You know why I think Labour are surging? Netflix
Is Labour surging in the polls because voters are rethinking the COVID years? A new TVNZ poll and the unexpected cultural impact of a Netflix documentary may be changing the political mood.
TVNZ are the beige cardies of the polling world.
They rarely bring surprises and they are very safe.
To see Labour jump five points is almost unprecedented.
It’s either a rogue poll or something dramatic is happening in the electorate.
I think if what we are seeing in the TVNZ poll is real and there has been an enormous jump for Labour, I think it’s down to two things, the failing economy and Netflix.
Has Netflix changed the political mood?
Why Netflix?
The Jacinda documentary, ‘Prime Minister‘ that has just been released on Netflix a month ago.
Normally a documentary wouldn’t get much viewing in cinemas, but Netflix is ubiquitous and it has allowed kiwis to re-examine the COVID lockdowns via a very different lens.
I personally have been very surprised by how many people have reached out to tell me that they have seen the doco and now have a very different perspective.
I think Covid turned negative for us as an experience and the hate trolls took over the narrative and away we went to the races on hating Labour for having the temerity to save 20,000 lives, have one of the best global responses to COVID and one of the lowest levels of economic shut down.
I think in the quiet of their own homes, Kiwis have reflected on a lot of that post-COVID bitterness and absolved a lot of their anger towards Jacinda.
I think the documentary has actually had an enormous cultural impact that is revealing itself now.
We have much to be proud of in our COVID sacrifice and New Zealanders are rethinking their evaluation in the light of the doco.
Why Jacinda Ardern still haunts the Right
The reason the political Right must destroy Jacinda and demonise her is because she put public health before private profit and the Death Cult Capitalists will never forgive her for that.
This documentary gives Kiwis space in their own spaces to re-interact with that fraught time and look at it from a different perspective.
That doco gets the Gen X salute 🫡
Oh! And the WHO, the CDC, the Health Department, the MSM and governments across the West, bent over backwards to assure everyone Covid19 wasn’t a bioweapon research project that escaped from a Lab known to be unsafe and so told porkies that it was just a bug from a dirty Chinese wet market.
Ha!
I thought that when Luxon reminded everyone that Winston put Ardern into government his minders were screaming “NO NO NO! Don’t remind them of competent and capable leadership”.
More evidence of Luxon’s “ability”…
Way past time for the ugly trolls et al to finally admit to themselves they were spiteful and unduly harsh. Jacinda brought NZ through a world crisis, that could have killed thousands more, with dignity and aplomb, and we should ALL have shown gratitude for her ‘twentyfour-seven commitment’. It would have been harrowing for her to see how some turned against her and even now, she fears living in NZ for the safety of her family. Shame on those who used her as a scapegoat! You are truly missed Jacinda – you were our shining light at a very dark time and now you have raised the Left’s hopes with your documentary – well done.
I think it is a rogue poll, but even then, National is still falling.
Should we have had a federal or devolved system where different regions set their own covid policies independent of Wellington?
More independence from Wellington would not have helped with the anti vax community who were not interested in any evidence that did not confirm their bias. Hindsight allows us to accept that vaccine mandates were a major barrier to a peaceful consensus over the issue although in a society that still thinks that alcohol and tobacco along with excessive sugar are personal choices even though they cause many health problems it’s unlikely that rational decisions would get universal approval.
Hindsight
I went right along with the covid health recommendations and think those in power were in general doing their best* but hindsight lets us see that the anti-vax crowd had good reason to be suspicious of pharma companies, the msm and the government’s attitude to freedoms.
+ the moderna vaccine was withdrawn from sale due to side effects
+ natural immunity was downplayed by officials to encourage wider vaccination
+ reports of frequent incidence of myocarditis in young men was not acted upon (who cares about young men!)
+ the vaccine did not prevent people catching covid (it reduced the chance they would be admitted to hospital, which is not how a vaccine usually works)
+ people were removed from their jobs if they were unvaccinated but the vaccine did not actually prevent transmission
“This study showed that the impact of vaccination on community transmission of circulating variants of SARS-CoV-2 appeared to be not significantly different from the impact among unvaccinated people”, The Lancet.
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-30992100768-4/fulltext
+ big pharma were given legal immunity from prosecution if their vaccines proved dangerous.
+ highly qualified, experienced doctors and epidemiologists, previously held in high regard worldwide but who held contrarian views on the handling of the epidemic, were disparaged and slandered by the msm.
Also, in hindsight, it would have been good if Jacinda had walked down to the protest with Winston and talked to people, many of whom were working-class Labour voters.
*obviously not the Health Minister who had to resign