Last night’s 1News Verian political poll showed one New Zealand voter in three is now somewhere other than the two major parties, a huge change to prior elections.
I think that 2002-2020 period was also probably informed by a lot of older voters who got spooked by the instability of the National-NZ First coalition and it became more desirable to have one really strong party for those voters too.
But there’s now a whole generation of voters who weren’t alive when Shipley rolled Bolger basically because he was moving slowly to keep his coalition partner on board, only to find that pissing off your coalition partner kinda destabilises your government. I wasn’t yet a voter, but that National Party shift was basically from a PM trying to work within the new rules of MMP to one that wanted to act as though National had an outright majority.
I imagine a lot of the frustration of this Labour government is that they didn’t do a lot with an actual majority :) But then there’s an advantage to being able to pin unpopular policies (that you still really want to do) on your small coalition partner - ie Act pull National governments further right than National parties campaign. But it strikes me that they’re quite happy with the policies, just know they can’t campaign on them.
Yeah, really good points. I think the coalition negotiation process was also very messy after that first MMP election (part of the why the coalition broke down). But Helen Clark introduced a very streamlined process in 1999, and that has basically been the blueprint ever since.
(As a side note, when the UK was doing a review of its electoral system, they sent people out to see what was happening in NZ. It happened to be during the first MMP term when the coalition had broken down. They concluded that MMP was a nightmare and the UK should avoid it. So that’s probably part of the reason it was never offered as an option when they had their own electoral system referendum. If they’d come over just a few years later, they’d have seen how that was an anomaly, and MMP runs extremely well here now!)
Also agree on National… my view is that National at its core is more right than centre, but Labour is more centre than left at its core. So National are happy to pick up Act policies, but Labour are more hesitant to pick up Green policies.
I think that 2002-2020 period was also probably informed by a lot of older voters who got spooked by the instability of the National-NZ First coalition and it became more desirable to have one really strong party for those voters too.
But there’s now a whole generation of voters who weren’t alive when Shipley rolled Bolger basically because he was moving slowly to keep his coalition partner on board, only to find that pissing off your coalition partner kinda destabilises your government. I wasn’t yet a voter, but that National Party shift was basically from a PM trying to work within the new rules of MMP to one that wanted to act as though National had an outright majority.
I imagine a lot of the frustration of this Labour government is that they didn’t do a lot with an actual majority :) But then there’s an advantage to being able to pin unpopular policies (that you still really want to do) on your small coalition partner - ie Act pull National governments further right than National parties campaign. But it strikes me that they’re quite happy with the policies, just know they can’t campaign on them.
Yeah, really good points. I think the coalition negotiation process was also very messy after that first MMP election (part of the why the coalition broke down). But Helen Clark introduced a very streamlined process in 1999, and that has basically been the blueprint ever since.
(As a side note, when the UK was doing a review of its electoral system, they sent people out to see what was happening in NZ. It happened to be during the first MMP term when the coalition had broken down. They concluded that MMP was a nightmare and the UK should avoid it. So that’s probably part of the reason it was never offered as an option when they had their own electoral system referendum. If they’d come over just a few years later, they’d have seen how that was an anomaly, and MMP runs extremely well here now!)
Also agree on National… my view is that National at its core is more right than centre, but Labour is more centre than left at its core. So National are happy to pick up Act policies, but Labour are more hesitant to pick up Green policies.