Labour at 59% – Winners/Losers & what every journalist & punter is missing
BOOM!
The TVNZ Poll follows the Newshub Poll in showing an enormous swing to Labour. This is as unprecedented as the pandemic itself, never before in MMP history has one Party had a realistic shot at becoming the majority Government and it has ramifications throughout the entire political landscape of NZ.
WINNERS
Jacinda Ardern – She is a god damned phenomena. Her emotional intelligence, communication and her sense of where Middle Nu Zilind cautiously sit ideologically has given her instincts that have become almost super powered. Disgustingly Cautious when it comes to meaningful welfare and inequality reform and a super star when we enter a crisis, she has steered us through terrorism, volcanism and the almost bubonic plague. She is building a 4 term legacy here and will be off to the UN afterwards to lead that. She has recast leadership from the masculine to the feminine without compromising on strength. Who would ever have thought we would see the day when Kindness was actually a quality in modern leadership?
ACT – ACT have played the culture war perfectly, the Woke Identity Politics activists keep feeding David ammunition and he keeps using it to attract the disaffected angry white male vote. With National in free fall expect more hardline National votes to move to ACT.
Maori Party – If they pick up an electorate seat, their 1.2% here could easily expand to a second MP off the list.
LOSERS
Labour – Being a majority Government can be as much a curse as a blessing. Currently Jacinda and Grant can pretend their own cautious political instincts aren’t the ones stopping any real progress on inequality, housing or welfare reform. They can blame Winston, but as a majority Government there is no where Labour can hide on those issues. If Labour wins majority Government they will actually have to do something on a whole range of issues, the problem is the talent pool inside Labour is a puddle and with total power comes Ministers whose deficits will become glaringly obvious. Labour could quickly become a victim of their own success if they don’t have real structural change in mind come the day after the election.
National – Oh how the mighty have fallen. The simple truth is that National don’t themselves know what the hell they stand for other than preventing the Left from taking political power. When free market selfishness is all you have to offer an electorate shell shocked by crisis, you quickly fail to be politically relevant. The first rule of the State is to protect the people, National want to gut red tape, recreate the housing crisis and smash up worker rights while attacking beneficiaries and gang members. Kiwi’s just shared a universal experience, they want to know how National will help them, not who National will beat up on their behalf.
Simon Bridges – Poor bugger, National’s problems aren’t Leadership, National could have been led by Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher and Blonde Blue Eyed Jesus and they would still be polling 30%! If Todd Muller is the answer, your’ve asked the wrong fucking question.
Greens – As TDB has been pointing out for 3 years, the woke middle class identity activist clique that the Greens have mutated into is a politically alienating as a cup of cold sick. The Spinoff Woke Twitter starting position is all white people are racist, all men are rapists and anyone supporting free speech is an actual card carrying Nazi who probably abuses children WHILE WEARING a Gestapo uniform. Their ridiculous Carbon Neutral by 2050 is a joke and they are more focused on reclaiming the word ‘Cunt’ and being good Trans Allies than the climate crisis. The Greens over poll each election and have gone backwards over the last 9 years so todays 4.7% can easily be 4% on election day. I think the Greens are in survival mode this election, unfortunately they don’t seem to appreciate that and if they do fail to win representation in Parliament, it won’t be their Spinoff level misplaced smugness that will have alienated the voters, oh no, watch them blame the heteronormative white cismale patriarchy for failure at political relevance.
NZF – Who? While they have a story to tell about fractured neoliberalism and free market capitalism that allowed a pandemic like this to erupt, they have no real ideas and no real policy. Winston will keep poking China to try and get an electoral reaction but with a Labour majority really possible here, NZF have become politically irrelevant.
CONCLUSION – what every journalist & punter is missing
I think what these incredible polling results tell us is that there has been a seismic shift in the psychology of the electorate.
Punters and journalists are missing the impact of what this shared universal experience has created, NZers genuinely feel they have sacrificed something through this pandemic. Every weekday for 8 weeks they’ve turned to Jacinda at 1pm and they have felt safer and they have felt proud of her leadership.
They watch the madness of Trump or what’s happening in the UK and they are grateful to Jacinda and with real gratitude comes loyalty in NZ.
For National to have fallen as far as they have, Jacinda has appealed to National voting women, Chinese-New Zealanders and the urban professional classes, groups previously unreachable by Labour.
Todd Muller isn’t going to change that, can you imagine him in the Election Debates up against Jacinda? It will be a homicide, not a political event!
Right now we are looking at a majority Labour Government with a mutilated National, a resurgent ACT and Māori Party minus the Greens and NZ First.
But 4 months is a long time in politics.
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After so many years of National domination of “the narrative” it is tricksy for an old school lefty to believe these figures. Will hands start to shake when that big black marker pen is grasped in the little cardboard booth, or mail in vote form…or will previously aspirational and conservative people be able to bring themselves to party vote Labour?
Jacinda’s ace might be to–after a suitable number of middle class horror stories about WINZ/MSD have emerged, and shit they are popping up already–to disestablish WINZ/MSD, bring in a world leading Basic Income via IRD, and establish a new Social Security Agency for urgent needs, child poverty, disabled etc.
There is a whole “Covid Capitalism” strategy being revealed, where many employers have played the Govt; Fletchers, Air New Zealand and even Carter Holt Harvey and many more are involved. The Govt. did the right thing with its ‘high trust’ model of wage subsidies and loans, otherwise the petit bourgeois sector would likely not have bought into Level 4 Lockdown.
Lets hope these polls can become an election win with National sidelined. After 2023 the generational shift should take care of the rest!
A day is a long time in politics Martyn.
NZF always comes back on election day, and history shows us that NZF poll results sink before election day, so expect their return.
Green Party have made a very serious mistake, pushing out the older ‘grass roots’ Green members for ‘educated urban elite young idealists’ – who turn the public off.
Interesting times.
One thing that has come out of ALL THIS i.e COVID-19 is I am sure as Hell so bloody glad we have a Labour/NZ First/Greens Coalition government than an opportunistic, self-serving, self-obsessed with image and Vanity government like the deceased National,ACT, United Future etc.etc.etc. style of government.
In their current evolution and status National will not achieve much of a vote at the next election. But who knows what 24 hours in a political day can achieve.
After today the next leader and deputy leader of National will be Muller and Amy Adams. The Two B’s(as we may as well call Bridges and Bennett)may well turn out to be Have Beens after 1.00pm today.
Could the Greens or NZFirst pick up a ‘first past the post’ electoral win as the Natz votes crumbles and thus making the less than 5% threshold irrelevant.
Also might ACT loose in Epsom as the crooked Goldsmith, scared for his political career, if he’s not put high enough up the list…..to what number given the speed of the Natz vote crumbling? … mean that he doesn’t hold his nose and be the usual crooked politician and step aside for the irrelevant hologram.
Just a thought.
And if Labour are strong enough to be in Govt without other parties, might Jacinda invite the other parties to join in cabinet so she has a bigger pool of talent?
She will definately need some help because apart from her and Grant there is little talent in the Labour cabinet. Today I heard Twyford on radio .What a train wreck and the same could be said about Kelvin Davies he can hatdly string 2 words together yet is supposed to be highly educated. But who would she bring in there are no Greens worth having and only 2 NZF worthwhile.
High poll result for Labour is an early gut reaction to leadership in a crisis no more no less.
It’s a well known psychological phenomenon – look at Scott Morrison’s polling, unless extremely badly handled as per Trump.
It’s also the reason the govt did the document dump now, in the honey moon phase of the crisis, if certain facts came to light later (eg official advice to shut the border earlier as was the case) when we are feeling the effects of hard economic recession, it would have been far more damaging.
Greens are definitely circling the drain. Deserved.
ACT is being rewarded as the only party which cares about civil liberties and holding government to account.
3 MPs at current polling.
NZ First dunno at the moment. Winston is a flat out liar, most know it but some fall for him every election.
Nats largely irrelevant and at the mercy of events. Parachute in a big name leader – Hosking? for airtime/attempted cut through?
I believe the Jamie Lee Ross tapes play a part in the dislike of Bridges.If as you say Winston is a flat out liar, what does that make Bridges?
I’d take Winston over Bridges any day of the week.
You are right and neither get my vote
Well Winston wasnt lying when he said Bridges won’t make it to the election as leader!
Your last line is as important as anything else you wrote here.
Because as much as people love Jacinda, (a) she is surrounded by lesser mortals who have a penchant for stuffing up, and (b) voters are notoriously fickle.
Over the next four months, we may see a few more own goals, which will erode the current level of support. By how much, who can say?
I do agree that NZF are history, not so sure about the Greens.
Gotta love #NZpol atm.
Oh how the mighty could fall. The simple truth is that Labour know themselves know what the hell they stand for other than preventing the Right from taking political power. The first rule of the State is to protect the people….
And neither of these parties would have a clue how!
If Labour were LEFT, if LABOUR WERE LEFT… then they would do it.
Why spend money – lots of money – on looking at tax reform and doing squat. Why spend money on looking at benefits and then ignore the main recommendation and just tinker around the edges. Because Labour have no balls! Gee don’t want to upset the ‘hardworking’ middle class.
But 4 months is a long time in politics. Neh Martin, this election and surely next election is a done deal for Labour. Don’t be too modest.
Another thing that the media is missing is that National’s percentage of the vote is not the whole story. They keep referring to the early 2000s as the last time National were below 30% but back then ACT had about 7% and United future had a similar amount.
This time ACT has 2%, TOP 1% and NZF has ???. Put simply we’re operating under proportional representation and right wing parties represent only a third of the electorate right now.
Labour will do nothing for beneficiaries if they win on their own.