Hard News: Metiria's Problem
333 Responses
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Joe Wylie, in reply to
This is not something that Greg O'Connor personally supports. He said that only in his capacity as President of the Police Association...
Thanks for that Matthew, I'm somewhat reassured to read that and stand corrected.
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Moz, in reply to
Let’s not deluded our selves into believing that this had nothing to do with the Green Party wanting to raise its prospects of getting there hands on the levers of power. Am I wrong ?
You do realise that The Greens are a political party, I assume? The entire point of political parties is to get their hands on the levers of power. I think it's good that that happens, because traditionally political power has changed hands through the death of the incumbent. Voting is so much nicer.
Power isn't the problem, power is inevitable. If you can see that it's much easier to simply talk about who should have it. If not, sing out and we could have that discussion instead.
What matters is what people do with the power, and that comes down to why they want it. I think The Greens are the least awful party in many ways, because for the most part their politicians want to make things better in a way that I agree with.
Other parties want to "make things better" in ways that I think are horrible. Some want to dismantle the state and let money and military might rule, others want a neo-feudal system of extracting resources from the poor to support a small caste of extremely rich people. The Greens at least seem to think that being poor is unfortunate and shouldn't be forced on people.
So I think you're right, but I fear that your underlying beliefs about politics might be self-defeating.
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The latest Colmar-Brunton poll doesn't look nice for the Greens. https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/95896855/green-party-out-of-parliament-labour-surges-in-new-poll
It's could be a temporary dip or a margin of error thing, but whenever I see something like this, I wonder if the whole 5% thing in a poll must cause people to reconsider if they want to risk voting for a party that mightn't make it over.
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Katharine Moody, in reply to
Which is perhaps one of the reasons the Electoral Commission recommended threshold changes?
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Rob Stowell, in reply to
I wonder if the whole 5% thing in a poll must cause people to reconsider if they want to risk voting for a party that mightn’t make it over.
Definitely. It can cascade like that. I want to vote for them, but if they're polling 4% on Sept 22, sorry - I want to change the govt more...
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I'm sure the Greens will get over 5%. There will be some headless chickenry in the media for a few days, but in the mad, logic-free way of these things, when the next poll has the Greens at 6 or 7, the headlines will be "Poll boost for Greens". Meanwhile, everyone can decide (no evidence required) that the Greens' slump is because 1) Little quit or 2) Turei revealed or 3) Turei quit. A counter-factual (Little quits, Turei doesn't) could have put the Greens at 10% or 2%. We'll never know, but who needs knowledge?
Worth remembering (to tie in with the 'Chinese names' discussion elsewhere) that approximately 100% of Conventional Wisdom Experts have been telling us for years that Labour had to do stuff like that - go all blue-collar, non-PC blokey to get votes from Winston. That was their best shot at clawing back into contention. In short, more or less the opposite of what has happened.
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If the Greens really do fail to meet the threshold, then a change of government is pretty much impossible. Labour needs two substantial coalition partners to form a government. So, abandoning the Greens because you think there is a danger that they might not reach 5% and thus waste your vote is potentially very counterproductive, IMHO.
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Rob Stowell, in reply to
abandoning the Greens because you think there is a danger that they might not reach 5% and thus waste your vote is potentially very counterproductive, IMHO.
Maybe, maybe not. I'm pretty confident they will bounce back, enough, anyway. But there's no rule that says Labour needs two partners.
Speculating ahead, if National lose, Bill steps down, and Jancinda stays popular, National have real problem finding new talent. Hard to see any of the current mob in cabinet as a credible leader, except Joyce, and he's too ... We could see another long stretch of one-party-on-top. Personally would vastly prefer that to be Labour, but it could leave the Greens out, and a strong opposition is also good.
Democracy is bloody hard to get right. -
So what else might happen? The potential for a close election and a change of government causes an unusually high turnout? Do the non-voters of recent elections mobilise, and if so how do they vote?
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stephen walker, in reply to
But there’s no rule that says Labour needs two partners.
Obviously there is no rule, but a cursory look at the numbers suggests strongly that they will need both the Greens and NZ First to form a government. I mean, are Labour likely to get the largest share of the party vote? Seems pretty unlikely. Will Labour plus Winston have enough to overtake National and whoever they can scrape up as potential coalition partners? That also looks like a very long shot to me. Hence the three-party coalition looks to be the most realistic hope of getting rid of National.
This latest poll seems pretty bizarre though. Greens going from 15% to 4% in one go? Even allowing for all the negative publicity around Metiria's resignation it still seems too much of a drop. I really would be shocked if they go under 8% in the election.
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Given all the minor parties failing to hit 5%, and Peter Dunne losing Ohariu, LAB + NZF > NAT + ACT. Would Winston Wear it?
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Rob Stowell, in reply to
a cursory look at the numbers suggests strongly that they will need both the Greens and NZ First to form a government. I mean, are Labour likely to get the largest share of the party vote?
Just at the moment, the unlikely seems ... at least something you don't want to count out :)
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The Stuff article above doesn’t really refer to undecided voters (its numbers add to 99%), but TVNZ’s article says it’s gone from 20% to 13%. https://www.tvnz.co.nz/one-news/new-zealand/1-news-colmar-brunton-poll-greens-plummet-below-five-per-cent-jacinda-effect-keeps-labour-climbing
I’d wondered if maybe some former Green respondents had just not wanted to commit to saying Green, but I’m not sure that’s a favourable number for them either. It’d very hard to know why people answer as they do from poll to poll, though. I suppose a Green optimist could hope there's been a surge from undecided to Labour at the same time as a smaller surge from Green to undecided.
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I sure do hope the Greens score above 5% in the next poll (A Roy Morgan, I believe) otherwise they could be in dire trouble if they start to suffer from people thinking a vote for the Greens is a wasted vote and either vote Labour or stay at home.
This existential Green political catastrophe can be laid entirely at the feet of Metiria Turei and the red-Green faction of that party. Can we say that seeds of disaster planted in the Greens by Sue Bradford, whose reckless vanguardism and lazy politics of elite consensus threw Labour out of fashion and into the wilderness for nine years, have finally come to fruition in the Greens as well?
All up, I struggle to feel sorry for the Greens. Inept political tactics and management by the Greens played a huge part in the defeat of the Clark government and Labour's banishment to the political wilderness and now inept political tactics and management - born from a delusion of grandeur that saw Metiria launch a bid to replace Labour as the primary party of the left (how long is a fortnight!) - have ironically given Labour the opportunity to do a passable impression of Lazarus and surge back into fashion, popping the phone back on the hook as they did so. In both cases, a certain out-of-touch left wing radicalism which has found a home in the Greens have been political wreckers on the mainstream chances of the two major parties of the centre/left in the build up to an election.
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linger, in reply to
You can dream all you like Rob, but Labour won’t gain more votes than National this time. (Yeah, I don’t know why National remains so popular either, but there we are.) So Labour’s chances of forming a government really do depend on their possible coalition partners and how closely aligned to Labour they are.
Winston First, and Dunne (if he gets in), are least aligned. Both have a history of supporting the party with the largest vote share. They could work with Labour, but are more likely first to give National a chance to form a government. Winston also has historically been reluctant to lend any support to the Greens.
Greens, Mana (if Hone gets in), and (probably) Maori are at the moment more likely to align with Labour, but their numbers are looking uncertain.
TOP? Dunno. Unlikely they’ll make the threshold, so that’s potentially 3-4% of the disillusioned-with-National vote (which might otherwise have been a Left vote) wasted there. [Edit for Stephen: yes, a vote for an ultimately unsuccessful party signals something, it's not entirely meaningless ... but if, even as you vote, you know they won't get in at all, it doesn't directly help change anything either, and in that sense is a wasted chance for change. Nevertheless, I agree that voting for something is better than not voting at all.]Labour’s best overall chance of success, strategically, is to campaign on party vote rather than electorate support against Harawira and Dunne. Other than that it’s tricky: Labour needs to increase its party vote share, but not at the expense of removing the Greens.
That said, this poll probably underrepresents Green Party support, and it is almost certain that they will make it over the threshold. For one thing the Greens have usually done rather better among expats and other special voters, who are underrepresented in polls.
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Sacha, in reply to
Inept political tactics and management by the Greens played a huge part in the defeat of the Clark government
You what? They weren't even part of that government.
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The problem for the Greens is not that they will fall under the threshold, but that they - and therefore all of us - will miss out on some very good potential new MPs.
By contrast, if NZ First get the dozen or so MPs currently predicted, the best we can hope for is that seats will be warmed by non-entities. The worst is yet another talkback-recycling third-rater (see previous Winston Lists, since 1996).
Ignoring the party lists is an endemic failure in our election coverage, and every term we go through it all again ... when we suddenly discover that we elected a headline-in-waiting.
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Russell Brown, in reply to
Amen.
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Rob Stowell, in reply to
The problem for the Greens is not that they will fall under the threshold, but that they – and therefore all of us – will miss out on some very good potential new MPs.
Yep. I think they need about 7% to get both Chloe Swarbrick and Golriz Ghahraman into parliament (7 and 8 on the list, now Graham has gone.) Definitely worth voting for.
But … I’m still gonna contend, if they consistently look like dropping below 5% on the night (it’s a tricky call, but we all make calculations like this) it’s reasonable to vote for the ‘next-best’ option – as long as that’s still a party you support/like enough/feel will make a positive change.
As someone who’s happily voted Labour many times (tho not lately) and hopes to enjoy a Labour govt next year, right now it’s a pretty easy choice for me – and it would appear from the polls, many other Green voters. -
izogi, in reply to
Ignoring the party lists is an endemic failure in our election coverage
It's mostly trivia but yesterday I bothered to google position #75 on the National Party list, Graham Collins. The top result was this Herald article from late last year, where his accusation of physical assault against Michael Wood (whom he accused of manhandling Parmjeet Parmar's husband) was categorically disproved by video evidence of the event, as well as showing that Wood had been provoked.
I get that #75 will almost certainly never be elected, even from National, but assuming the Herald's account is accurate, how does a destructive liar like this even get onto that party's list?
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Craig Ranapia, in reply to
I wonder if the whole 5% thing in a poll must cause people to reconsider if they want to risk voting for a party that mightn't make it over.
It's also equally plausible that enough people might look at a poll that leaves Labour every bit as beholden as National to a bigot and his personality cult with zero counter-balance and decide not to risk it.
I know this is not the narrative Labour and the Greens Derangement Syndrome afflicted punditocracy are going all in on, but still...
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izogi, in reply to
I think they need about 7% to get both Chloe Swarbrick
I'd heard about Auckland's local election, but it wasn't really until Backbenches on Wednesday that I saw Chlöe Swarbrick speaking for the first time. I was impressed with just how informed and assertive she was with the issues she was confronted with. Not every candidate nor MP can pull that off.
It's probably easy for someone who looks for excuses to write her off as as young wannabe who came third in Auckland because of the electoral system, but if she can have an opportunity of getting into Parliament it'd be awesome, imho. She comes across as a genuine future leader.
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Rich of Observationz, in reply to
I think you have it there.
Personally, I'm just going to do something weird and vote for the party whose policies I most agree with.
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Which might have been the Greens, but they lost my vote for:
- dumping Metiria. Frankly, I don't care if she spend her teenage summers interning for the Baader Meinhof. She was their most effective MP and James Shaw is not.
- supporting the repeal of health and safety legislation preventing people going into dangerous mines so that people can go into a dangerous mine and search for corpses. It's a minor issue, but it indicates they favour dumb populism over rational policy.Not to mention that if the Greens do get 5%, and Labour are in a position to form a government with NZF, then I can fully see them being dumped at the instigation of Peters and then pliantly giving that government a free ride on confidence and supply.
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izogi, in reply to
they lost my vote for ... dumping Metiria
Not that the method should change your view, but do you see it as the Greens having dumped her?
There was obvious internal conflict (esp shown by Graham and Clendon's thing) and maybe that's what you're thinking of, but what I saw was a Greens' leadership that was prepared to stick it out and defend her vigorously in the face of a public that was looking for any random excuse to discredit the party by attacking her, until she decided to leave.
For comparison, when National has problems it tends to be in the context of maybe 50% of the population looking for excuses to bag them, but another 50% looking for excuses to justify why it really doesn't matter. For the Greens it's more like a 85/15 split.
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