2020 New Zealand general election & referendums (17 October)

[Continential]

What is the point of the existance of the NZ First when they will join a Labour Government?

[CumbrianLefty]

In the past they have joined up with National, presumably that could happen again?

[EastAnglianLefty]

Possibly the more pertinent question is what the point of ACT is? It's been nearly a decade since they had a second MP, so is it really worth National's while to keep gifting them a safe seat?

[Tintrlvr]

Any chance the government parties make a deal not to run in every constituency so that NZ First and the Greens are guaranteed to enter the parliament by getting a safe FPTP seat?

I doubt it myself, but if Labour does make a deal with the Greens, I think it will be in Nelson. National holds it and the Greens broke 20% in the electorate race; still behind Labour though, which is part of why I doubt it would happen.

Pericles would probably have better insight than I would.

What about Coromandel? The Greens were in a pretty distant third there most recently, but it's also the only electorate they've ever won (way back in 1999!), and, unlike Nelson, Labour has never won it, so it's not like Labour is giving away a chance at winning a seat by turning it over to the Greens.

[Pericles]

What is the point of the existance of the NZ First when they will join a Labour Government?

NZ First is not a far-right party but is populist on both economic and social issues, though relatively centrist overall. The National Party is a pretty neoliberal party and that isn't a great fit for them. NZ First has stopped a lot of Labour's agenda-such as a water tax, capital gains tax and a repeal of the 3 strikes law-which I think is bad and I'd prefer just Labour and the Greens. However, that does appeal to a slice of the electorate who like to keep both parties in check, and they do still have a valid purpose imo.

[Former President tack50]

I mean, isn't New Zealand one of those very few countries where the left (Labor) is actually more anti-immigration than the right (National)?

If so, an NZ First-Labour deal makes perfect sense. Many right wing populists tend to be actually economically centrist or even to the left.

[CumbrianLefty]

I mean, isn't New Zealand one of those very few countries where the left (Labor) is actually more anti-immigration than the right (National)?

Genuine question - *is* that actually true?

Historically of course, NZ Labour was one of *the* very first leftist parties to embrace the "third way" (and of course certain people like Douglas went much further than even that) whilst the National Party under Muldoon embraced centrist or even left economic populism. So this surely hasn't always been true, even if it indeed is now.

[Estrella]

A longer explanation of NZ First's existence is that Nationals were historically - for a conservative party - very, very economically interventionist (to the point of basically trying to create an autarkic economy), which, in turn led to a weird episode of a Labour government enacting Thatcherite policies. Nationals opposed them at every turn, obviously only until the moment they got into government themselves. In response, their statist wing broke off and created NZ First. They used to do much better (13% and all Māori seats in 1996), but the shine wore off. I imagine that the only reason for their continued existence is that old people still love Eternal Leader Winston for giving them free bus passes or something. _{(Yes, I know obscure trivia about NZ politics, how could you tell?)}

There's a great documentary about the chaos of the 80s, if anyone is interested.

Edit: I posted this literally seconds after CumbrianLeftie lol

[An American Tail: Fubart Goes West]

A longer explanation of NZ First's existence is that Nationals were historically - for a conservative party - very, very economically interventionist (to the point of basically trying to create an autarkic economy), which, in turn led to a weird episode of a Labour government enacting Thatcherite policies. Nationals opposed them at every turn, obviously only until the moment they got into government themselves. In response, their statist wing broke off and created NZ First.

This also led to the formation of NewLabour and later the Alliance. Man, that was a weird 10-15 20 years.

[urutzizu]

As far as I know Labour supports a higher refugee resettlement intake, while generally also supporting stricter limits to economic migration, while National is the other way round. I would not be surprised if the fact that New Zealand is also one of the few places that allows all foreign nationals with permanent residence full voting rights, and the Chinese vote being a very Important Constituency in favour of the Nationals, have something to do with that.

I also wonder whether this is why not just Immigration, but also Opinions on China are inverse in New Zealand, as opposed to places like Canada, Aus, or the US. I think Labour in NZ tends to be a little bit more critical towards China, banning foreign donations and Huawei (which the national party leader criticized), while National (or at least Bridges himself) has been very, very pro-china and they also have an MP (Jian Yang) who worked with Chinese Spies. While Chinese-origin Voters are also an Important voting bloc for the Centre-right in Canada and Australia, the Chinese Community in NZ tends to be more pro-PRC than their Counterparts in US, Canada and Aus.

[Estrella]

Well, now that we're all talking about it, I decided to do a write-up on most of New Zealand's minor parties, starting from 1938, when the modern-day National Party was created.

It's worth mentioning that, despite superficial similarities, NZ has a political environment unlike most other English-speaking countries. Without going into too much detail (and stereotyping):
* Consistently high turnouts - 74% in 2011 was the lowest participation in a very long time, and throughout the 20th century it was in the high 80s or low 90s
* Openness towards new ideologies, like the surprisingly progressive Liberals in the late 19th century, Labour's unashamedly socialist policies in the 1930s, the rise of green movement in the 1970s, economic liberalism in the 1980s and things like the Wellbeing Budget today
* The above means that, even during FPTP, there were more "third parties" with some relevance than you'd expect

So, here are the (at least a bit relevant) pre-MMP era small parties (best result in brackets).

Democratic Labour (1943, 4.3%) - a hard-left splinter from Labour

Democrat Party (1935, 7.8%) and their successors People's Movement (1943, 0.9%) and Liberal Party (1963, 0.9%) - classical liberal anti-socialist parties

Values Party (1975, 5.2%) - the first green party in the world, a product of the 70s counterculture and anti-nuclear movements that collapsed due to infighting but laid the ground for NZ's current relatively green orientation (bans on nuclear weapons, GMOs etc.)

Social Credit, later known as Democrats (1981, 20.7%) was by far the largest FPTP-era third party. They started out supporting social credit (duh) ^{which I like to call Vanilla Strasserism}, a leftish but non-socialist ideology for people who are very angry about (((bankers))). Slowly, they drifted into a kind of vague centre-left populism, attracting many protest voters.

New Zealand Party (1984, 12.3%) - a libertarian flash-in-the-pan personality cult around property magnate Bob Jones. Their high result was spurred by Robert Muldoon's economic policies that drove the country to the brink of bankruptcy.

Now, here are the parties that emerged in the last years of FPTP and after the transition to the proportional system:

NewLabour (1990, 5.2%) - a very-much-not-Blairite (socialist, in fact) splinter from Labour

Green Party (2011, 11.1%) A rather left-wing but most of the time still constructive ecologist party

Alliance (1996, 10.1%) A merger of NewLabour, Greens, Democrats and Mana Motuhake, intended to be a big-tent left-of-Labour coalition. The ex-NewLabour part broke off to form the Progressive Party (2002, 1.7%) and the Alliance fell apart soon after.

New Zealand First (1996, 13.4%) Explained above.

Mana Motuhake (1990, 0.6%), Mana Māori (1996, 0.2%), Mauri Pacific (1999, 0.2%), Māori Party (2008, 2.4%) and Mana Movement (2014, 1.4%) - a string of parties advocating for Māori interests. All are left-leaning, but supported both Nats and Labour in the past. Mauri Pacific is somewhat notable for becoming the home of several NZ First Māori MPs

Internet Mana (2014, 1.4%) - a slightly surreal coalition between Mana Movement and the Internet Party of a certain Kim Dotcom, who couldn't actually stand, because he is a German citizen

Christian parties - This diagram explains why I can't be bothered

United Future (2002, 6.7%) a self-proclaimed centrist party created by some people from the aforementioned Christian parties. Supported both Labour and National, depending on political circumstances and amount of pork on offer

ACT aka Association of Consumers and Taxpayers (2002, 7.1%), a creation of liber(al)tarians from both main parties. Started as a GOP copycat, but lately becoming more liberal.

Conservative Party (2014, 4.0%) - the current GOP copycat

Aotearoa Legalise Cannabis Party (1996, 1.6%) - Surprisingly successful back in the 90s

The Opportunities Party (2017, 2.4%) Formerly a personality cult around Gareth Morgan, with a chaotic mishmash of feelgood policies under the guise of rADiCal CenTrIsM

Still, despite what I said in the beginning, NZ is not becoming an European multi-party system. After the initial excitement, most third parties either diminished in size, fell apart and vanished, or became a personal fiefdom for their leader: Progressives for Jim Anderton, United Future for Peter Dunne or Mana for Hone Harawira.

[CumbrianLefty]

As far as I know Labour supports a higher refugee resettlement intake, while generally also supporting stricter limits to economic migration, while National is the other way round. I would not be surprised if the fact that New Zealand is also one of the few places that allows all foreign nationals with permanent residence full voting rights, and the Chinese vote being a very Important Constituency in favour of the Nationals, have something to do with that.

I also wonder whether this is why not just Immigration, but also Opinions on China are inverse in New Zealand, as opposed to places like Canada, Aus, or the US. I think Labour in NZ tends to be a little bit more critical towards China, banning foreign donations and Huawei (which the national party leader criticized), while National (or at least Bridges himself) has been very, very pro-china and they also have an MP (Jian Yang) who worked with Chinese Spies. While Chinese-origin Voters are also an Important voting bloc for the Centre-right in Canada and Australia, the Chinese Community in NZ tends to be more pro-PRC than their Counterparts in US, Canada and Aus.

There is a strain of right wing opinion that has been *very* pro-China in recent years, it has waned in importance as economic and political nationalism has grown in influence though. And this pandemic is likely to leave it very much a minority current there.

[Frodo]

I don't know if you Kiwis know just how much some of us here in the United States envy you. For starters, you have a real leader at the head of your government...  

[Pericles]

I don't know if you Kiwis know just how much some of us here in the United States envy you. For starters, you have a real leader at the head of your government...  

That reminds me of this exchange from the other day https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6pHM8ZT2lZo

[Pericles]

A Labour Party internal poll has leaked and ... WOW.

Labour-55%
National-29%
NZ First-6%
Green-5%
ACT-3%

Preferred Prime Minister (at least this is how I am interpreting the article);
Jacinda Ardern-65%
Simon Bridges-7%
Judith Collins-7%

https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=12328854

This is even better for Labour than I expected. Maybe it is a bit rosy for Labour, but UMR does seem to have a good record and I remember their poll right before Jacinda Ardern took the Labour leadership in 2017 (those numbers were 42% National, 23% Labour, 16% NZ First, 15% Green). If the political landscape is remotely like this, it seems very hard for National to make up the gap. And combining the blocs makes it even worse for them-National & ACT are on 32% combined, Labour & the Greens are on 60% combined and Labour, NZ First and the Greens are on 66% combined (!).

Honestly, if it's really this bad I doubt Simon Bridges survives. The threshold usually cited for his leadership to be in danger (at least before Covid) was National being under 40%, under 30% simply wasn't imaginable. At this point, if National sees similar numbers (apparently they aren't showing their caucus internal polling lol) then they will have to ditch him, not even to win the election but for MPs (especially list MPs) to save their own seats. Taking this with a grain of salt but it is newsworthy.

[Oryxslayer]

Reminder that most govt's right now are experiencing either never-before-seen highs in approval and support, or horrific lows in the previous categories. No govt can capitalize on these numbers though since the source of the support is also preventing any electoral campaigning.

[Pericles]

Reminder that most govt's right now are experiencing either never-before-seen highs in approval and support, or horrific lows in the previous categories. No govt can capitalize on these numbers though since the source of the support is also preventing any electoral campaigning.

To an extent yeah, but New Zealand has an election on September 19 and as the response has succeeded in largely eliminating the virus domestically that election is likely to go ahead. So this could be an exception as it's hard for such a bounce to wear off completely by then. If the US were less polarized and Trump had responded better such an effect could have taken place there too perhaps, though November is a bit further away.

[An American Tail: Fubart Goes West]

Reminder that most govt's right now are experiencing either never-before-seen highs in approval and support, or horrific lows in the previous categories. No govt can capitalize on these numbers though since the source of the support is also preventing any electoral campaigning.

Yeah, fortunately Jacinda isn’t gonna pull a Muldoon and drunkenly call a snap election. It will be interesting to see if they can hold these numbers, but wow. Just wow.

This could be the first time under MMP in which a party can form a majority government on their own. I’m hoping that the Greens hold on. I’m guessing that the Maori Party will be toast. Obviously, those electorates are tricky to predict and dependent on lots of things, but if the Maori Party couldn’t win any last time, I have a hard time seeing them winning any this time.

Taking this with a grain of salt but it is newsworthy.

Speaking of potentially newsworthy, but ultimately unlikely to have any effect, Jami-Lee Ross is forming his own party.
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=12328220&ref=art_readmore

Simple Simon may be screwed, but it won’t be thanks to Jami-Lee.

[Pericles]

Reminder that most govt's right now are experiencing either never-before-seen highs in approval and support, or horrific lows in the previous categories. No govt can capitalize on these numbers though since the source of the support is also preventing any electoral campaigning.

Yeah, fortunately Jacinda isn’t gonna pull a Muldoon and drunkenly call a snap election. It will be interesting to see if they can hold these numbers, but wow. Just wow.

This could be the first time under MMP in which a party can form a majority government on their own. I’m hoping that the Greens hold on. I’m guessing that the Maori Party will be toast. Obviously, those electorates are tricky to predict and dependent on lots of things, but if the Maori Party couldn’t win any last time, I have a hard time seeing them winning any this time.

Taking this with a grain of salt but it is newsworthy.

Speaking of potentially newsworthy, but ultimately unlikely to have any effect, Jami-Lee Ross is forming his own party.
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=12328220&ref=art_readmore

Simple Simon may be screwed, but it won’t be thanks to Jami-Lee.

Yeah Jami Lee Ross will lose his electorate, best case for him is his party gets like 1%.

With majority government, in 2011 and 2014 National came very close to it both times. In 2011 National was polling in the mid 50s before declining in the campaign to 51%, then a polling error and NZ First having a late surge to end up above the threshold resulted in National getting 47% instead. In 2002 Labour also was polling like it could get an overall majority, but the minor parties surged in the campaign and it ended up getting only 41% (National declined in the campaign too though and ended up on 21%. The tendency seems to be for voters to recoil at the end from giving one party a majority. Though maybe 2020 could be the first to go against this, just like how the second largest party hadn't formed a government until 2017.

[Oryxslayer]

Reminder that most govt's right now are experiencing either never-before-seen highs in approval and support, or horrific lows in the previous categories. No govt can capitalize on these numbers though since the source of the support is also preventing any electoral campaigning.

To an extent yeah, but New Zealand has an election on September 19 and as the response has succeeded in largely eliminating the virus domestically that election is likely to go ahead.

Yeah I know which thread I'm responding to lol. The election though is four months away and it's likely the international situation will have changed in any manner of forms. It's also very well possible the unusual circumstances that have boosted everyone's approval will have vanished and the numbers all look more normal.

[Pericles]

Reminder that most govt's right now are experiencing either never-before-seen highs in approval and support, or horrific lows in the previous categories. No govt can capitalize on these numbers though since the source of the support is also preventing any electoral campaigning.

To an extent yeah, but New Zealand has an election on September 19 and as the response has succeeded in largely eliminating the virus domestically that election is likely to go ahead.

Yeah I know which thread I'm responding to lol. The election though is four months away and it's likely the international situation will have changed, and it's very well possible the unusual circumstances that have boosted everyone's approval.

Ok right, so your basic argument is all these coronavirus bounces are extremely fleeting and will fade very quickly. Which is possible, but at least in certain situations it's perhaps more likely they fade a bit slower over a longer period and so in New Zealand's case wouldn't be entirely gone by September 19.

[EastAnglianLefty]

Also, whilst coronavirus may or may not be a major concern in NZ in 4 months time, it will be in large parts of the world and will hence be in the news frequently. The reminder that NZ appears to have handled it extremely well is unlikely to hurt (always assuming that that's still true in a few months time, obviously.)

[CumbrianLefty]

Internal poll klaxon - but still, that is pretty impressive.

[Oryxslayer]

Also, whilst coronavirus may or may not be a major concern in NZ in 4 months time, it will be in large parts of the world and will hence be in the news frequently. The reminder that NZ appears to have handled it extremely well is unlikely to hurt (always assuming that that's still true in a few months time, obviously.)

I also fully expect coronavirus to be a thing come August/September, however the situation will have evolved into any number of potentially new phases. This evolution probably ends the international rally-around-the-flag, since everyone would have been in a state of new-normal for 6-7 months, and the early panic and unity would have subsided.

[CumbrianLefty]

Yes, by that time politics is likely to be returning to "normal" along with other aspects of life and the "blame game" will doubtless be underway. Though of course that also means that governments that have genuinely handled things well will have less to be blamed for.