3 months out from 2017 election – National in danger, Labour dependent on ground game, Greens self-flagellating, NZ First turbo charging

3 months out from a General Election and the list of issues that our political class and corporate media are avoiding this month are…

• Did other Ministers hear the Todd Barclay tapes?
• Do those Ministers need to be interviewed by the Police?
• Why do the NZ Police have a terrible history of hurrying prosecution and investigation into right wing political crimes but not ones that hurt the Government?
• How much was paid out to keep the staff member illegally taped silent?
• What commercial role does Peter Thiel have with the NZDF, SIS AND GCSB and how much did that relationship decide his citizenship?
• Does the Government allow HackingTeam to operate in NZ and do they have contacts with Thiel?
• The Housing crisis is spreading throughout the country in a vast ripple and the Government won’t measure housing affordability and the numbers they do release are heavily tampered with to make the Government look good.
• The constant and wilful manipulation of Government statistics while strangling official information requests.
• Homelessness out of control and filling motels throughout the city as ghettos while Boarding Houses so run down they are effective slums are barely policed by a local Government that doesn’t have the resources to be effective or competent.
• Suicide rates that are out of control and may be twice as high as officials claim
• Catastrophic climate change and how we will adapt to that
• Polluted rivers destroyed by dairy farming
• Egregious under investment in infrastructure, so much so that we fear the ability of Auckland City to cope with two major events at once with America’s Cup and APEC
• A mental health system that functionally doesn’t work.

…it’s almost as if the Middle Classes who are property investors don’t care as long as they can get another 5% in untaxed capital gain and those desperately just trying to get by don’t have the time or energy to engage while the mainstream media go on a hysterical feeding frenzy over Labour’s International Interns who were framed in a negative light.

Meanwhile Winston purrrrrrs.

 

Political Party Challenges:

NATIONAL – current poll of polls 47.5%

Wow. What a month! Out of no where, Bill English was body slammed by the Todd Barclay revelations and the shock of how poorly he handled the barrage of questions left many asking if Bill English was going to do a Theresa May and meltdown in the heat of the actual campaign.

And I’d argue that’s a very real possibility. English can’t lie down the barrel of the camera the way Key could and the weakness and shifty squint eyed responses English gives are so cringeworthy that you’re forced to avert your eyes its so ghastly.

Hillary Barry beat him up for 8 minutes on Breakfast TV. It was the worst political interview I’ve ever seen by a Prime Minister.

There ain’t nothin like Hillary Barry in full journalist attack mode.

The Police have re-opened the Barclay investigation so it gives credibility to the whole sordid affair.

National benefitted from the poll being taken while the mainstream media were describing the budget as a ‘family friendly left wing’ budget. The real criticism and Barclay fiasco haven’t been taken into account yet.

The Housing Crisis keeps highlighting the emptiness of National’s vision.

The National Party are also now in a dilemma. The dichotomy of the National Party is that they preach small business morality but pass legislation for big business interests. This frustration is reaching boiling point in the North Island provinces who see they provide the economic muscle for bugger all infrastructure investment.

Those voters are rushing towards NZ First.

If National lean back towards the provinces while Auckland is gridlocked Auckland votes will be at risk.

The female vote that National have had under Key is up for grabs by Labour’s secret campaign weapon, Jacinda Ardern.

The factions within National will start to panic if National’s Party vote slips to 43%.

Watch Judith Collins.

 

LABOUR – current poll of polls 26.9%

 

The only kind thing that can be said about the Labour Party this month was that when the intern story broke they immediacy owned up and dealt with it.

The way they handled it gave them mana, and it cauterised the issue.

The underlying problem of needing to excite youth voters remains unsolved and Labour’s lack of visionary Left policy continues unchallenged.

Last week Winston Peters announced writing off students loans if they stayed in NZ for 5 years. That’s actually secret Labour party policy and by holding it back they’ve allowed Winston to steal some of their thunder, but if Labour repeat it, it will have far greater impact and give Labour a huge lift amongst Tertiary students.

If Labour announce a new way to wipe student loan debt, it would change the result of the election.

With the rise of NZ First in the Provinces, Labour look like they will be a mainly urban based party, which can work in their favour if they drum in a 2 tick strategy.

I think Labour’s secret weapon on the campaign trail is going to be Jacinda who shoulder to shoulder with Andrew is going to provide a style of collective leadership that voters are yearning for.

If Labour win Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch, they change the government.

Their worker rights reforms were mild and their restrictions on foreign students gained support but ultimately hurt by the perception of the Interns.

Labour’s success rests on their ability to turn out the urban areas, it will be their ground game that will gets them over 30%.

As NZ First’s popularity climbs, the important relationships with Winston that MPs like Stuart Nash, David Parker, Kelvin Davis and Willie Jackson have will become vital for Labour to get anything done in a Labour-NZ First minority Government.

GREENS – current poll of polls 12.2%

The ritualistic self-flagellation of the Greens last month for daring to suggest a sustainable population cap was an environmentally justifiable response to the constant dynamics of growth was a public step away from the Greens as an activist environmental party and its final transformation into a middle class identity politics movement.

Whether the academic activist electorate is currently maxed out or is waiting to vote on mass is yet to be seen but arguing the interests of those who recently arrive should impede the interests of those who are already living here is a huge jump to make for an environmental party who once saw population control as the unspoken truth within sustainability.

For those with the class skills to maximise free market globalisation, migrant rights are a new holy grail of cosmopolitan etiquette on par with binary gender dynamics, intersectional feminism and correct pronoun micro aggressions.

Pitching directly for this well educated and smart new electorate makes sense as TOP erode the cannabis vote and Labour and NZ First start sounding like racist old family members drunk at Christmas dinner.

The challenge will be how they manage NZ First’s cross burning electoral barnstorming. The new generation of candidates are going to have to do all the heavy lifting in terms of media coverage as James Shaw is a very mediocre campaigner and Metiria has been missing in action.

 

 

NZ FIRST – current poll of polls 9.2%

Matthew Hooton keeps braying to anyone who will listen that NZ First are going to have a huge win this year, and he’s right, they are, but he always follows that up with the claim Labour are going to be the casualty of this gain.

I think he’s utterly wrong there.

Winston’s success in Northland and Jones candidacy in Whangarei speaks to something else entirely.

The rupture between the provinces and Auckland isn’t just economic, it’s cultural.

Look at the careful wording Jones has used to date. Mentioning politically correct and talking openly about speaking to issues that  make people feel uncomfortable is the full on cultural confrontation that the provinces are demanding.

The very snide elite opinion on display interviewing Jones on TV3’s The Nation is the exact thing the provinces are rebelling against, but the seeds of that discontent is with National voters, not Labour ones.

Labour with Jacinda are aiming at the urban centres where the type of bloke folksy routine Jones spins is an anathema, but it is National Party voters who are most hungry for change.

They don’t see National progressing their concerns, they don’t see their infrastructure invested in, they don’t see their interests progressed, just big business mates of the Government.

Look at the recent stuff survey looking at voter attitudes. While not scientific because people selected to participate, it did have almost 40 000 participate. The most interesting part of that poll was just how frustrated male National voters  are with the Party.

This frustration feels no home with Labour or the Greens as they represent the very cultural elitism that alienates these voters. To these voters the Greens and Labour can’t decide if they are Arthur or Martha and if they could decide would spend the next 12 months arguing over pronoun use.

In Shane Jones and Winston Peters this simmering resentment deep within the North Island provinces against lazy slack National MPs who have time served their existence through to double chinned backbench impotency is ready to explode.

A change of Government is now a real possibility.  I think NZ First will leap frog to the 3rd largest party at the downfall of National and the most likely outcome will be a Labour-NZ First minority Government with Green Party supply and confidence for Cabinet Positions.

Shane Jones is NZs truest Donald Trump and Muddle Nu Zilind will lap the Jonesy up like a prodigal son returned from making it big in Sydney.

Low horizons on a flat earth.

Stuart Nash will be weeping into his pillow watching his plans for a Provincial Labour revival evaporate to NZ First .

Winston Peters could well be the next Prime Minister.

 

MAORI PARTY – current poll of polling 1%

Marama Fox received severe blowback over her comments regarding students living like slave labour when the reality suggests the issue was overblown. Fox was left beached when the tide of indignation turned.

Cleverly they have cut a deal with Pacific Island groups in an attempt to raise their Party vote, but these types of alliances require far more genuine time than this hastily thrown together one.

It has all the feeling of a Plan B after they ran out of Maori candidates.

The Maori Party should be higher than they are polling if they want to ensure Fox is returned off the Party List.

 

UNITED FUTURE – current polling 0.1%

Surprise, surprise all of a sudden Peter Dunne is making all sorts of soothing words about drug reform. Watch him forget all those words the bloody second the election is over. Greg O’Connor still drawing a lot of attention. O’Connor has been doing far better than anyone expected on the local issues.

 

ACT – current polling 1%

What the bloody hell is this photo about? Is it ACT’s small Government policy? Is this the future of user pays transport under an ACT Government? Is this how unionists will be punished once Seymour becomes the Minister for Labour?

The Greens have out manoeuvred his attempt to portray himself as the only Party for migrants so his ace card to get another MP in off the Party List is fading.

 

TOP – current polling .4%

Have made Mika their Auckland Central candidate, clever move. Social media campaign and press releases have lifted their profile and the meetings are being hugely attended.

Lots of anecdotal, ‘I’m thinking about voting for TOP’ comments from people across the political spectrum.

Will continue to surprise, needs a way to enter the election debates or will get drowned out.

 

MANA – current polling .2%

I have a lot of time for Hone, he’s a great bloke, but his call to execute Chinese P Dealers was so far off the mark it’s difficult to come back from.

A statement like that just made his fight with Kelvin far harder to win.

 

The biggest indicator for a genuine desire for change came earlier this year from two Horizon Polls.

The first is how there is a change of sentiment amongst the 2014 and 2017 electorate…

…in the 2014 election, 56% wanted a National led Government, this time 54% want a Labour led Government. That’s a clear signal for change. The second interesting thing is that 77% of NZ First voters want a Labour led Government…

…if NZ First does hold the balance of power, their own members overwhelmingly want  Labour to lead the Government. The caveat to that is NZ First are about to drag in a large number of National voters this time around.

My conclusion 3 months out is the same I had last month, I think the 2017 election will be close and won on the margins, but if there is a change of Government, the most likely outcome will be a Labour-NZ First minority Government with the Greens in supply and confidence for a couple of Ministry positions.

Second likeliest outcome is National with a NZ First coalition Government

But, that turns around if National don’t take a hit in the next round of Polls. If National remain high, one would have to start saying it will be most likely a National Party + ACT + Maori Party  Government.