to Hentai porn for 72 hours. The frenetic spittle drenched proclamations against Freddy the Frog and the Nephs on the couches shtick always plays well to a provincial white grievance that loves Shane and Winston for saying the racist things they can’t say at the Cosmopolitan Club any more, but it’s a dying minority in a country whose future is younger and browner. NZF is a party utterly overrun by the antivaxx movement and all the crazy shit they believe. To keep that increasingly toxic and radioactive movement sated, Winston will increasingly lose the centre. NZF won 6% on election night and have dropped to the threshold after all the publicity they have gained in the last 12months.

The Māori Party continue to sit pretty and harvest the votes of Māori shocked by how racist this Government is, but as the economy gets far harsher and as the poverty more extreme, Māori voters will demand more from the Māori Party than political theatre and stunts in Parliament. If it’s all hat and no trouser, then voters will move back to Labour in droves. Jacinda’s ‘kindness’ became her weakness when the economic tide turned and the Māori Party’s identity will become equally hollow if they have no solutions beyond ‘be Māori’.

TOP once again surprise with 3%, which is up on their 2% election night result and highlights the genuine discontent with the main parties and the two 1% fringe parties highlights the remaining power of post-Covid grievance.

Preferred PM shows what everyone already knows. People don’t like Luxon and they still blame Chippy…

What is most interesting is that a majority believe we are heading in the wrong direction…

…this is the most telling part of the Poll.

NZ is at a political cross roads, we either allow Culture war grievance & revisionist history to overtake our reason or we demand hope and progress.

The legislative blitzkrieg launched by the Right are all for their donor class against the common good.

The Left needs to work together and define that common Good.

The truth is that the political landscape is far closer and the Rights hold on power far more brittle than is comprehended.

On this Poll, the Right only have a 3 seat majority. They have no mandate for the enormous neoliberal austerity privatisation agenda they are driving.

The Right can be defeated, the Left just needs to work together.

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