Newshub Poll – Winners & Losers
As the country oscillates between the depression of home haircuts and incandescent homicidal rage over mask wearing, Newshub’s latest Poll seals the fate for narratives as we end 2021 more polarized than since the Springbok tour.
People trust Labour and are frightened by Judith while being smitten by David Seymour. At any other time this level of skitzerphrenic political confusion would be enough to have the Dr check your meds, in NZ this is how MMP manifests.
There are of course winners and losers.
Winners
Jacinda + Labour – They have saved NZ from mass hospitalizations and death so what do they get for their tireless Covid performance? A never ending hatefest of toxic bile vomited upon them from Maori & Woke claiming their response is a racist genocide to Death Cult Capitalists screaming Jacinda is a coward for not killing her citizens for the economy.
On top of that are religious nutters who think Jacinda is the antiChrist, Qanon lunatics who think she is Nazi Germany and Crystal Karen who thinks she’s raping Gaia.
Yet DESPITE all that, Labour are STILL at 42.7%. This tells us that despite all the bitching and complaining, the middle holds for Labour. Voters have decided that Labour’s flaws are still far preferable than National or ACT’s promises.
David Seymour & ACT – They are seen as the right wing values party and Seymour’s continued performance is out dazzling Judith’s attempt to take reactionary votes off him. Their rise to 16% masks a radical right polarization of politics not seen before in NZ politics.
Let’s remind ourselves of ACTs more crazy shit…
- Cut and freeze the Minimum wage
- Interest back on all student loans
- No Kiwsaver subsidy
- Cancel winter energy payment
- Dump all climate crisis legislation
- no more best start payments for families with new borns
- cut welfare payments
- no tax credits for research and development
- cuts to working for families
- $7b a year cut in public services
- Abolish Maori seats
- Abolish Human Rights Commission
…THAT is getting 16%!
Sweet Zombie Jesus.
ACTs stratospheric rise in the polls started – LIKE I FUCKING WARNED IT WOULD – when the bloody woke identity politics activists went on their deplatforming rampage and tried to strangle free speech off.
Well done wokies, you handed him the ammunition he’s use against us.
Judith Collins – Now you might argue that Judith is a loser in these results, but she’s not! Judith has cemented a loyalty from her Caucus by promoting the most incompetent clowns who know they would never hold that rank under any other leadership ticket and it is this Machiavellian positioning that has kept Judith as leader. She tricked Nick Smith into resigning so his exit would benefit her by bringing in loopy Harete Hipango. Judith loves power more than a Great White Shark loves blood. Any hope she will leave voluntarily is as misplaced as believing Trump will stand for the Democrats in 2024.
Maori Party – Calling the vaccine roll out a ‘modern genocide’ and comparing it to the Squid Games would be punished if it were any other Party, amazingly it’s been rewarded in this poll because radicalizing AntiVaxxers with such emotionally manipulative language is ok when it’s fighting the heteronormative white cis male colonizing patriarchy etc etc etc.
Losers
National – At this stage National couldn’t get laid wearing a banana costume in a monkey brothel. Replacing the leader isn’t enough of a solution.
Beneficiaries and the poor – Labour could pump tens of billions into the speculative property market that spiked house prices but they can do sweet fuck all for the poorest amongst us! A $5 per week lift in some benefits NEXT YEAR is a bitter slap in the face from a political party that sells its compassion as cheaply as a drug addict in debt.
Conclusion
As TDB has been pointing out since 2020 election, ACTs extraordinary rise is no fluke, it is a rupture on the right and represents a chasm of difference between ACT and Labour/Green.
National are in a death spiral brought on by age demographics and a rural/urban divide that is brutally amputating National from anyone right wing under the age of 60.
This gifts ACT unquestioned support from voters who have little idea how extreme ACT Party policy really is.
National has to win the center because it can’t keep fighting ACT for the reactive right while trying to win those center voters over.
Unfortunately in a Delta environment riven by divisive hate, there are no more adults in the room to appeal to.
Labour + Green will win 2023 but with ACT likely to eclipse National in 2022 over the looming Free Speech fiasco, the battleground for 2026 will become the most ideological since Rodger Douglas and the fourth Labour Government.
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Voting in bourgeois parliamentary elections is nearly always voting for the status quo in terms of class power.
A system that historically supports capitalist ownership and appropriation of socially produced wealth will still be there the morning after Election Day.
It used to be a question of voting for a lesser evil when there was a choice between tories and social democratic Labour. But in our neo liberal Parliamentary consensus arrangement, even the Greens are not anti capitalist.
But it is still worth voting because even neo liberal Labour will do certain reforms like boost minimum wage, pay equity for carers, increase paid parental leave etc. Nashnull would not do these things and ACT would remove some of them!
The hope going forward is that new gen voters will rebel against renting over priced dumps for life and thumping great student loans and precarious work with no Basic Income available to tide them over. The boomer tail* will be long but no longer numerically superior so change is now possible in 2023 and 2026–but it will not happen without organisation along class left lines–mark my words!
* yes for the two boomers (I am one too) that get offended by the term, not all older people are selfish grasping bastards and ladder pullers, some like me have been life long activists and battled against Rogernomics and anything else going.
Great comment TM. Same.
TM – I’m not sure about this ‘neo liberal Parliamentary consensus arrangement, even the Greens are not anti capitalist.’ Is the coalition agreement such a binding bandage that it cuts off the blood supply to the vital organs of a progressive Party which is what I thought the Greens were/are supposed to be?
Well I don’t know about the MMP arrangements in that respect really apart from the Green MPs I guess, and they are definitely limited by conventions.
The Parliamentary NeoLib consensus as I, and a couple of other pundits have termed it, is a historical matter really that has evolved over too many years via too many self interested people.
My partner was a Green member and I did some work to support Sue Bradford’s election campaign when she was in the North at Ahipara a few years back, she is back again in Taipa in semi retirement too. At that time the Green members were active and it seemed a highly Democratic Party too me judging by the meetings I attended. There was the EcoNation 2020 movement and various militants.
So something has changed in the party by my estimation. Just when a radical anti capitalist Green movement should get mass support, NZ Greens have wussed out and been captured by the “parliamentary road”. The Green Policy is good if you take the time to read it and I will still vote for them for one more election!
Good on you! And I agree with your analysis here, may it admittedly be the lesser of two weevils rather than something truly inspiring, like wot we really do need…
Good on you Tiger M ! And I agree with your analysis here, may it admittedly be the lesser of two weevils rather than for something truly inspiring, like wot we really do need…but ain’t to be seen anywhere. But we must be practical. The other lot absolutely must not get back in so a bit of perspective ISA good thing.
Be careful Labour was also in a death spiral and polling at low as 22, and stole the election 2014. Can happen the other way around.
There is Trump style anti vaxxing, 3 water power grab, gender transitioning for teens and criminal offences for bad jokes and religion and political views on the way if Labeen get their totalitarian government ideas through.
Of course Labour and Greens are very hypocritical in many areas, especially on water and the environment, so it’s not just made up from the right.
There is public downright hatred out there for Labour. I’m surprised at the intensity of it.
Saying that I despised National when they were in, so maybe that’s what happens at the end of multiple terms. Voters give them the benefit of the doubt for a while, and then send them a message.
Laminate it then.
Judith ain’t going nowhere people! Got it!?
She would rather take the whole stinking rotten rusting ship down with her at the wheel than hand it over. And although we badly need an effective opposition to make Jacinda anything, thats anything, at all mind, it couldn’t happen to a nicer collection of creeps than National inc!
I think Crusher must have actually lost her mind under Key’s whiphand. To think they chased Nikki Kaye out of the party, with her proven Ardern-beating pedigree, for this is truly indicative of something rotten and irrational in the party. It’s Weekend at Bernie’s: the political party.
Late reply but to record it: “Chased Kaye out of the party”? Did you mean she was involved in the Michelle Boag private information leak as deputy leader and pulled the pin rather than face the music?
Just listened to Jacinda announcement about allowing hairdressers to open . It shows that there is obviously noone around that table that has the remotest knowledge of what it takes to run a business . Staff rosters buying product organising clients
suppliers need to ramp up their ordering delivery systems. They were given no heads up. What a shambles.
Labour did a good job when we were first hit by covid and won an election because of it but they are falling down on the job now. It is a pity National are still not in a position to take advantage of this situation
The
Don’t worry the Natzos master strategists are beavering away as we speak, developing a massive king hit on the Govt.–“Merv from Manurewa”, Soymun Bridges, Cam Slater-oil, and their trusty assistant–Mr Woodhouse’s “homeless man”…
Haha hehe hoho thanks for the laughs and spot on commentary Martyn