First, this isn’t a prediction: it’s an assessment of some symptoms of change. A glance back to the 2017 and 2020 elections reminds us that prediction of election outcomes can be hazardous.
Last week’s bad news for the Labour government was the announcement that the three months to 31 March had seen a slight drop in GDP. That was the second consecutive quarter of negative growth, so it meant officially a recession, though a very shallow one.
Some headlines said ‘NZ has entered a recession’. The pedant in me said that NZ had gone into recession in late 2022, and the data to 31 March confirmed it. The official GDP stats are already ten weeks out of date, and so, for all we know, the recession may be over by now!
But most voters aren’t as pedantic (or optimistic) as me, and ‘now in recession’ is the news that people are getting, as framed by editors.
And then there’s the cost of living (inflation was 6.7% in the year to March) and higher interest rates. If mortgage payments go up as well as grocery bills, then middle-class mums and dads feel the stress. They may hear the National Party blaming it on the Labour government’s ‘economic mismanagement’.
Labour, of course, deflects the blame onto global events over which they had no control as ‘economic managers’, but that may not convince enough people.
And the ACT Party will add that the country’s entrepreneurial spirits are being strangled by miles of red tape. Their proposed Ministry of Regulation (or, more precisely, Deregulation) will hold governments to account, they claim, and fight to free up productivity.
It doesn’t matter how convinced, or not, you and I are; it matters how convinced thousands of ‘swinging’ voters are. And surveys are saying that most people think the country is heading in the wrong direction.
If we go by opinion polls and how they’re reported (and I always advise caution here!), then it seems now to be accepted that, to retain office, Labour will probably need the support of both the Green and Māori parties.
But a Taxpayers’ Union/Curia poll* has indicated that – while it makes no difference to most people – the marginal propensity to vote Labour is net negative, when respondents are asked to suppose that Labour could only form a government if it gets help from Te Pāti Māori.
Was that push polling? – planting ideas in people’s minds, rather than surveying their opinions. While I wonder whether that was a good use of polling, it could be taken as evidence that being associated with TPM erodes support for Labour.
National and ACT have accordingly rejected TPM, and the sentiment seems to be mutual. TPM has therefore lost its potential to play kingmaker, and become instead a captive to a left-wing alliance. And this may be doing the left overall some electoral damage.
For example, I sympathised with TPM co-leader Rawiri Waititi when he said that local iwi did ‘their best to de-escalate the situation’ in Ōpōtiki during tangihanga for a gang leader, given the manifestation of respect for the deceased. But Mr Waititi didn’t have to tell Luxon and Hipkins publicly ‘to shut their mouths’, even though their comments may not have been helpful. I’d give Mr Waititi credit for being staunch, but it looks like he’d be difficult to work with in government – for either leader.
National drive the point home with their ‘coalition of chaos’ taunt.
What’s more, Labour’s rolling maul of scandals goes on. On Friday, the Human Rights Commission announced that Race Relations Commissioner Meng Foon, who’d been appointed by the Labour government, had chosen to resign over donations to Labour MP Kiritapu Allan. It was also revealed that a company of which Foon is a director was receiving income from the Ministry of Social Development for the provision of accommodation, including emergency housing. This covers time before and after Foon became Race Relations Commissioner, and the total received is more than $2 million. This shouldn’t have been happening as it undermined the Human Rights Commission’s reputation for independence.
Is the whole country going to the dogs? And will the people call time on the incumbent government?
National’s Christopher Luxon is now on the record telling farmers that New Zealand is a ‘very negative, wet, whiny, inward-looking country’. At first I thought, ‘Speak for yourself’. It sounded like another one of his gaffes, as an aspiring leader shouldn’t be running us down like that. But then I decided to own it, as academics like me can be a negative, wet, whiny, inward-looking bunch – while passing it all off as critical thinking. And I hear a lot of whining and doom-casting from other parts of the community as well.
Luxon added that we need to get our mojo back. But that only reminded me of Muddy Waters getting his ‘mojo working’ – even though, sadly, ‘it just won’t work on you’.
It seems we blame one political leader for what’s wrong, and then hope another will cast a spell and fix it. In August 2017 Ardern’s ardent supporters were convinced she’d fix everything. Weren’t they expecting too much? How do we get better government, then, beyond just changing who’s in office?**
People’s economic worries must erode support for Labour, as will the series of negative stories about the conduct of some of those in office. Furthermore, the three-party arrangement that’s now regarded (thanks to tea-leaf readings of opinion polls) as necessary to keep Labour in the Beehive may be a deterrent for many voters. These factors could, of course, shift between now and the election, so it’ll be interesting to look back at this post once the dust has settled.
Maybe next week I need to return to the question of how the media let the inexact science of opinion polling shape pre-electoral political narratives in ways that could be self-fulfilling – and even misleading.
* Taxpayers’ Union/Curia poll data were reported by Thomas Coughlan in Friday’s NZ Herald.
**I’m writing a book about it.