In the normal course of things -- and this is Hard News's seventh New Zealand general election -- I'd write a lengthy post looking back at the campaign, summarising the issues and considering options for voting.
But I'm tapped out and tired and there's paying work to do, so this time, it's up to you. You have until midnight to parse, pontificate and perhaps even persuade.
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this is Hard News's seventh New Zealand general election
Crikey!
that's alright ,don't think we need you point out how dodgy National is this time , its more obvious than ever...
http://www.3news.co.nz/Brazilian-oil-spill-draws-attention-to-drilling-in-New-Zealand/tabid/417/articleID/233352/Default.aspx
Jonathan King, in reply to
don't think we need you point out how dodgy National is this time , its more obvious than ever.
Clearly around 50% of the frikking population need someone to draw their attention to it!
Still staggered that support for National is so high while support for asset sales is so low. Also terrified at the thought that National might get an outright majority, though I still consider it unlikely.
Given the way the polls are being reported, I can't help but feel that this might be Labour's 2002, with traditionally-low voter turnout exacerbated by people looking at the polls and saying "I just can't be fucked voting for a party I know is going to lose abysmally." Which saddens me greatly, given that I think Labour have some very constructive policies, finally, but I'm also far more engaged than most voters.
Sacha, in reply to
that support for National is so high while support for asset sales is so low
A 'key' feature of this time around.
I'm also far more engaged than most voters
That probably applies to most of us here. Makes it harder to understand how others are making decisions in the context of busy everyday lives.
The Herald's John Armstrong notes Key's stuff-ups during the campaign making little impact on polls.
The paradox is that Goff - unlike Key - would seem to have got more right than he has got wrong during the four weeks on the hustings. Yet, this does not seem to have made a blind bit of difference. If anything, Labour's support has ebbed even further.
Labour's "shock-and-awe" campaign was always high risk. It had to be. But the lesson is simple. You cannot shift three years of negative sentiment in less than three months - the short timeframe Labour gave voters to absorb its capital gains tax and other policy lurches.
I am currently braindumping on what I see as #TheKeyProblem people have been missing over on my new blog, Key Problems, and hoping my old blog comes back on line soon. I’m sure some of you will remember me from the 2005 election season, although I did not get involved here back then. I was playing antiwingnutarian defence in the comment sections of JTC and No RIght Turn, and various other places. And briefly, on my old blog, tiberias.blogspot.com, which I hope will come back to life soon after my little “Meta Key Problem” is resolved. I’ll check back in here after I’ve braindumped a bit more, and had another look at my #MetaKeyProblem. Also see a few pointers I’ve tweeted with @mrtiberias, who is brand new, following a bunch of people, and could use a few more friends so tweeps don’t get the idea he’s just a followspammer!
Kumara Republic, in reply to
Still staggered that support for National is so high while support for asset sales is so low.
Almost half of New Zealand voters believe no political party truly represents their views.
Two days before election day, Fairfax Media-Research International's latest poll throws light on how people feel they are served by politicians.
At the tail end of an election campaign where policy versus personality has been a recurring theme, the poll also shows more than 40 per cent of voters are driven to choose a party because they like the leader.
One expert is concerned the survey reflects a far from healthy democracy while another commentator says politics is about compromise and the result is "pleasing".
A good initiative by the Herald - a quiz on knowledge of the different voting systems being paraded before us this year.
So I happen to be voting in Phil Goff's electorate. Previously I've voted Labour, because in the end I felt their version of centrist fitted most closely to my own.
But like many (apparently) I am utterly disillusioned with the Labour MPs. There are some good ones, near the bottom of their list. But the MPs most likely to get in are a dreary lot, wedded to a brand of politics that is about power not statesmanship.
Oddly for me it's the Green MPs that have made the strongest positive impression on me. That said you don't have to go far down their list to find medication level wackos. And the Greens are still wedded to ideology over evidence. They have some excellent policy but they have some completely loony policy as well.
Unlike most (apparently), I find the National policies and MPs to be heavily focussed on making the rich richer and to hell with what that does to the country or anyone else. A politics of selfishness that works because it convinces the middle that they too will benefit (because they could be rich too). Frankly I don't trust English, Key and Joyce, but that's just my hatred of fat men in suits.
So based on the MPs on show I'd vote Green.
But based on the policies I'd vote Labour and hope the Greens got enough influence to get their good policies through.
What I find puzzling on an emotional level is that the campaign has made me less decided. Don't get me wrong Nationals campaign has made me more certain they are in it for the rich, and some of them even believe that will be good for the country. But the Labour campaign has left me confused about my feelings for them and the Greens have, by saying sensible things, left me asking questions about them as well.
Nat,
Overheard in a Baker's Delight in West Auckland:
Shop Assistant 1: "I just don't think the election affects me."
Shop Assistant 2: "Um, what about the minimum wage?"
Shop Assistant 1: "Oh yeah, but I don't think my vote will count."
Shop Assistant 2: "How about if there was a 50-50 split and your vote made the difference?"
Shop Assistant 1: "I guess..."
I hope she was convinced, and good on her colleague for having the discussion.
I'm loath to say this, but I think National will win reasonably comfortably. They remain very, very popular in the provinces, especially.
Labour will lose about five or six seats, which'll be picked up by the Greens.
Maori will lose one or two seats to Labour.
NZ First will get - just and only just - 5%. Mana will only just retain Hone's seat, Kelvin Davis will give him a very close run.
ACT and United Future will perish.
The story of this election is going to be a story of the polls. If the polls are to be believed, support has hardly changed for the left/right blocs since 2008 with Labour and the Greens cannibalising each others vote and NZ first – again – flaking off chunks of National’s soft support. But there ciould still just be a joker in the pack if technology has rendered the polling methodologies wrong.
Labour won’t suffer a 2002 type meltdown because Phil Goff is a better man than Bill English, Labour has run a smarter and more imaginative campaign, and Labour has better policies than National while Stephen Joyce sounds like some darkly brooding Tolkienesque wizard, locked up in his tower pouring over polls and focus group results and losing touch with reality.
The day after Goff was made leader of the Labour Party the media decided Labour was going to be humiliated in 2011, a lovely little Goff/English 2002/2011 synergy of ritual media execution followed by (starting with the teatapes) first disillusionment with the government, leading to a cliff hanger in 2014 either way and then a media-led clamour for Labour in 2017, after which the cycle will repeat. For five years we’ve been treated to most of the media being greater or lesser willing participants in being bullied and bribed by the Hollow men into a cult of personality built on negative identity politics whilst lazily regurgitating their long term electoral narrative. It is a charade where the citizens have been reduced to spectators in a horse race reported by a media that is completely decadent and morally dysfunctional, yet we call it “democracy”.
3410,
On a One News vox pop the other night I heard a guy say that he couldn't make up his mind between Labour and National, so he was going to give his electorate vote to the Labour candidate and his party vote to National. :P
I guess that's what Labour gets for failing to advise "Party vote Labour" on their billboards. :P
Matthew Poole, in reply to
Labour won’t suffer a 2002 type meltdown because Phil Goff is a better man than Bill English
Labour’s polling right now is down around the level of National's 2002 result. It’s entirely possible that their voters will look at the polls and say “We’re doomed. Fuckit, I can’t be bothered.”
Matthew Poole, in reply to
I guess that’s what Labour gets for failing to advise “Party vote Labour” on their billboards
Except that they do have "Party Vote Labour" billboards up all over the place.
Sacha, in reply to
What's your take on the role of the political opposition parties and movements in driving and shaping media coverage, Tom?
Tristan, in reply to
I think question 2 is wrong." Under which system do you vote for a party and an electorate MP?"
correct answer PV!?
FletcherB, in reply to
Herald – a quiz on knowledge of the different voting systems
The Herald says I got question 2 wrong...
Under which system do you vote for a party and an electorate MP?
You answered: SM & MMP
Answer: PV
Am I being an idiot, or is it the Herald that's wrong?
Kumara Republic, in reply to
The day after Goff was made leader of the Labour Party the media decided Labour was going to be humiliated in 2011, a lovely little Goff/English 2002/2011 synergy of ritual media execution followed by (starting with the teatapes) first disillusionment with the government, leading to a cliff hanger in 2014 either way and then a media-led clamour for Labour in 2017, after which the cycle will repeat.
Sounds like the journalistic equivalent of the GI Joe character Destro – selling political artillery to both sides of the divide for fun & profit.
Most ironic piece of party advertising: ACT anti-crime pamphlets that have Banks advertising "zero tolerance."
How appropriate...
Sacha, in reply to
I believe the word is hypocritical rather than ironic. :)
Take a closer look at Horizon Polling. 95% of their 3000+ respondents are picked from the 2006 Census. At the bottom the page in their current (23-24 Nov) results they have interesting stats on landline ownership.
After the election the accuracy of the polls will be interesting given that Horizon has Labour at about 28% but National at about 35% and NZF at about 9%.
http://www.horizonpoll.co.nz/page/187/more-intend-to-vote-labour-gains
I know what I'm voting and it is anyone except National or ACT or UF.
Fascinating (as Bishop would say, dissecting a dead facehugger in Aliens), listening to Hooton on Nine to Noon. He was obsessively repeating “ so-called asset sales” and puffed up with moral indignation over Labour’s “scare campaign” (this from a man who compared them to the Kahui parents a few years ago). His urgency, and his repetitiveness was quite morbidly interesting – he seemed to be panicked.
Moreover, he generally takes every opportunity to ridicule the Greens and didn’t mention them at all.
Someone sweaty has had a talk to him, obviously.
I’ve decided on one thing that summarises my pissed-offness with how this National government acts.
National standards.
It was a campaign slogan rushed into law under urgency shortly after the Key government took office. Avoiding select committee scrutiny was a feature, not a bug, in that process. Had it been considered like any ordinary bill, the government would have had the embarrassing experience of hearing its own officials explain all the problems with what it was trying to do.
Still, it might have been saved. There was still a possibility of using standards to get real, useful data about how kids were learning. Tolley’s office had a chief research analyst who’d been through the British experience and was very well versed in what not to do.
Which, naturally, turns out to be what National did. There was something really contemptuous about the way this was dumped in the final week of the campaign. Schools will be forced to publish their National Standards results – and the government will make no attempt to prevent these data being compiled into comparative league tables, even though they simply are not comparable.
Even though the use of the data in this way introduces perverse incentives that destroy the research value of the data. National’s even going to give “good” schools more money.
And even though Tolley promised a year ago to prevent efforts to compile such tables. Now it’s just going to happen.
I’m disgusted by the whole thing. By the pointless war Tolley has fought with boards, principals, teachers and parents the length of the country. By the fact that they could foist this on the system without even a trial. By her arrogance. By the utter stupidity of defying advice and ignoring experience in favour of a soundbite.
There are plenty of other examples of National ignoring good sense and evidence, but this one seems the most precisely contemptuous to me.