Where to now for NZ Labour?

Labour’s and Ardern’s polling hit great heights in mid 2020 and gradually declined from then. Labour won 50% in the September 2020 election but their polling continued to decline after that, falling to the low 30s by the time Ardern resigned in January 2022.

This decline was mainly a swing from Labour to National, and it seems to have been driven by a number of factors: some disillusionment with Ardern as a leader, a boost for National following their leadership change in late 2021, and also public dissatisfaction with some of Labour’s policies – or perhaps with the process by which those policies (notably 3 Waters) were being introduced.

A paradoxical situation arose in which National was leading Labour in the preferred party polls by about 5 or 6 percentage points, but its leader (Luxon) was running second, behind Ardern, in preferred PM polls. That suggests that Luxon hasn’t been the only pull factor for National.

What’s driving people from Labour to National can’t be explained solely by leadership, especially in light of Ardern’s higher (albeit declining) rating as preferred PM, up until she resigned. It appears to be about government policy as well.

Many of the roughly 32% who remained with Labour will undoubtedly have been very disappointed to see Ardern step down. But her replacement, Chris Hipkins, is a likeable and competent leader, the transition was smooth and rapid, and it looks unlikely that there’ll be a big drop in support for Labour as a result of it. Labour supporters who are really upset about the loss of Ardern are more likely to consider the Greens as an alternative, rather than Luxon and the National Party.

Labour could experience a boost from the leadership change, on the other hand, even if it’s only a temporary ‘honeymoon’.

But the switch from Ardern to Hipkins won’t reboot Labour in the way that the switch from Andrew Little to Ardern did in August 2017.

Hipkins has to establish himself as likeable, trustworthy and competent, which I think he can do. But, on its own, a change of leader won’t turn the tide and bring back those who’ve defected. To the extent that Ardern’s leadership style had begun to turn some people off, it may help a bit. (Many otherwise decent mild-mannered Kiwis had become annoyed with Ardern’s leadership style.)

The other two main options for Labour now will be addressing the economic stress facing families and rethinking its most controversial policy reforms. And that includes co-governance, as that’s shaping up to be one major line of attack, especially by ACT, and a vulnerability for Labour, in the coming election debates.

There’s no doubt that the Ardern government did a great job in tackling the Covid-19 pandemic, and that meant a relatively low mortality rate. But the living have to make a living…

Ardern’s resignation: was it timely?

Election year 2023 got off to an interesting start when prime minister Jacinda Ardern announced (on 19 January) that she was resigning and would quit parliament in April. The Labour Party caucus would elect a new leader to contest the election in October.

Ms Ardern’s leadership has been widely praised internationally. So, what does this say about her leadership? Was it her time to move aside?

The moments in which Ardern shone as a leader (a terrorist attack, a volcanic eruption and a pandemic) were all events that neither she nor any other sane person would have wished for. And she did a great job leading the country through those difficult times.

But these were not the kinds of things that she’d set out to achieve as a politician. Child poverty was a special concern for her, and, to give her credit, the Labour government did make some strides in addressing that social problem. But it’s not what she’ll be remembered for.

Ironically, her government’s comparative success in responding to the Covid-19 pandemic has contributed a lot to undoing Ardern’s prime ministership, due to the polarization of opinion – and the sheer level of hatred from many people – that arose from the strict measures (vaccine mandates and border controls) that were taken. The pandemic was the making and the breaking of Ardern as prime minister.

Labour meanwhile was trailing behind National in the polls in late 2022, especially after National chose a new leader, Christopher Luxon, in November 2021. Centrist voters were abandoning Labour.

By her own admission, Ardern no longer had the energy to lead the party into the 2023 election. Indeed, she used exactly the same metaphor (‘not enough in the tank’) as John Key had used in 2016 when he stood down as prime minister.

So, New Zealand has now had two popular prime ministers who’ve bowed out voluntarily ahead of an election.

We can view this as a sign of strength: knowing when your job’s done and knowing when it’s time to move aside. Ardern talked about ‘the responsibility to know when you’re the right person to lead, and also when you’re not’, and about knowing ‘when it’s time to go’.

The implication is that she’d reached the conclusion that she was no longer the right person. It takes a brave person to admit that and to act on it.

Her decision wasn’t really a surprise, as the question of the party leadership was raised in late 2021. At that time, I wrote:

‘As the emotional and financial costs and the social divisions [arising from the pandemic] mount up daily in people’s lives, many turn their anger and frustration on the country’s leader… These tensions could become so glaring that a refreshed leadership is necessary in the interests of the party’s future election chances.’

But it remains to be seen how Ardern’s resignation will affect her party’s performance at the election. She has handed Labour an opportunity to refresh its leadership and its policy direction, and it’s up to them to use that opportunity effectively – or not.

What’s wrong with democracy?

The rise of authoritarian leaders and disruptive populists has caused political scientists to warn us about the end of democracy. And a global survey showed that ‘dissatisfaction with democracy’ rose sharply in the USA, UK, Australia, Spain and elsewhere since the 1990s.

Now, ‘democracy’ should mean that most, if not all, people participate in and influence the policy decisions that affect them, which would be satisfying if done well. So, what if our present crisis and dissatisfaction aren’t about democracy? Is the real problem that our representative governments aren’t very democratic? Should we stop calling them ‘democracies’?

What we have in practice is representative government supported by a large and anonymous civil service. Multi-party elections and civil service appointments ensure that the average citizen stays out of – or is spared the trouble of – policymaking and administration. We elect a few people to make decisions on our behalf; the hard work is done by hired bureaucrats from whom we rarely hear. We now call this ‘democracy’ (rule by the people) due to the universal franchise and the institutionalisation of values such as press freedom and judicial independence. And this arrangement was, after all, much less undemocratic than European fascism and Soviet communism.

It doesn’t resemble the demokratia of ancient Athens, however. Their lawmaking citizens’ assemblies, attended by thousands of free men, and their allocation of administrative offices by lot (or sortition rather than election) were quite unlike our representative government.

Considering the history of the arts of government, competitive representation is a comparatively good model. In modern industrial societies almost everyone can read and has to pay taxes, so all adults should have a vote – not just the property-owning men, as in the past.

That’s an improvement on absolute monarchy, theocracy and totalitarianism. But even Vladimir Putin’s kleptocracy has an elected assembly of representatives (the Duma) to rubber-stamp laws. Mussolini and his fascist party rose to dictatorship in the 1920s after they’d been elected as representatives in the Italian parliament.

Even in countries that are highly rated for free and fair elections, most people know little about the parties and policies for which they vote – if they vote at all. Rising educational attainment and ready availability of information haven’t significantly reduced our ‘political ignorance’. Ignorance makes ‘the people’ easy to ignore or manipulate. For example, the opinions of a majority of Americans are less likely to be reflected in policy outcomes than those of economic elites or organised interest groups, according to one frequently cited study. The majority may rule – provided they agree with the rich and influential.

And disproportional electoral methods can give minorities a majority representation. In the UK’s election in 2019, only 67.3 percent of those registered actually voted. Conservative candidates received 43.6 percent of total votes, or only 29.3 percent of all people registered. But the Conservative Party won 365 (or 56.1 percent) of the 650 seats.

When we add in the misconduct of some political leaders, it’s no wonder that people are dissatisfied. But don’t blame democracy. If there’s a genuine crisis, it’s a crisis of representative government, not democracy.

Representative assemblies arose in the middle ages. Monarchs summoned noblemen, bishops and wealthy commoners to gain consent to raise taxes and levy troops in order to wage war. At its inception, representation was aristocratic and not democratic. Two historical developments transformed representative government: monarchs were either overthrown or confined to constitutionally very limited roles; the idea that parliaments act on behalf of all the people (not just a few) was strengthened as the franchise was extended, first to all men, then all adults. But representative systems produce a wide political division of labour. They’re now less undemocratic, but not fully democratic. For large populations, however, this may be a workable compromise.

Countries that enjoy higher levels of prosperity, civil liberties and respect for human rights are more likely to conduct free and fair elections. But they may also experience considerable political distrust. And in many other countries, elections are fraudulent, opposition parties are suppressed, and government is corrupt.

So representative government with a universal franchise has been a great improvement on the past – but not a panacea for the ailments of government.

Does representation need to be redesigned? To effectively address urgent global problems, it would greatly help if we could restore trust in government, which could require institutional changes. Getting a majority of the people to agree on reforms is a difficult political task, however, no matter how enlightened the intentions. But beneficial structural changes to our systems of government are not impossible either.

Now, I won’t offer solutions before you’ve had a chance to think about the problem. So let me conclude with a question: what is the purpose of good government?

The long Covid-19 emergency: when does it end?

On 25 March 2020, the New Zealand government declared a state of national emergency and the country went into a strict month-long level-4 lockdown. Now, nearly two years later, they are preparing to relax border controls (initially for fully vaccinated New Zealanders returning from Australia who will have to self-isolate), and we are under the ‘red’ setting of the traffic light system. This isn’t a lockdown now, but it imposes restrictions on how businesses operate and excludes people who are not vaccinated. The vaccine passes have sparked protest action at parliament. (In case you’re wondering, I’m willingly triple vaxxed).

Let’s separate the actual pandemic from the emergency measures taken in response to it. Covid-19 will live on, but we need to understand the conditions under which the government would hand back disease controls to the community.

In a democratic society, emergency measures are justifiable if they are necessary, proportionate and temporary. Few would argue that strong measures weren’t necessary to combat Covid-19, although you can debate whether New Zealand’s approach was in proportion to the actual risk. Did we do too much or too little? The pandemic response has been costly in human and economic terms, but the country has come through with a very low mortality rate compared to others, so the government can make a fair case that its emergency powers were proportionate.

Emergency measures must also be temporary, and we need to know at what stage of the pandemic the restrictions and vaccine passes will no longer be considered necessary for our protection.

Denmark, for instance, lifted all pandemic restrictions because Covid-19 is no longer ‘a socially critical sickness’ there, given their high rate of vaccination. It’s still a serious infectious disease, but Covid-19 will exist along with other infectious diseases.

From early 2020, New Zealand was one of the last to be hit by Covid-19 due to isolation, and that gave us time to prepare. I’m not saying that we should simply follow the Danish example – especially given the vulnerability of some communities to infectious diseases. But we’re surely getting closer to the stage at which we could rely on the greater majority of individuals and whānau to follow medical advice, and on businesses (including airlines) to incorporate Covid-19 into safety and health policies under normal law. The time will come for the government to step back, terminate the traffic light system, and give responsibility for disease controls back to the community.

So, I’m saying continue to take Covid-19 very seriously, but plan now to give us back control, as coercive state controls can only be temporary.

(A similar but stronger case has been made by the American political scientist Yascha Mounk, though this should be read with the caveat that the United States has generally set a poor example in this pandemic.)

A constructive discussion about ending New Zealand’s emergency powers may have to wait until we’re over the peak of the omicron wave. Meanwhile, a protest currently on parliament’s grounds appears to be demanding the termination of Covid-19 restrictions and the vaccine mandate; but this is only an obstacle to rational public dialogue about the matter, as the government can’t concede to a group that has included some aggressive and dangerous elements. They’re doing their cause a disservice. If protestors would pack up, go home and be patient, they might soon see some light at the end of the tunnel. I’d just remind them to be obedient and stop at all red lights as they drive home – for everyone’s safety.

Te Pāti Māori calls for constitutional change

“Te Pāti Māori are calling to remove the British royal family as head of state, and move Aotearoa to a Te Tiriti o Waitangi based nation.”

Removing the British monarch as head of state could be done by Act of Parliament, as Barbados recently did. The Governor-General of Barbados simply became head of state instead of the Queen, but nothing else was changed. This step doesn’t necessarily need a referendum, although many Kiwis would demand one, and political parties would be unlikely to defy that.

Supposing we did jettison the Queen, though, the tricky thing is what comes next, as Aotearoa/NZ doesn’t have a written constitution. If we were proposing other transformational changes, then we would have to draft and adopt a written constitution.

Te Pāti Māori want a Māori Parliament which would operate alongside the present one in some manner. There have been different models proposed for this.

Te Tiriti was an agreement with the British monarch of the time, Queen Victoria. It granted to her, te Kuini o Ingarani, te Kawanatanga katoa o o ratou wenua – the government of the land. So ‘divorcing’ Victoria’s descendant Elizabeth II (and her successors) might also mean cancelling te Tiriti, as the British monarch was party to the agreement. But I guess you can get around that by rewriting te Tiriti, deleting references to Wikitoria te kuini from all three articles, and putting the essential remaining words into the new written constitution. Or maybe add a clause that says she and her successors have been divorced now and that the basic agreement lives on without them in a new republic.

So far so good. But by becoming a republic (a thing of the people) you can’t really negotiate with ‘the Crown’ anymore, because we would have gotten rid of that. Te Pāti Māori want to divorce the Crown and yet continue to hold the Crown to account for its breaches of te Tiriti.

One of the reasons why our political leaders have shied away from drafting a written constitution (and only talked about it) is that it would set off a whole lot of scrub fires that no one would know how to put out. Te Tiriti is one issue. But what powers would the judiciary get to rule on compliance with the constitution? What powers would a new head of state have, and would they be elected or appointed? Again, it’s all controversial, and people would justifiably demand a referendum to approve any draft constitution.

Te Pāti Māori have used Waitangi Day to boost their plans for constitutional reform. It’ll be interesting to see how this Tiriti policy pays off in opinion polls and at the ballot box in 2023.

Labour’s income insurance proposal

The Labour government has published a more detailed proposal about an income insurance scheme that was first signaled in Budget 2021. This would add to the ACC’s personal injury scheme to cover income lost due to redundancy or due to illnesses not already covered by ACC. The key aspects to it are income support on 80% of previous earnings (with a 6 month max.) and a retraining programme.

Labour’s proposal was immediately attacked from both sides. National says this is a new tax that we can’t afford. Indeed, the proposed levy would be $1.39 per $100 of your pay (plus employers’ contributions). This is in addition to the current ACC levy on earners. It’s up to you to decide (not the National Party) if you consider this ‘affordable’ in return for wider income insurance cover and retraining if you lose your job. Employers actually quite like the idea because it would make it easier for them to initiate redundancy processes and terminate jobs, as the state would be covering the costs of redundancy compensation.

From the other side, the Greens have attacked the proposal because it ‘bakes in’ the income equalities that exist in the labour market by paying out at 80% of previous earnings, rather than a needs-based rate, as in the welfare system. Note that a lot of workers who lose their jobs end up with no financial support from government at all, as the mean-testing for welfare-benefit eligibility includes spouse’s income.

Neither the Greens nor National have anything constructive to say about the retraining and re-employment services that will be provided – which is the really important aspect of the proposed scheme. From a worker’s point of view, it does mean a new levy to cover the risk of losing your job(s), but it also means income protection and retraining at a much lower price than you’d pay to a private insurer. Do you want this or not?

Before the present detailed proposal was released, I published an article on the idea here, if you want to read more.

What’s up with 2022?

Normally it’s Māori communities – namely Ratana Pa and Waitangi – who kick-start politics in New Zealand after the summer slumber. But such things are now subdued by pandemic restrictions, and it’s the Covid-19 response that matters most as we face the incoming omicron variant.

It took just one brave Kiwi journalist to make the Taliban look more humane than the New Zealand government’s border restrictions. The National Party capitalised on the unfairness of MIQ by proposing to open the border to all fully vaccinated New Zealanders. And they also (inexplicably) suggested giving all staff and students at schools rapid antigen tests – although it’s hard to see what the public health pay-off of that would be. The main point is that the Opposition has no real criticism of the government’s response to the pandemic, other than to say that last year was a shambles.

Well, imagine that we were all unexpectedly dumped in the middle of a huge quagmire and it was up to the prime minister to decide how we’d get out of it. Naturally, there’s no ‘nice’ way out. And naturally the stragglers will complain about things getting messy along the way. Some will have opinions about a quicker cleaner pathway, but so far no alternative is looking so attractive as to make us want to change course or to get a better navigator.

The fact that Jacinda Ardern’s popularity declined in the latest opinion poll should come as no surprise, all the same, although a couple of foreign journalists who’ve asked me about it did express surprise. (Perhaps that’s just their lead-in to get me talking….?)

Anyway, which of us hasn’t felt disgruntled about the last lockdown and about someone we know having trouble with MIQ? There’s a lot to be pissed off about as we make our way out of the quagmire.

I imagine, though, that Labour politicians can’t believe their luck that the latest poll has them in the lead on 40% and still in line to form a coalition government with the Greens. National’s increase to 32% came at the expense of the ACT Party, so it’s not getting them any closer to effecting a change of government. (And I refer you all to my earlier post about the systematic inaccuracy of the opinion polls!)

What the world can learn from Aotearoa New Zealand

What are those Kiwis on? Even as they endure the world’s strictest lockdown to combat an outbreak of Covid-19 delta, New Zealanders’ rating of the government’s responses to the pandemic remains very high (approaching 80% approval according to a survey published in The Spinoff, 23 Aug 2021) and the majority continue to express overall trust in government.

This is bucking a world trend of declining trust, polarization and government ineptitude. Indeed, cynicism has reached such depths that commentators outside of New Zealand hope that the country fails in its fight to eliminate the deadly virus and they profess to pity Kiwis for complying with effective public-health measures. But perhaps they should listen and learn from New Zealand instead.

There was a time in history when the small nations, especially the younger ones, looked up to their older more established allies for the example of how to govern. But the roles are now reversed. The erstwhile ‘leaders of the free world’ and ‘mothers of parliaments’ and the like now should be looking to small countries such as New Zealand for lessons.

Not only are wellbeing and trust indicators higher in smaller democracies, but public dissatisfaction with democracy is low and declining in those countries as well, according to the 2020 Global Satisfaction with Democracy Report. The Scandinavian countries, as always, perform well on such league tables, and these countries use various forms of proportional representation for elections.

New Zealand departed from the Westminster model of single-member electorates (won on a simple plurality) in 1996 and adopted a mixed-member proportional representation system. Unlike Britain, Australia, Canada and the United States, dissatisfaction with democracy didn’t grow in New Zealand since the mid-1990s.

But, in some important respects, New Zealand differs also from the Scandinavians: it hasn’t experienced the party fragmentation and the rise of far-right ‘pariah’ parties (with whom no one wants to form governments) that we’ve seen in Sweden and Denmark, as well as in the Netherlands and Germany.

In general, New Zealand is a political outlier, but it sets an example from which the world can learn.

The National Party’s leadership woes

Prior to the 2020 election, the opinion polls were over-estimating National by about 5 percentage points (low 30s compared with the election result of 25.6%). If they are still that inaccurate, then National’s recent polling results in the 20’s (as low as 23% in the Roy Morgan March 2021 poll) could reflect a more dire underlying reality.

The Roy Morgan poll also suggests that Labour support is weighted towards women, National’s towards men. 54% of women and 36% of men supported Labour; and respectively 20.5% and 25.5% National.

National also lost support to the right-wing ACT Party, but there is less to be gained from attracting those voters back: there are fewer of them, and ACT can only coalesce with National in a government, and so they are National’s political ‘captive’.

To form a government in 2023, National would have to entice over many many busloads of voters from Labour (that is, from the centre), but those busloads would have to be majority female.

Just having a strong female lead (Judith Collins) is not sufficient in itself. It’s hard to imagine Collins beating Ardern in 2023, after failing in 2020, unless something drastic were to happen in the interim.

National now only has a minority of women MPs (10/33), and they lost some strong women from their caucus in 2020.

The recent ‘chatter’ about Simon Bridges and Christopher Luxon as replacement leaders for Collins is not helpful for National in the short term. And it’s hard to see how former opposition leader Bridges or the newly-minted (and anti-abortion) MP Luxon could win over large numbers of centrist voters, least of all women. This is especially difficult for National while Jacinda Ardern continues to perform well and sustain her popularity.

Collins probably has to go before 2023, but the alternatives don’t look like winners at this stage. My conclusion is that National needs to foster and promote talented women.

Is Ardern going social-democratic?

One of the most urgent social and economic issues facing the Ardern government is housing affordability. The poor suffer from a lack of emergency housing (many are accommodated in motels), the younger ‘aspirationals’ can’t afford an entry-level property. Low interest rates due to the pandemic-related recession mean cheap credit, and property investors (landlords) have taken advantage of that to buy, contributing to a rapid rise in prices and rents, and pushing home ownership further out of reach for young people, including couples. The residential property boom in New Zealand has been legendary. And it is a significant source of inequality. While (mainly older) investors get rich from rents, aided by tax-deductions and a lack of any effective capital-gains tax, their younger tenants help them to pay off mortgages and get richer. Young renters’ own prospects for financial and family security were undermined in the process.

Prime minister Ardern, in her first term, and in coalition with the New Zealand First party, had not helped by ruling out a proposed comprehensive capital-gains tax. NZ First had blocked the proposal in cabinet. Ardern, for her part, wanted the issue ‘off the table’ for the 2020 election and basically said ‘no CGT on my watch’.

Now that her Labour government has a solid parliamentary majority (and NZ First has gone altogether), Ardern and finance minister Grant Robertson have announced a CGT within the first 10 years of ownership of an investment property (if it’s not a new build), and an end to the tax-deductibility of interest payments on loans. Investor pressure-groups are outraged. The opposition National Party is calling Ardern a liar.

Indeed, the new policy may well be classed as a breach of a pre-election pledge on Ardern’s part. But there was huge public pressure to do something to take the heat out of the property market and to give the younger generation ‘a fair go’ as first-home buyers.

In addition, the government is introducing supply-side measures, for example to assist local government in opening up new suburban developments in order to accelerate construction of new homes.

Aside from the NZ government’s pandemic response (widely praised for its effectiveness), this new housing policy could be the beginning of a majority ‘Labour-unleashed’ government. Housing for working families, either rent-controlled or owner-occupied, has always been a key social objective for Labour governments in New Zealand. The history is that Labour builds public houses, and then National sells them off.

Ardern’s government has been building them again, but has also been under intense pressure from left and centre to rebalance the residential property market in favour of first-home buyers.

Ardern’s willingness to back-track could be seen as a broken promise, or as a bold and pragmatic political step, depending on your status in the property market: investor or tenant. To extend the ‘bright-line’ test for capital-gains tax could be a sign that Ardern is now confident enough to break away from the fiscal and political conservatism of her first term. It will take a good deal more confidence to address other outstanding social and environmental problems such as benefit inadequacy and renewable energy.

The pandemic has already forced an abandonment of neoliberal fiscal orthodoxy. Whether Ardern’s pathway forward leads to anything resembling social democracy remains to be seen.

Misleading opinion polls

In the US, the publicly reported opinion polls overestimated Biden’s lead over Trump. RCP gave Biden a nation-wide polling-average margin of 7.2 points over Trump. The actual margin is about 3.

In NZ, before the 17 October election, polls overestimated National and underestimated Labour by significant margins.

The averages of the six polls taken in the month before the election were: National 30.9, Labour 47.2.

The averages of the three polls taken in the two weeks before the election, while advance polling booths were open, were: National 31.4, Labour 46.3. It looked like the gap was closing.

On polling day, therefore, it was reasonable to expect that Labour would finish on about 46. As Labour’s trend in the polls since its stellar heights in mid-year was downward, 45 also appeared to be a reasonable prediction.

As it turned out, predictions based on the opinion polls were significantly wrong. Labour’s final election result is 50%, National’s is only 25.6%.

The polls in the final fortnight were over-estimating National by an average of 5.8 percentage points. They were under-estimating Labour by 3.7 points. The Green and Maori parties were also under-estimated (1.1 and 0.7 points respectively).

Conclusion: opinion polls in New Zealand have a conservative bias.

NZ’s Election 2020: A summary

For the first time since MMP elections began in 1996, one party can form a majority government on its own. It’s not a slim majority for Labour, and they won’t need Green MPs sitting in cabinet – although the Greens have expressed interest in holding at least one ministerial portfolio. We needn’t regard this outcome as a return to the Muldoon era of ‘unbridled power’ (to use the title of Geoffrey Palmer’s 1979 book) as Ardern and co will need to be mindful that this majority will probably only last one term, and that voters can easily punish them for over-playing the hand they’ve been dealt.

With preliminary votes putting Labour on 49.1% – and special votes likely to boost numbers on the left – it’s an election that breaks records for MMP elections. The highest party vote before this under MMP was National’s 47.3% in 2011.

Labour got a low of 25% in 2014, and, following Ardern’s taking up the reins, they rose to 37% of the party vote in 2017. Leaping to 49% in 2020 is an extraordinary feat. It’s only exceeded by the victory that gave Labour a second term in 1938.

There was a relatively high percentage (7.7%) of ‘wasted’ votes (that is, votes for parties that did not win any seats). This meant that the ‘effective’ party vote for Labour was 53.1%, hence giving them a majority of seats.

Economic activity had dropped drastically in the June quarter, but the opinion poll support for Labour rose to stellar heights, from 55 to 60% in July. Far from getting the blame for the downturn, the Ardern government was gaining support due to its decisive response to the pandemic.

But it was to be expected that such a high level of support would decline. Opinion polls leading into the election were indicating Labour in the mid-forties. And the final three opinion polls had National in the low thirties. Why did they under-estimate Labour and over-estimate National?

With record-breaking levels of advance votes, just shy of 2 million, and a slight boost in the percentage of the eligible population enrolled, notably in the 18 to 29 age-range, voter turnout was high. The Electoral Commission reported: ‘The total estimated votes (those counted on election night plus estimated special votes still to be counted) is 2,877,117’. That’s 82.5% of registered voters, compared with 79.8% in 2017. This may help to explain the higher-than-expected results for Labour and for the Greens. Higher turnouts tend to favour the left.

Pollsters may also have failed to sample enough younger voters who turned out partly for cannabis legalisation and control, and partly for Labour or the Greens.

National suffered some surprise losses at the level of local electorates, for example in Ilam. But, even in traditionally safe blue seats that National did retain, the candidates’ majorities were significantly reduced, and the party vote went in favour of Labour. Botany and Selwyn are examples of this. It may be the case that opinion polls did not pick up a large number of people who said they’d vote National but then switched to party-vote Labour in order to keep the Greens out of reach of a coalition.

It also has to be said that Judith Collins did not lead a great campaign overall, although she did perform well in head-to-head debates. Down provisionally below 27% of the party vote, National could become mired at that level for some time to come, just as Labour was from 2008 to mid-2017.

In order to retain office after the next election (2023), it would be logical, from a vote-seeking viewpoint, for Labour to appeal more to the centrist voters that it has won over from National. But naturally Ardern will also be under pressure from the party’s more progressive left. They will expect socially and environmentally transformative policies, especially after feeling thwarted in the last term due to the more cautious or conservative influence of NZ First.

After being criticised for ‘failing to deliver on promises’, Labour now has a clear run for delivery. But will they veer to the left, or stick with a relatively cautious middle way?

As a final note, the return of the Māori Party with one seat means there are now five parties in parliament. Hence, the decline in numbers of parties represented is not occurring as I’d predicted. And, of course, the defeat for NZ First is another story – or maybe end of a story – to tell on another occasion.

One week before New Zealand’s polling day, what’s the situation?

Opinion polls, no matter how well conducted, can create false expectations. There is always a margin of error, they can’t capture late-deciders or switchers, and they can be foiled by poor turnout.

It’s looking at least like turnout will be good for this election. Advance voting is strong, while good weather and daylight saving will make a marginal difference for busy people. Registrations of younger people are higher than in 2017.

And it does look like the recent volatility in the polling (which boosted Labour up to unrealistic highs) has settled into something more or less stable.

I’m assuming that this election is the end of the road for NZ First, as they have no chance of winning Northland now. Their previous support-base has split left to Labour and right to National, ACT and New Conservatives.

The Māori Party could squeak back in with one of the Māori seats, but that would not make a decisive difference to the overall outcome in government-formation.

Now, let’s assume that the next parliament consists of four parties (ACT, National, Labour, Green). Moving then from right to left, what’s the situation looking like?

We can predict that ACT’s leader David Seymour will win the Epsom seat, but they may not need that anyway. Polling lately at 8% in the party vote, they could win 10 seats.

National is looking, on a good day, to have about 32%. That’s enough to net 41 seats. But 51 seats (National plus ACT) are not enough for a centre-right majority.

Labour has dropped to 47% in the polls, and a party vote at that level would give them 61 seats. A bare majority.

If the Greens got back in with 6%, that would give them 8 seats. So, if Labour fell short of the majority indicated above, they would still be able to govern with the Greens. A Labour-Green coalition government is a strong possibility.

But, let’s suppose that the Greens’ candidate loses in Auckland Central and the party goes below the 5% threshold, and we add one percent to Labour (assuming that’s where most of the missing Green voters went.) Under those circumstances, with three parties in parliament, then Labour would have a majority of 65 seats.

On election night, before special votes are counted, there could be uncertainty about the full outcome, especially if Labour and Green party-vote percentages are lower than predicted above. Special votes tend to swing things to the left slightly, by one or two seats. Either way, though, it looks like Labour will be returned to office. National and ACT combined (at 40% or a little more) do not add up to anywhere near Labour’s polling in mid to high forties. If the Māori Party wins a seat, that could produce an over-hang (a 121-seat parliament), but they would not oppose Labour staying in government.

It looks like Jacinda Ardern will get another term as prime minister.

As polling gets underway…

Overseas polling is open and advance polling booths open on 3 October. So, what’s the situation?

Opinion polls since May suggested that Labour could gain a majority of seats. It was predictable, however, that such stellar polling, from 55 to 60%, would decline as economic reality started to bite. More recently, as Labour’s polling figures fell, a Labour-Green coalition government began to look more likely.

Jacinda Ardern has been consistently well ahead of her main rival, Judith Collins, in ‘preferred prime minister’ opinion polls.

A pathway towards a centre-right National-ACT government opens up, however, if the Greens fall below the 5% threshold. If, in addition, sufficient numbers of those former National voters who were planning to switch to Labour this time round change their minds and go back to National, then it could be a cliff-hanger on election night. We may even have a two-week wait while special votes are counted.

Is New Zealand’s “Covid Election” winnable?

Can a sitting government win an election in the midst of a major economic crash, particularly while implementing policies that actively suppress economic activity?

Conventional wisdom would say it’s a pathway to defeat – unless you have a compelling narrative that the economic damage is all for a greater good, somehow. You could say that it’s in aid of national defence against a deadly pandemic, and that an alternative laissez-faire “herd immunity” policy would be worse for the economy in the long run.

Opposition parties don’t get plain sailing, what’s more. Under conditions of national crisis, they risk appearing unhelpful, if not unpatriotic, if they criticise a government that is valiantly fighting an implacable foe.

They might expose governmental incompetence, when they uncover it, especially if it’s endangering lives. But they have to somehow prove that they have a better way to fight the virus, with less economic loss, without any past experience to draw upon.

For both the party that leads government and the opposition, there is significant downside risk. The worst result, if they both lose voters to minor parties, would be a stalemate – a hung parliament. National crisis then begets constitutional crisis with unpalatable political compromises and a long delay in government-formation, just when the country needs decisive and active government.

And no one wins.

The New Zealand General Election (on 17 October) appears not to be headed into that zone – for the time being. So far, the incumbent Labour Party, led by prime minister Jacinda Ardern, has been polling over 50%, sufficient to form a single-party majority government.

But, then, John Key’s National Party was also riding over 50% prior to the 2011 election – at which his party achieved a lower, but still very strong, 47.3% share of the party vote. Don’t blame the pollsters, however. Something unexpectedly came unstuck.

In the present case, many voters’ patience and trust will be wearing thin as lockdown continues in response to a coronavirus outbreak that came to light on 11 August. But, how thin? How many voters who have switched to supporting Labour could switch back to National out of frustration? And will the pandemic suppress, or stimulate, voter participation?

The 2020 Election will be one to watch, especially as it is one of the first in the western democratic world to be staged while the global pandemic is still in full swing.

(NB: The second round of the Stuff/Massey online survey goes live on Sunday 30 August.)

New Zealand general election delayed

The New Zealand general election has been delayed from 19 September to 17 October 2020 due to the Covid-related lockdowns caused by a recent outbreak.

In the NZ system, the choice of election date, within a 3-year limit, is the prime minister’s. On this occasion, the prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, consulted with the leaders of other political parties to take account of their concerns about the safety and fairness of an election under lockdown, and the way in which this hampers their efforts to campaign in public spaces.

The Electoral Commission manages the election itself, and has plans in place for safe conduct of the election under lockdown.

The polling-day delay was reasonable in terms of public health concerns and campaign-period disruptions – even though no one can be sure whether 17 October will be more or less ‘Covid-safe’ than 19 September.

The delay is also politically astute, as it dampens opposition parties’ accusations that the election may be unfair due to lockdown constraints on traditional face to face forms of campaigning.

Judith Collins, leader of the opposition National Party, wanted the latest possible date, 21 November. This would have given National more time to attack Labour over border-control of Covid-19 and over economic fallout. Collins earlier said she would have supported a delay beyond the 3-year limit, into 2021, but this would have required a 75% majority vote in parliament to override the limit on the parliamentary term. Essentially she was suggesting that the government that she was attacking should be given, with National’s support, extra time in office, without an election!

The 17 October date looks like a reasonable compromise. The Electoral Commission does have plans in place to hold the election, with safeguards and, if needed in cases of serious disruption, powers to adjourn polling.

So, parliament reconvenes. The business select committee met this afternoon (17 August) to agree on parliament’s timetable.

Dissolution                  6 September

Writ day                      13 September

Nomination day          18 September

Early voting begins     3 October

Polling day                  17 October

Whenever Parliament is dissolved or expires, the Governor-General must, not later than 7 days after the dissolution or expiration, issue a writ to the Electoral Commission requiring the Electoral Commission to make all necessary arrangements for the conduct of a general election. The writ for a general election shall appoint: the latest day for the nomination of constituency candidates; and a day for the polling to take place, being a Saturday; and the latest day for  the return of the writ. Polling day must not be earlier than the 20th day after nomination day. The latest day for the return of the writ shall be the 60th day after its issue.

Jacinda Ardern’s Labour Party high in polls

In a Newshub-Reid Research poll released on 26 July, Jacinda Ardern’s Labour Party posted an extraordinary lead of 60.9%. A result like that in the election on 19 September would deliver Ardern a sizeable majority in the House and a strong mandate for her party to lead the economic recovery without a coalition.

The opposition National Party scored 25.1% on the same poll, causing their deputy leader to question the polling company’s methodology.

Opinion polling has been in the spotlight in recent years for ‘inaccuracy’ in relation to actual electoral results and outcomes. But Labour has been polling over 50% since April.

Certainly the polls, and public opinion at large, have been volatile lately, as New Zealand goes through the Covid-19 crisis. Prime minister Ardern seems to be taking nothing for granted, however, and realises that she has to continue to earn the confidence of the electorate.

At the moment, it looks most likely that she will return for a second term as prime minister. But the political climate is unpredictable, and public opinion has been changeable, so Labour cannot afford to switch to auto-pilot.

Will Jacinda Ardern win another term in office?

Jacinda Ardern has shown exemplary leadership since she took office as prime minister of New Zealand in October 2017.

She has been a global inspiration for progressives who have lost their trust in political leaders and who are seeking hope for a better future and an inclusive style of politics.

Let’s recall the moments that have made her stand out on the international stage.

Jacinda is New Zealand’s third woman prime minister. But she attracted international attention during the 2017 election as she was 37 years old at that time.

Having taken office as prime minister, she became the world’s second elected head of government to give birth to a baby while in office. She took six weeks parental leave.

On 15 March 2019, two mosques in Christchurch, NZ, were attacked by a lone gunman who killed 51 worshippers. Ms Ardern’s responses to that terrorist attack were praised internationally. Her compassionate embrace of the victims, and her reaching out to Muslims at large, drew many positive comments.

Ms Ardern’s leadership in response to the Covid-19 pandemic has been widely praised for its clarity, compassion and respect for scientific medical advice. New Zealand was comparatively successful at bringing the virus under control and its death-toll was relatively low.

In an age of skepticism and distrust about politics and politicians, Jacinda stands out as a beacon of hope. But domestic politics in New Zealand is not that simple.

In spite of international acclaim for Jacinda, there is no guarantee that, after the election on 19 September, she will have a second term as prime minister.

Many New Zealanders are suffering from the economic consequences of the pandemic, including unemployment and business closures, especially in tourism. Opinion polls have been very volatile, and the opposition National Party has chosen a new female leader, Judith Collins.

This blog will keep you up to date with the major events in the 2020 New Zealand election.

The New Zealand Election

On September 19, 2020, New Zealand will hold a general election. The incumbent government is led by prime minister Jacinda Ardern of the NZ Labour Party, in coalition with the centrist NZ First Party, and supported by the Green Party.

The main opposition is the centre-right National Party which happens to hold the largest number of seats of any party.

New Zealand’s parliamentary system means that the head of government, the prime minister, is not directly elected. Governments are formed from the majority in the House of Representatives after the election.