What we are seeing with NZF taking ACT vote is a function of the highly polarised political environment we operate in now.
If you are a cross-burning, banjo twanging redneck culture war boomer, you want your bigotry full strength, not the diet sugar free version that ACT are offering behind flimsy intellectual fig leaves.
Thanks to social media hate algorithms, you want your bigotry to be full bodied and cruel and no one is offering up full bodied cruelty like NZF.
When Culture War Boomers like Chris Trotter refer to themselves as ‘conservative populists’, he’s really talking about being a cultural brownshirt.
NZF have more ‘Rob’s Mob’ populist hate than ACT can muster and thanks to the highly polarised online community, NZF are taking from ACT.
This dynamic has some way to run for NZF because if you look at the sub 5% threshold, there are still plenty of anti-vaxx freak shows that could give their vote to Winston, with Freedoms NZ going up 1.5 points to 2.3%.
Anti-Trans, climate denial, anti-Treaty, anti-vaccine, pro-Israel, pro-Trump, weaponised free speech – these are all the alt-right boomer culture warrior talking points and Winston’s anti-intellectualism is more appealing to the gumboots of NuZilind than Seymour’s zen poet routine.
If Winston really wanted to slay ACT, he’d knife Seymour’s Regulatory Bill that is currently floundering and play the National Sovereignty hero role.
Meanwhile National slide into the 20s which has always historically been the zone National replace whoever is the leader, however Luxon is safe for two reasons.
The first is that Erica Stanford is the lead candidate but can’t win it because of her skeletons in the closet, so if anyone other than Erica takes leadership it will arouse questions about why she didn’t.
The bigger issue for National however is that they are failing, not just because Luxon has all the charm of a road accident, but because the economy is in free fall and that’s because of Nicola Willis and her poor decision making at the beginning of the 2024 election which has caused cascade Industry failures throughout NZ.
Removing Luxon doesn’t solve that issue, so Luxon AND Willis would both need to go and there is NO appetite for that kind of move inside a Party as uptight as National.
So Luxon is safe because the other choices would be more destructive.
Increasingly having independent opinion in a mainstream media environment which mostly echo one another has become more important than ever, so if you value having an independent voice – please donate here.
Auckland economically is about to turn. Within the next 6 months most remaining fixed in the 7s will go onto high 4s-early 3s; new home buying hasn’t been better since the mid 2010s and demand from the regions (post fonterra brands sale) will mean more goods to be imported via Auckland-based businesses.
This will have an effect on polling numbers remembering all the left has got is tax-and-spend (on shit) and rabbithole radicalisation. It’s a numbers game – neither National or Labour are likely to get into the 40s again for a while as both are dependent now on manufactured mcMPs without any life experience or the skeletons that this entails.
From a consolidation point of view the electoral result is within the margin or error. The issue for the left is the economy is likely to get better rather than worse from now until the election. Hipkins (sorry Willie has) has also made the decision to align with the MP rather than put an olive leaf out to NZF. If the polls turn this will be a fu#k up of an epic scale.
“Spend on shit”. Ferries and infrastructure are not shit. Tax and spend on infrastructure, healthcare and education would be money well spent. Like a ZB devotee you look to the housing market as the answer
Willis has been on a mission to sink the economy ,starting with the ferries on day one .Her mates are closing up shop faster than John walker in his hey day .Shit is bad when the herald business suck ups are saying she and Luxon are crap and rank them lower than the uneducated education minister .
Sorry Frank. The majority of Aucklanders don’t have a mortgage so falling mortgage rates aren’t going to have the effect the Coalition are praying for and crowing about.
You are right on the money Frank .Anyone who has tried to revive a failed business has to stop all activity so that correction can be made to turn thinks around. VZoters in 2023 saw the mess we were in and voted for a change of direction .That has happened with inflation undercontrol housing market stable and work in the pipeline.
Do we really want want Luxon rolled – he’s such a huge asset to the Left? He never stops bumbling along, foot now permanently in his drooling mouth, saying exactly what comes into his empty head whether it is sensible or stupid. His claims of late re number of jobs out there show just how desperate and out of touch he is. If he were even half a man he would fall on his sword now and put his party and the voters out of their misery but he’s such an extreme egotist it wouldn’t even dawn on him that he is way, way past his use-by-date and is now a huge, permanent embarrassment to his party and enablers.
Frank admires what the right is doing in so many countries and the progress they bring. Why just yesterday US tax dollars paid for some idiot to say circumcision causes autism! How f’ing stupid can people be? Pretty f’ing stupid. Is that Shona Laing in the background?
Compared to the Shite that USAid funded during the Biden years autistic circumcision is well ahead of the curve