Standing up to China: The real reason National is tanking and Labour is up in the polls

Ok you primitive screwheads listen up!

So its political poll time again and holy hells bells look at those results, really look at them and tell me what you see.

Yes thats right Labour up, National Down, the Greens slipping and NZ First plunging into well below the 5% threshold in what looks suspiciously like what happened two months before the last general election when Jacinda Ardern blitzkreiged the opposition via the polls and then later on at the polling booth.

And lets put the mechanics of these movements aside for the moment and take a look at how this has been reported in the media or more importantly how this is being reacted to in the media.

Firstly we have Stuff which delivers the bad news via Henry Cooke in rather succinct and factual terms while noting the steaming pile of issues that Kiwibuild and the Karel Sroubek scandal were BUT without directly drawing the obvious conclusion that despite these two very damaging situations Labour has come out the other side with a jump in polling.

Then we have Tracy Watkins, also of Stuff, delivering a rather tepid opinion piece which tantalizingly hints at what may actually be going on behind the scenes but ends up with a lot of overly dramatic sentences or questions which state the obvious (such as "is it time for National to panic?") without really delivering any of the juicy analysis promised.

Meanwhile over at the NZ Herald "political commentator" Bryce Edwards does his usual plagiarist cut and paste job of other peoples work in his latest political roundup which is just sooooo lazy that I genuinely wonder why the Herald employs him and why he does not just make a list of links he wants us to read rather than desperately trying to add value to them by clumsily inserting his usual summary of things.

For Kiffloms sake Bryce, I have heard you speak on Radio NZ and its clear you have both a brain and opinions so why cant you just put these tedious lists to bed and tell us what you actually think, sheesh!

Then there is Audrey Young, also of the NZ Herald, doing just that by stating that its way too early for the knives to come out for Bridges. Well at least its her own opinion and not just a five minute list making exercise which makes its all the more a pity that shes completely and utterly wrong! Not only are the knives out they have been out for months but are held in "stasis" by a certain factor we will get into soon.

So lets check out the blogsphere shall we, perhaps there is more wisdom to be had there.

Over at National party supporting Kiwiblog, David Farrar, is, expectedly, talking things down and doing damage control by explaining this away as some sort of summer "bump" in polling because the PM was out at Davos and saying he will be "more interested in the next poll" but pausing just long enough to not the potential exit of both NZ First and the Greens in the next election based on the current polls.

Well at least its more analysis than the mainstream media but David is just being disingenuous by making it out that Kiwis cared about Jacinda headlining at Davos to be the real reason for the jump Labour has made (and the related decline of National) because this poll is also coming out in the period of the afore mentioned Sroubek and Kiwibuild muck-ups so you would think pressing issues more close to home would negate any temporary spin from mingling with the globalist elite for a few days.

Meanwhile no mention either way over at Norightturn but with the end of the Saudi Sheep Deal, climate change and NZ's open government being rated as marginal perhaps dear old Idiot Savant has other things to report on, maybe, maybe not, but its absence is noted. However as this is one of the better political blogs out there I am prepared to let it pass this time.

But aha, whats this I spy, its the Pundits Tim Watkin noting that the whole thing was "inevitable" and describing Judith Collins as the "complicating factor". Really Tim? Really? But Tim speaks some truth when he notes that its "a long way till the next election" but like all the other examples here there is almost no real analysis of whats gone on and playing the "its inevitable" card is the journalistic equivalent of Deus Ex Machina.

The sun coming up is inevitable, death and taxes are inevitable and given your half baked attempt at describing whats gone on as "inevitable" so is my opinion of your post as a "lazy hack job" inevitable, and you can quote me on that.

And finally over at The Daily Blog we get Martyn Bradburys usual take on things which given his political views, is that view is Bridges is a "dead man walking" which is not new and I could have told him that in October last year with my Dead Party Walking post.

But even Martyn, who can usually be relied upon to make schadenfreude entertaining rounds, out his post with the usual warnings about Judith Collins like she is the political boogeyman and how "right-wing pundits will pray this is rouge" with "rouge" being the polls result and not Collins going bezerek in a cabinet meeting.

Yet even in the Fifth Estate the takeaway on this poll result is way off and while mindful of my previous wisdom about political polls I think its time to set the record straight on why here and now after over 12 months of consistent polling, consistent rumblings of leadership challenges and things like Jamie-Lee Ross that only now is National getting hit in the one thing that has previously been unassailable and was its bedrock of both party discipline and future fortune: Nationals (some say magical) 46% party polling.

And just over a year ago I was pointing out that sooner or later that 46% was going to slip in my series of posts about rehabilitating the National Party but no one was listening then so just for once I am going to say "I told you so" because, unlike Tim Watkins saying saying its inevitable after the fact (easy thing to do Tim), I was saying it was inevitable 12 months ago when there was absolutely no indication that it would drop and in fact was defying all expectations in the post election enviroment.

But lets get to the real question about why it has dropped now.

Conventional wisdom is that its been that gosh-darned Jamie-Lee Ross and his damaging effect on National party polling and moral.

However that makes no sense because the previous Colmar Brunton poll showed absolutely no change to that magical 46% and that was taken right in the eye of the storm that was Ross saga and with the public having full view of the buildup of things in the months before so explaining this away due to Jamie-Lee Ross is just idiotic.

But there is a connection to Jamie-Lee Ross and National getting mugged in its polling and that is the revelation that National MP Sarah Dowie was the person telling Ross to kill himself via text which has not gone down well with the public despite a cabal of certain female National MPs, staffers and some in the media trying to paint her as the victim in the piece while Ross got characterized as the rapist in waiting.

As I have said in previous posts its takes two to tango but Dowie, in an age where that kind of behavior is absolutely not acceptable, went well beyond the fold.

With things like #meetoo and the review on bullying and harassment in parliament Dowie gets exposed as just as bad as any misogynistic male MP who thought that their position or name made them safe and as such its rather fitting that she not only get investigated by the Police but if found to be the sender of that text (and we all know it was her but let the system do its job) then she be cast out of parliament because if it had been Ross (or any other male MP doing such a thing) they would have been gone as of yesterday and the public views on the matter reflected that.

So some splinters of the Jamie-Lee Ross saga have done some damage here but it was always minor and in the end Bridges exercised some degree of damage control, even if only after the fact, by not talking about Ross any further but it was certain parties in the media who sought to paint this in a rather jaundiced light (as described above) that made the backlash there what it was. But still this was not what brought National down.

What about things like the Kiwibuild saga toppling over spectacularly in the early new year or the rancid stink from the Karel Sroubrek scandal that left Labour, Jacinda and Ian Lees-Galloway looking like a king sized hypocrites; shouldn't have those things had some effect in leveling out the poll result?

Well yes they should have and they probably did but when in the context of National selling citizenship to right-wing billionaire Peter Theil and its nurturing of the toxic and cancerous Housing Hernia one foreign drug dealer and a flawed but honest attempt to fix said hernia fall very rapidly into perspective as minor moments rather than deliberate and dishonest politics.

Thus we come to the real reason that National is down in the polls, or more correctly, Labour is up: Standing up to China.

Sure National scare-mongered it up as much as they could but in the end the current government saying no to Huawei for the 5G deal was the right thing to do and Simon Bridges going on TV to moan that New Zealands relationship to a country that is not free, democratic, jails it citizens for no reason, censors their internet, will risk war for its own stupid pride and will happily turn back an Air New Zealand flight due to accidentally mentioning Taiwan is not going to wash.

And that's it, that's the reason why after so long and so much Labour is finally up in the polls; because it made the most ethical decision so far of this government AND followed it through with action. If Labour could do this for things like tax, housing and all the rest Kraff knows where it and National would be polling but I cant imagine that National would be above the mid 20s.

National has been in China's pocket for so long (as Chinese spy Jin Yang is still a member of the party) that National probably don't even realize how distasteful being seen as a quisling is but Ross's recording of Bridges talking treason/sedition on behalf of China is one of the great scandals that the media just don't have the stones to investigate but the public no longer remain comfortable with China as our largest trading partner and using its size and leverage to undermine our democracy though it infiltration of politics both here and abroad.

Thus with National out of government China is no longer getting a free ride and that means that we may still trade with them but we wont be offering up our backsides for China's pleasure.

Something to note also here is that this was not some side effect of Jacindamania, the PM tried to stay well out of it and in the end it fell on Andrew Little, the GCSB and the Five Eyes relationship to see this through and for a public that had been desperately waiting for the government to fire on something and hit a six this was the first time it did since the first 90 days and look what happened.

Supporting this is the minimal movement in preferred PM polling (with Jacinda and Judith slightly up and Simon slightly down) showing that the movement in the party polling is not related to personality politics but rather it was solely an issue which drove this change.

Of course Judith Collins is now polling Higher than Simon Bridges and Bridges definitely has something to worry about but when has he not had to worry about his position as leader. As I have stated before its the toughest job in politics so unless he was harnessing personal mojo like Jacinda Ardern or John Key he was never going to be stroking it big all over the electorate in the preferred PM stakes.

All of this means that while Judith is polling higher she has not dethroned Bridges, yet, but she has out evolved him and that means no slick PR is going to take Simon any higher than he has been and his stock is now falling.

Also that "stasis" effect we have around who will be next leader of National in relation to jolly Judith Collins is due to the high degree of doubt around not only Bridges as being the man for the job but also Collins being the woman for the job (despite her repeated protestations that she does not want it: Your fooling nobody Judith!).

Bridges may not yet have the toxic cast that Bill English had roughly one year ago but as I mentioned late last last year the warranty on his time as leader "has expired" and that view came after I spent an evening speaking with moderate/centrist young Nats and listening to their views on who should be leader.

Short answer to the long question: They don't know who should lead but they sure as heck know it shouldn't be Bridges or Collins.

Nor should it be Paula Bennett, as her recent demotion to drugs "spokesperson" and subsequent beating by Chloe Swarbrick live on national TV showed that Bennett's limited intellect and long history of hypocrisy make her unsuitable to even be deputy leader let alone as some sort of vocal mouthpiece on an issue such as drug reform.

In fact if there is a moral to this story for National it was they should have taken my advice last year ago when I said that for Bridges to succeed as leader he needed to get rid of retched golems like Bennett, Brownlee, Smith and Collins (the remainders of the Gang of Five) and remake the upper party to his own design by letting some younger blood in.

And what a difference that would have made if only Jamie-Lee Ross would have been prevented from going bezerk by giving him the position promised to him by Bridges rather than to corpulent bully-boy Gerry Brownlee.

But its too late now and it does not matter if its Bridges or Collins at the helm of the ship as all Labour has to do is use their position as the government of the day to make a few more things real and you can watch that 41% slide into the 30s and down into the 20s to that place National was in before John Key seduced the party.

So thats the real reason why the poll results are what they are but there is no need to thank me. I do this because I care.


Vootie!

Sex, lies and Judith Collins

Listen to this while reading

Some people may have been shocked at the dirty laundry put on display last week when Jamie-Lee Ross and Simon Bridges went head to head in the public sandpit like two junkies high on cat pee but if you have spent any time in Wellington such stories are just the tip of the iceberg.

Take for instance the following:

·         A prominent minister in the last National Government was known to have such an insatiable lust for hiring pretty blonde women to work in his office that staff started to screen applicants based on hair colour

·         The speakers apartment, on the top of Parliament, has been the scene of several drug fuelled orgies involving MPs, sex workers and parliamentary staff

·         There are at least three brothels operating within 5 minutes’ walk of the Beehive; one set in a high class apartment building on the Terrace, another in an oddly decorated house slightly further up the terrace and one just across the road from Parliament: all have MPs as clients

·         Political lobbyists with access to parliament have provided drugs and sexual services

to MPs as part of their job

·         A highly paid Wellington courtesan operates under the cover of being a “communications consultant” to MPs and has her expensive Agent Provocateur lingerie insured as a “business expense”

·         Parliamentary services staff in the mid-2000s noted the operation of an individual they nicknamed “the groupie” whose mission it seemed to be to sleep with every male MP in parliament

·         An acquaintance of mine who has worked in the offices of five MPs, from various parties, over the years noted that all of them had affairs with their staff, all were married at the time and the offenders were both male and female MPs

·         The wives of at least two current MPs met their mates after working in their offices and having workplace affairs with them

Seven of the above are confirmed true and one remains suspected but unproven, you guess which one.

The point of the above is not to provide salacious titbits but to show that the kind of dirty laundry exposed by the Simon Bridges/Jamie-Lee Ross spat is not anything new if you work on or near the beltway in Wellington. Such things are, in fact, depressingly mundane.

And while the public may enjoy seeing MPs going at each other the reality is that it drags politics in general further down the slippery slope it has gone in the last decade (as Tracy Watkins has recently noted in Stuff).

It also doesn’t help that a recent round of research has shown that MPs are increasingly divorced from the general public they seek to represent (as well as reality) and most current MPs are now the kind of career politician that have no real life experience or basis in reality to lead a country or represent their electorate (given that the report notes distinct lack of MPs with any farming or trade background).

But Watkins is being deliberately naive if she thinks that this recent round of childlike squabbling is going to bring about a happier healthier parliament or more moral MPs (come on Tracy, at least try and be realistic on this one) by the sudden realization that someone has gone too far.

Still, parliament remains operational by recently having the third reading of the highly controversial and ultimately dangerous CPTTP trade deal (boo, hiss!) while also seeing a bill that would empower the Commerce Commission to look at anti-competitive behavior, and specifically the fuel market, also pass its third reading (Yaaay!) and thus showing that despite all the sexual shenanigans things can and do get done there.

Unfortunately all of this is being undermined by parties selling out democracy, wholesale, just so someone can buy their way into parliament (as National has recently been exposed doing) and no bill passing its third reading is going to offset that.

Nor is having people like National Party president Peter Goodfellow or Deputy Leader Paula Bennett stirring the pot or obviously playing the game for their own ends, by keeping Simon in the dark about Ross’s bad behaviour going to do National any favours by leaving Bridges looking naked and vulnerable as leader.

Thus we get to the most recent political poll results, done in the wake of Nationals spectacular meltdown, and what do you know, National down, Labour up, Greens up and Judith Collins (up several points to 5% as preferred PM) breathing down the neck of Simon Bridges (down 3 points to 7% as preferred PM) like the villain in a slasher movie.

Of course the reality is that with Jacinda Ardern now sitting on 42% as preferred PM it makes not a whit if its Judith or Simon who polls higher at this point as all Nationals internal ruckus has done is expose further the rift in National between the various party factions and your seven or five percent won’t be making the nut on election night against Labours 45% and Jacinda’s 42%.

And the even grimmer reality is with the Greens up 1 to 7% Labour and the Greens can govern alone as Winston and NZ First went nowhere at 5%. This means that the direct political outcome of all of Nationals infighting was to boost Labour, Jacinda and the Greens while weaken National and Bridges and set Judith’s heart all aflutter.

Unfortunately for Judith “I stab from the front” Collins, National does not appear suicidal enough yet to let her be leader which is a good thing because polling or otherwise National are now teetering on the brink of the political abyss that Labour fell into, with it nine cruddy years in opposition and endless leader swaps, which is a good thing because letting Judith run the show would bring the party to a place which it does not want to go.

Yes, the Judith Collins, as the Donald Trump of NZ politics scenario has been discussed before but not only is the NZ political landscape not polarized enough to facilitate such antics but Collins is such a tainted figure that it would be easier to leave Simon in charge and see what rocks he can steer the ship onto rather than allow Collins to rally the atavistic hordes to her dubious crusade.

Hunter S Thompson once said Richard Nixon represented the dark side of US politics and the same could be said for Judith Collins and politics in NZ. Just as Nixon did everything to advance his own political goals at the expense of all others so to would Collins do anything to get her backside on the throne, and NZ would be poorer for it if she did.

However, never say never as given how National has handled this crisis Collins might somehow exploit the chaos to grab the top job as Leader but she would never make it to PM and once that door is opened it cannot be closed and National would soon be begging John (or even Max) Key to come back and lead them rather than sink further into the murk that Labour has only recently climbed out of because if Collins for Leader, why not Brownlee, Bennett or (shudder...) Nick Smith.*

And there is even the rumor doing the rounds that Jamie-Lee Ross’s actions and later meltdown were subtly engineered by Collins (who Ross was a previous supporter of) so that the ultimate result would be to weaken Bridges and boost her own profile (and remove potential contender Ross) all in one foul swoop.

Given how fractious National has become and with Bridges smack-down on certain MPs its clear that such a scenario could be used for personal advantage but it remains just a theory and while the path to  the top job always has a few bodies to step over it would not be sound to engineer some sort of fratricidal bloodbath just to be queen. Or would it?

I don’t know where this will end but it’s safe to say that, after a brief hiatus in the wake of the 2017 general election, FukYoo Politix is back with a vengeance.

Is it any wonder that politicians are viewed in the same vein as child sex predators and lawyers?

And its a mood noted elsewhere so with that in mind rather than burn the Beehive to the ground and behead all sitting MPs, their staff and pets, here are my suggestions to a better Parliament, more open political parties, cleaner MPs and a healthier democracy:

• Term limits of being an MP (say four terms/12 years)
• No political donations to parties over 10K and all donations over $1000 must be declared in full
• Lobbyists banned from parliament and not allowed select or individual access to MPs or senior govt staff
• Pay of MPs cut to under 100K
• All MPs must have at least 15 years experience in non political/government jobs or roles related to their portfolio (ie must have been a farmer to be minister in any farming related role in government)
• Repeal the Waka jumping law

None of the above are particularly extreme and yet they would be a lot easier to deal with for MPs and parliament than allowing the ugly, angry and sometimes violent specter of populism/FukYoo politix to predominate and ultimately do the same thing.

Reader can suggest their own in the comments.



*-Amy Adams omitted because she is the obvious choice to succeed Bridges and go against Jacinda but I suspect that National male egos may not be ready for that yet (much as Labour was not able to stomach such a thought until they had scrapped the bottom of the barrel so many time that Andrew Little was leader before things got so desperate that Jacindamania happened. Also Adams may be playing the long game and lettering Judith run herself out of contention by tilting now, rather than when its less messy. Its what I would do.

Repeat after me – “It’s just a poll, it’s just a poll, and it’s just a poll!”

Ah political polling, the barometer, if you will, of our national mood; the dipstick measuring the public's tolerance for politicians and parties; the rectal thermometer slid, ever so gently, into the backside of New Zealand to see what its political temperature is.

Thus while no poll is exact they can provide a generalised snapshot of the situation and are often a harbinger of changes to come in the political ecosystem.

Poll results can determine the life and death (politically at least) of a politician or party leader, cause a policy shift and, when enacted in the form of an election, change governments.

So building of the back of yesterday’s post about Judith Collins lets dig a little deeper into some of the other results which have come out of the latest round of polling and see what we can find.

And for those who want to know a little more about the polling environment in New Zealand then I refer readers to a post I wrote back on KP entitled Let’s get Statistical! which looked at the political polling situation two years ago and broke down the dynamics of political polling in NZ including who does the polling, the rules for polling and why the margin of error is important.

Also for those who want to see how polling can effect change when the political situation is ripe for it check out my post from early last year when Andrew little was still heading Labour.

Greens and NZ First: circling the drain?

At first glance the polling from the latest One News/Colmar Brunton poll does not look very good for Labours collation partners (with the Greens down 1 to 5% and NZ First down 1 to 4%) and there has been various rumblings about a “one term government” in the comments below the article just to spice up the proceedings.

However since there is nothing riding on those poll results (like an election or a leadership challenge) they are better off as indicators of the public mood at this time, like waves coming up the beach, and not to be taken too seriously. 

The hyperbolic tone of the articles title could just be the editors attempt to spice up what is otherwise a rather dull piece but I think its just a fraction more on the side of media trying to stir things up where there is very little to stir.

That said some context is always good and we know from previous experience that NZ First can sag in the polls only to bounce back up just before an election when Winston takes his mojo medicine show on the road so a post-election poll showing NZ-First at 4% has a lot less impact when Winston is deputy PM (and acting PM while Jacinda is on maternity leave) and NZ First has ensured that for the next two and half years they have their people an policies in government via the coalition agreement.

NZ First has had higher poll numbers to be sure but those are always linked the mercurial Peters so it’s never a good plan to write the party off based on the polls alone. When Winston steps down and Shane Jones (now his successor in all but name despite more than a few in party not comfortable with him) steps up we will have a different ball game (as Jones polling mojo is mostly untested) but we will cross that bridge when we come to it.

Meanwhile the 5% the Greens got this time round (down 1% from the previous poll in April) is not that big a shift from their 6.3% they got in the election but when you look out across previous elections we see that the electoral decline in vote share over subsequent elections (10.70% in 2014 and 11.6% in 2011) is a come down from the time when Labour was in disarray and ticked off Labourites were swelling the Greens, but looking out over the longer history of the Greens we see that this is the range that the party has normally sat in when being polled.

It’s true that James Shaw’s disastrous handling of the party in the run up to the 2017 election and the rise of Jacinda Ardern hurt the Greens badly by gutting ranks of the Green vote but the reality is that 5% is about where the Greens usually sit on the longer timeline and if Shaw can keep his trap shut and avoid doing anything stupid the party should be able to keep the Green brand above the 5% cut-off come the next election.

National and Labour: Neck and Neck or the Tail Wagging the Dog?

From the same article as provided the stats for NZ First and the Greens there are also the numbers for Labour (no change at 43%) and National (up 1 to 45%) which are really minor shifts in polling but still the articles plays it like things could go anyway with potential coalation partners.

And at the start of the year there was a certain vibe in certain sections of the media (not naming names) that National had won the popular vote and was therefore the rightful party to form a government while Labour, The Greens and NZ First had done some sort of dodgy deal to steal the election (just like people thought Trump had done) by combining votes in some dirty, “disgusting”* and unfair trick to twist things in their favor.

Of course anyone who was subscribing to that theory was ignorant of how MMP politics works, eating too many dogbiscuts and as medical professionals describe it “an idiot!”

I addressed much of this in a post from last year and it was clear that while previous elections had showed Labour wallowing in the 20s and 30s as polling goes that was more of a short term reflection (think the post Helen Clark era comedown from her political neutering of potential challenges to her leadership) rather than some sort of historical norm.

Also Nationals strong polling in 2017 was as much as a product of politics in the John Key era (meaning that the first post Key election for National would probably be able to coast in on the momentum of the massive boost Key gave the party) as well as the fact that with National now the only party of the Right and the partisan dynamics of the NZ political landscape (ie that NZ is more conservative than many believe) there were definite limits to how many would cross the political line.

So the defining factor of NZ politics as we know it under MMP is not the monolithic vote blocks that the two main opposition parties have but the smaller, but crucial, vote shares that parties like NZ First and the Greens can bring to any potential coalition and it’s the ability of those bigger parties to woo those smaller parties to their side that makes the difference.

Thus we have a Labour, NZ First and Green coalition government not because of any inherent skulduggery on the coalitions part any more than the fact that National screwed the pooch (although one of those factors did count to some degree) in the election by driving Winston away via their personal attacks on him and instead the mechanism of MMP did what it was supposed to do and provide a fairer more balanced result than the yes/no/either/or result FPP used to force upon voters.

And with those thoughts in mid we can dismiss the idea that this is some sort of neck and neck situation (even if we discount that an election is still two years away) as it’s the coalition dynamics that count as neither NZ First or the Greens are likely to swing to National any time soon (see my posts on The Temptation of James Shaw and We are all Socialists now Comrade for further details why not).

Also the dog still wags the tail it’s just less of a pure breed mutt and more a MMP flavored “mixed breed”**.

So what can the current polls tell us?

The barometer analogy (along with the other two) I used at the start of this post works best as we don’t look at our barometer to see what’s going to happen next month or next year. We look at our barometer to see what’s going on now or in 12 to 24 hours from now and while political polls do have slightly longer time frames but the effect is essentially the same: a short term forecast which is generally accurate but subject to local factors and conditions.

Current political polling is probably most noticeable for what has been described as a lack of “budget bounce”*** and Simon Bridges leadership remaining open to contest, which is how most commentators have described it but other than that it will only be when we add the data from multiple polls up or when the afore mentioned election, leadership challenge or policy furor is pending can a particular poll be the hinge on which politics turns.

Why the budget did not “bounce” and Bridges job as leader remains up for challenge are the subjects of my other recent posts but in short one poll result is just one poll result so take a breath and repeat after me “it’s just a poll” as the slightly hyperbolic/hysterical tone of the original articles headline is not quite on par with these beauties.

*-As one national party higher up I spoke to around that time described it

**-for those who can’t bring themselves to say mongrel

***- ie not polling increase for the government after it releases its budget rather than this Budget Bounce (a purveyor of bouncy castles etc)

Here comes Judith!

Of all the antics which came out of parliament last week it seems that the winner on the Opposition side of things is Judith “I stab from the front” Collins.

It was not retarded antics of Paula Bennet, Gerry Brownlee, Trevor Mallard, Phil Twyford or Clarke Gayford which seems to have made hay but loveable and cuddly Judith.

The latest polling from Reid Research has the MP for Papakura appearing in the polls at 3.7% for preferred leader.

Collins appears to have made sweet filthy lucre off her time in the house while the rest ended up looking like a bunch of spoiled kids squabbling over the toys.

Not that Judith is the most adult of the MPs in parliament but at least she had the decency to avoid the histrionics of Bennet and stay on target while the many others in National found themselves reverting to their default setting of rumour-mongering, cat calls and the slimy shift from “holding the government to account” to Dirty politics Part II as they continue struggling to adjust to life in opposition and cant seem to land a decent blow on a government which is slowly starting to come down off its silver lined cloud and deal with the reality of actually fixing whats wrong in NZ.

“So what”, I hear you say “Jacinda reigns supreme as our beloved Warrior Queen at 40% so who cares?”

I know one person who will be caring about those poll results: Simon Bridges.

Bridges remains at 9% and has struggled to get traction as Opposition leader since he took over what is commonly known as the most difficult job in politics. This is not entirely his fault given the antics of his minions BUT his bold face and claims to be playing fair have not done much damage to the Government so it’s not hard to assume that the National Brain Trust (specially the more conservative elements*) will be looking round and counting the days on Bridges expiry date.

In some ways it’s a shame really because Bridges (and his play fair approach) remains the best bet to hold the Coalition government to account as it begins to falter on the big issues and in the wake of its lackluster budget. 

Collins has picked up some polling on Bridges weak leadership and because Labour is beginning to appear to have won the war but lost the peace as it looks like it does not really have the political will to do what needs to be done and instead will do just enough to keep the dissent from boiling up in the populace (which is typical Labour).

Still this could be the beginning of National playing the game that Labour previously played – that being the Leadership Shuffle.

Collins of Course remains poker faced about this and stating in the media she is "very happy doing what I'm doing and I'm very supportive of our leader Simon Bridges" but Bridges would do well to get some of the same type of stab-proof clothing that Bill English started wearing when he took over from John Key.

At least with Judith, Simon will see her coming.

*-Ah who am I kidding, that's all of them.

Elections 2017: The final analysis part II - I voted National and all I got was this coalition government

This post is dedicated to John Key; new chairman of the board of ANZ bank which recently announced record profits due to "efficiencies"

We now get to the nuts and bolts section of our analysis, the “hard” data, so to speak, because elections generate a lot of data in the form of polls, votes and policy analysis/costings.

And the most important data at the end of the day is the following:

Final vote/seat count

National –            44.4% and 56 seats

Labour -              36.9% and 40 seats

NZ First -             7.2% and 9 seats

Greens -              6.3% and 8 seats

ACT Party -         0.5% and 1 seat (good God Epsom!)

TOP Party -         2.4% no seats

Maori Party -       1.2% no seats

Mana -                 0.1% no seats

Other Parties -     0.4% no seats

First and foremost the current Labour/Greens/NZ First arrangement comes to a grand total of 50.4% and even if National got to add in Act and the Maori Party (due to their previous association) they still only get 46.1% of the vote.

So yes National got the most votes but this is not a FFP system we live in, it’s MMP and inter party politics is important here so it’s not your individual total that matters but the grand total of all parties that are forming any coalition and on that front National lost.

Also, and lets not be coy here, National was still getting such a level of votes mostly due to the fact that up to two months before the election Labour was in such a state in the polls that many voters were clearly turned off voting for them. That all changed of course after Jacinda Ardern took over (see below) and had it happened earlier I suspect there would have been a bigger shift.

Now let’s compare those figures with the 2014 election outcome:

National –            47.04 and 60 seats

Labour -              25.03 and 32 seats

NZ First -             8.6 and 14 seats

Greens -              8.6 and 11 seats

ACT Party -         0.69 and 1 seat (again, good God Epsom!)

United Future -    0.22 and 1 seat

Maori Party -       1.3% and 2 seats

Mana -                 1.42% no seats

Other Parties -     0.86% no seats

What stands out when you compare these two sets of figures is that between 2014 and 2017 is that almost every single party in 2017 had a decline in vote share compared to their outcomes in 2014.

The only major party to buck this trend was Labour.

Importantly also is the level of decline and its proportion to the actual vote base of each party. National lost 2.6%; New Zealand First lost 1.4%; the Greens lost 2.3% and Maori lost 0.1%.

While Nationals loss was the biggest in actual terms, when taken in proportion to the sheer numbers the biggest loser was the Greens who lost over a quarter of their vote base in 2017 when compared to 2014.

And this loss is even worse when compared what the Greens got in 2011 (11.6%), which should be ringing alarm bells in Green HQ as the current trend is a party haemorrhaging voters. This may be reversed due the Greens now getting into government (Eugene Sage is Minister for Conservation is a big win) but as noted in previous posts the Greens need to work hard to avoid electoral oblivion by slipping below the 5% threshold.

Also when you place this information on the political spectrum we see that there was a distinct and marked shift of voters to Labour from all other parties (or voters shifting through parties). Which in electoral terms means that Labour acted like a vote sink, sucking in voters from across the political spectrum at the expense of all other parties.

Labours 11.6% jump in vote share is far greater than the 6.4% combined losses from the main parties (and including Maori) is a massive surge which means that those voters did not just come from the current vote spread and in fact also came from those who had previously not voted deciding to vote (up to 79.75% from a nadir of 74% in 2011 and 77.9% in 2014).

Another interesting nugget is that NZ has gone from having seven parties in parliament to five and the majority of votes sit with only four of them, which leave power centralised much more than any previous time since MMP started (previous elections had either six or seven parties make the cut).

Some of this is attributable to United Future vanishing as soon as Peter Dunne cut and run as well as the electoral mauling both Maori and Mana received this time round for behaving like idiots.

Admittedly these numbers are raw and do not reflect many of the nuances that can (and have been) found coming out of the 2017 election (for example the discrediting of the rural/urban divide theory and the data for Auckland showing a marked shift towards National this election) but the data does clearly show the following things:

1.    All parties except Labour got less votes than the previous election

2.    There was a marked shift to Labour (and by extension the Left)

3.    Fewer parties made it into parliament and any previous MMP election

The first two on this list are directly connected and show a resurgent Labour under Jacinda Ardern (more on that in a moment) while the last indicates that the era of one person/one issue parties under MMP is probably over.

This political culling of the smaller players may show that after the “deregulation” of NZ politics, by the introduction of MMP in the 90s (thereby breaking the two party stranglehold under FPP and allowing many new players to enter the game), the “market” has reached a state of stabilization and cartelization with the smaller and independent operators driven out of the “marketplace” and the remaining actors operating at the level of informal agreement to “regulate prices”.

And with the heady days of early MMP behind us and the public now able to recognise a one man band masquerading as a larger political cause when they see it (are you listening Winston?) the four remaining survivors of this election (because Act does not count in any meaningful way) get to fill seats in the house previously held by now extinct political parties.

But why stop there when there is more data to crunch, so try this one on for size.

For those who bemoaned the lack of policy discussion at the expense of a relentless focus on personality there is data to show why that was.

In looking at both party and preferred leader poll data is was possible to link changes in various party personalities with clear shifts in the polls.

The most obvious example is the sudden and massive shift in polling for Labour after Jacinda Ardern took over, but we can also see noted shifts in party fortunes when Meteria Turei disclosed her benefit fraud; when Shane Jones joined New Zealand First (this was reflected in the tumble in Winston’s personal polling going from 10+ percent to five and six percent) and even in the slower and less drastic shift in National’s fortunes after John Key bailed out (although credit to Bill English for actually increasing his personal polling during the same period) and when the Todd Barclay scandal broke.

Add in the fact that this election we did not have any flashpoint issues to galvanise public opinion as previous elections (think Dirty Politics and media personalities like Kim Dot Com sucking up all the public’s attention and emotion) and it’s clear that any sudden shift in party fortunes was almost always tied directly to some individual’s behaviour or circumstances.

And while the jury remains out on the increasingly tabloid manner of much of the NZ political press as the driver of such a view it is indisputable that media coverage of the election almost always returned (like a gossipy magazine) to the person rather than the policy and usually left those who wanted the debate to be about the issues (ie policy) out in the cold.

Issues like clean water, child poverty, house prices and anything else which could have been the hinge of this election only ever got a secondary part as either some sort of political garnish to the main course of Jacindamania, Winston’s Super payments, Meteria’s benefit fraud, Todd’s criminality, Bill’s memory loss or Andrew’s ineptitude or lost in the static (or should that be statistical) haze of unfocused public discord which could never focus on an issue long enough to deal with it.

Thus in the final few weeks of the election the normal stable political polls started to jump around very wildly with National sub 40% and Labour above 40% and preferred PM polling starting to look like a coin toss as Bill sank to 28% in July and Jacinda peaking at 35% in early September (where she had been at 6% in July). Even Winston during this period skipped around like a drunk fairy (hitting 10% in July and diving to 4% two months later when National tried to take him out with their clumsy reveal of his Super data).

By election day on the 23^rd of September the polls were scrambled both for party and leader and what had been a rather staid and predictable (as well as depressing) electoral outcome of National for another three years (and possibly perpetuity) changed to a an exciting 26 day game of “Where’s Winston?”.

So at this point we have the numbers showing a shift to the Left, personality politics dominating, 1/5^th of voters not voting, the near extinction of minor parties and it’s no wonder that some people howled when National got the most votes but failed to make a government as while not a traditional FPP environment it was certainly not the MMP environment we were used to either.

Add in the backdrop for all this being 33 years of Neoliberal politics and an electorate constantly saying “F**k it!” (every six or nine years) as it tried to rid itself of the affliction that such an ideology was and what was a guaranteed win when John Key was leader had become something else with distinctly populist overtones, albeit through a Kiwi lens, when Jacinda became leader of Labour.

Finally, with National having nothing left to foil the meteoric rise of Jacinda Ardern but a table full of Dead Cats (via the advice of professional muckrakers like Crosby Textor) and it was clear in the final month, that despite its high polling, National had lost the election as scumbag moves like Steven Joyce’s outright lying about Labours costings and scaremongering about their tax plan had National starting to look like a child molester caught out on To Catch a Predator and showed that they had nothing positive to offer New Zealand and thus Winston decided to go with Labour.

No outcome is ever a given but all of the above adds up to a mood for real change, not just a change of government but one of ideology, a change away from land sales to foreigners, billionaires buying citizenship and pay as you die health care to something more for the People and less for the dangerous class of parasites whose feeding on the flesh of this nation had gone from a simple itch to full blow infestation and possible death (given how corrupt elites usually end up destroying any society they afflict).

And that’s how it happened…

Next week - Part III - We are all socialists now, Comrade   

Statistical Update! The King(maker) is dead! Long live the Queen!

Typical, the day I put out a post on the latest political polling in New Zealand Colmar Brunton has to go an release a brand new poll: just to skew my numbers I suspect.

OK, so I need to update my figures for the last post, not all of them but a few things have changed significantly.

And those significant changes are:

Say Hello to Leadership Crisis x 2!

Jacinda Ardern (9%) is now more popular than Andrew Little (7%) as preferred PM. Just last month Jacinda was 4% but 30 days later she shoots up 5% while Andrew has not changed.

Putting that into perspective the second most popular person for PM is now Jacinda Ardern where two months ago she was 1%. Holly molly!

Meanwhile Bill English sheds 5% to now sit at 26% which when compared to his predecessors popularity is shockingly bad. Bill will be certainly starting to worry (and look over his shoulder) now as his popularity evaporates.Eeeeeeeeek!

Say hello to our new Kingmaker.

But the most interesting changes are the rise of the Maori Party to 4% (up 2%) and the decline of New Zealand First to 8% (down 3%).

The rest of the numbers for the major party's numbers have not changed with National still on 46%, Labour on 30% and the Greens still on 11%.

Which in the coalition game leads us to the following:

National/Maori - 50%
Labour/Greens - 41%

So even if NZ First throws its support in behind Labour and The Greens it wont be enough, at best it will be a close (but no cigar) 49%.  

And now NZ First may have to start thinking about how to whats next on the campaign trail with the coming election while the Maori Party have the power to keep National in power which unless changed means that the long held kingmaker position of NZ First has been cut out from under him.

So I think we could call these game changing developments and I will be commenting on the Labour leadership situation in my next post.

Vamos a obtener estadisticas!

My normal weekend routine is a mundane mix of looking after children, doing household chores and gardening with some martial arts training thrown in for flavor but this weekend its wet and I am at a loose end so what better way to spend the time than pouring over the latest political polling data right, right?*

Ok so maybe not but the latest data has some rather juicy little nuggets buried within and after reading I think its worthy enough to post about it.

First up its the sources of that data and we have the latest polling from Roy Morgan (dated 17 March) and some slightly older data from Colmar Brunton (covering the period 11-15 February) to digest. Whats interesting is the Colmar Brunton data is pre-National's superannuation announcement and the Roy Morgan is post and while they are two different polls, so the results would not ever be identical, its still its interesting to have results from both before and after.

Party Popularity

The main party popularity from Colmar Brunton are as follows:

National at 46% (down 4%)
Labour at 30% (up 2%)
Greens at 11% (no change)
NZF at 11% (up 1%)
ACT at 1% (up 1%)
Maori at 1% (no change)

no other party had any significant polling.

The main results from Roy Morgan are:

National at 43.5% (Down 4.5%)
Labour at 29.5 (up 3.5%)
Greens at 14.5% (up 1.5%)
NZF at 7.5% (down 1.5%)
ACT at 0.5% (down 0.5%)
Maori at 2% (no change)

All the rest no significant polling.

Now the Colmar Brunton has about 1000 people polled with a +/- 3.1% margin or error while Roy Morgan polled 847 people and some fancy chart to explain things but in the end seems to come out at +/- 3.2% for the MoE and for those interested in my breakdown of NZ political poling see my old post from KP here.

My own take on these polls is that the Colmar Brunton is usually more conservative (if possibly pro National given its done on behalf of TV1) while the Roy Morgan is a bit more wild in its take (possibly due to its smaller sample size but also as its an offshore poll and not subject to the same constraints that NZ polls are (see my KP post for the details on that) and as such less accurate.

So like the nice people over at Kiwiblog who just take the Curia Public poll average and be done with it I tend to balance the results out a bit and instead of the raw numbers look for  the movements in the numbers themselves.

So what are these numbers telling us?

The most obvious is the clear and noted shift in both polls for National going down and Labour going up while the other parties have various ups, downs or no change.

Next is the fact that for the first time in a long time a Labour/Greens coalition is above National in the Roy Morgan poll (even if only by 1%) while closing on National in the Colmar poll but still out by 5%.

So as always that leaves us with the inevitable question who will New Zealand First support because in neither poll will ACT or the Maori party have enough seats to cover the deficit and as such Winston is back as kingmaker (as he has been for a long time).

So nothing really new there but the downward trend of National and the upward of Labour show that there is a shift going on.

Whats causing this I think are a combination of Labour having two good by-elections recently, the promotion of Jacinda Arden to deputy to Andrew Little in Labour (more on that in a moment) and English & Co dropping the ball by pissing off the public with a string of ham fisted media blunders (water, superannuation and Bill English's drug problem) and probably not going to be helped come next poll by the Hit and Run scandal.

But one of those afore mentioned juicy little poll nuggets is the 15% undecided on the Colmar Brunton poll (down 1% from previous) which as always leaves a rather large pool of potential voters out there who have not made up their mind but will wait to see which way the wind blows come election day.

Preferred Leader

Then its onto Colmar's preferred PM section which provides a rather interesting slice of not just who is being seen as PM material but who is also even registering on the public radar.

And the number for preferred PM are:

Bill "why are'nt you John Key" English at 31% (no previous recent polling)
Winston "lets make a deal" Peters at 8% (steady)
Andrew "see you in court" Little at 7% (down 1%)
Jacinda "no eyes on the leadership, honest" Arden at 4% (up 3%)
John "see you later suckers" Key at 2% (down 34%)
Metira "ho hum" Turei at 2% (up 1%)
Gareth "what me worry" Morgan at 0.1% (no change)
Helen "not eastern European" Clark at 0.3%
Dont know at 36% (up 2%)
None at 4% (up2%)

Now I took only what was interesting from a long list of names here but what stands out is the following:

Bill English is less popular than John Key just last month (36%) which is a terrible start and shows that the public mood for Bill is not what it was for John which is not exactly shocking but has now been tabulated for all to see.

What is shocking is how far John Key fell in short order (down to 2% from 36%) as it shows that without the media exposure that kept Key oxygenated it has rapidly faded from public consciousness (as I predicted he would).

And for those wondering how drastic this is its worth noting that the current poll includes Helen Clark still polling at 0.3% which is only 0.1% behind Judith Collins (on 0.4%) which shows just how strong the cult of Clark really is that even nine years after she left the office she can still register on the poll and only just behind a known aspirant for the throne (Collins) which shows just how unlikely it is that Judith Collins will ever get the job because no secret National leadership cabal in its smoky back room right mind will ever let such a low polling misanthrope anywhere near the throne.

Interesting but not surprising is seeing Jacinda Ardern move up to the number four spot from the ranks of the dispossessed where most other MPs live to be within striking distance of Andrew Little who must be starting to feel very very nervous at the moment as his popularity stats since he took the job have tracked steadily down from his high in 2015 (where he was on par with contemporaries like Goff, Shearer and Cunliffe) down into a space where he is now polling below Winston Peters.

Normally I would say make of this what you will but in these heady days I would say that this is just another nail in Little's coffin as the sound of blades being drawn across whetstones becomes just that bit more audible as that rift in the Labour party does not go away just because no one is talking about it and Arderns one win in Mt Rokslill was enough to oust Annette King (currently polling on 0.6% but previously 0.2%) and get her the number two spot.

So in this vein I fall back on my previous advice to the Labour party: roll Andrew Little now while you still have a chance!

But the mind blowing stat of them all on this chart is the 36% undecided which when added to the 4% none and 1% refused leaves a walloping 41% of the voting populcae who is not into the politics of personality or simply cant make up their minds on which mutant to pick.

And while the don't know number has generally been high across previous polls (27% to 34%) it has been steadily rising since September 2016 which may provide some clues to why John Key did decide to leave (if your not buying the "he was pushed" argument) as it shows Key gently trending downwards while the undecided goes up.

What rings out loud and clear from all these numbers is that the age of Key is over, no ifs or buts about it and Bill English has inherited a solid poll lead but its an established position (being popular as PM) and his previous polling (0.1, 0.9 and 0.4 from mid 2016) show that he was on nobodies radar for running the show should Key suddenly decide to throw in the towel or get rolled by an insider clique wanting to regain control of the party in what I would term a "right wing Jeremy Corbyn" coup.

Of course there is room to massage the stats all sorts of ways given that most personalities in NZ politics resonate with the public as about as much as or less than a cast member from Shortland Street but its telling what the current shifts show as its clear that the mood for anyone of the current crop is open to debate and most positions are as easy go as they are easy come (as Jacinda could soon find out once the honeymoon is over.

The Issues

So at this point the polls have given some info on the parties and the personalities but what about the issues?

Good question unmedicated voice in my head, I am glad you asked as both polls have brought their own take on the mood of the nation on what is hot and what is not.

Roy Morgan gives the goods on what direction the country seems to be moving in and confidence in government with numbers of 61% for the right direction and 25% for the wrong direction is close to a three year high so maybe the housing hernia is having some sort of perverse effect on the mood of the populace because the Colmar Brunton poll shows that the number one issue in this country at this time is the dear ol housing hernia at 27%; with education at 20% and the economy at 16% for the top three followed by health, the environment and immigration coming immediately after (at 15%, 9% and 9% respectively).

And Roy Morgans handy chart of the government confidence rating is also worth viewing as from the heady highs of 2008 to the slump of 2012 to the partial revival in 2015 to a recent jump overt the last few months (from what was a rather gloomy mood for most of 2015 and 2016) we can see that National have never recovered from the euphoria of things in 2008 when they won.

It is also worth noting, to be fair to National, that while they are down they have been consistently higher than Labour was when they took office (with govt confidence under Labour polling well below anything National has ever achieved).

Thus while correlation is not causation its is interesting to see those two stats sat side by side.

Also interesting is seeing education polling as the number two issue while the least important issues on voters minds are things like euthanasia, foreign investment and drugs all at 1% each while Maori issues, water quality, refugees, disasters and defense all polling in the "less than 1%" category which can also be known as the "who gives a s**t!" category.

But again what stands out is not what is an issue to people but how many people stated "don't know" or "other" on their polls which were 21% and 4% respectively meaning that 25% of the population has its mind somewhere else and I would really like to know where (any suggestions would be appreciated).

And if that were not enough Colmar Brunton poll drops its take on the issues when compared to voter blocks which provides an interesting slice of who is thinking about what, thus we learn:

- Housing issues resonate with middle aged Labour voters making over 100K a year
- Education resonates with middle aged pakeha women
- The economy resonates with male National supporters over 55
- young people aged between 18-34 (31%) don't know what the issues are

Be happy, be sad, be concerned, be confused by those numbers because that while people do have important issueson their minds at heart there is a very black gulf in those early and new voters, which like a lot of the other null stats that has been listed, shows that there is a solid core of the NZ public to which politics or any issue related to it does not resonate and where there are solid political cores of older voters who (like in the UK with Brexit) may end up dominating the issues and the election outcome.

So these are the stats and as a whole its shows, what I belive, are three things.

The first is the clear sign of third-termitis for National in government, which was cleverly hidden by John Key's dark arts but with him gone are now exposed like the scaly belly of a dragon.

The second is the definite potential for this election to have outcomes like the the US, the UK or elsewhere with big chunks of voter apathy, populist candidates rising and the near certain situation of a hung or paralyzed parliament if Winston does not kick his support in behind one vote block or another.

The last is that potential election issues are definitely coalescing around things like housing and education but there is still room for things like water issues (under the broader banner of the environment) to come in hard on the electorates consciousness or for things like the SAS/NZDF scandal to add some murk to the proceedings.

NZ politics in NZ has a curious dynamic in that the issues don't create the fire that can often be seen elsewhere but because kwi's are a passionless lot, we can let things slide for far too long before we wake up with the light of oncoming oblivion shining in our eyes (and its horn blaring in our ears) and only seconds to yank the wheel hard to the left to get back in the right lane.

Enjoy the rest of your weekend. I know I will.


*-Oh I will be having some drinks and getting my boogie on later tonight but I probably could make better use of the time today.