WHEN EVERYBODY LIVED in villages, and every village had a graveyard, the expression “whistling past the graveyard” made more sense. Even so, it’s hard to describe the Coalition Government’s response to the latest Taxpayers’ Union/Curia Research poll any better. Regardless of whether they wanted to go there, or not, the polling data is leading the Coalition partners’ thoughts inexorably towards the dreary burial-ground of electoral hopes.
As they draw nearer to that dismal place, the tune they have elected to whistle to keep up the courage of their jittery supporters is that old political favourite: “Don’t Worry, We’ve Been Here Before.”
Conservative voters are invited to cast their minds back to 1990-1993, the first term of the Jim Bolger-led National Government. (That rules out every voter under the age of 40, but, never mind, they can always Google it!)
In the years preceding the 1993 General Election, we are told by National’s whistlers, the opinion polls also showed National lagging behind its opponents. (One survey put them at just 21 percent!) When all the votes had been counted, however, National found itself with just enough seats to govern.
On the night, and facing the prospect of a hung parliament, Bolger was not moved to breathe a huge sigh of relief. In the run-up to election day, he had been persuaded that National was on track for a comfortable win. Denied his easy victory, a clearly frustrated Bolger was moved to deliver the most memorable quote of the entire campaign:
“Bugger the pollsters!”
But, National’s whistlers are forgetting something. The General Election of 1993 was the last conducted under the First-Past-the-Post (FPP) electoral system. Indeed, it was also the year in which New Zealanders voted decisively to replace FPP with Mixed Member Proportional (MMP) representation. Looking for solace in Bolger’s narrow 1993 victory is, therefore, a lot like looking for cheese in a chalk factory.
Not a good analogy, then? But wait, it gets weirder.
The Jim Bolger-led National Party had been swept to victory in 1990 on a wave of revulsion at the damage inflicted upon New Zealand society by Labour’s “Rogernomics” – the top-down free-market revolution for which it had never asked, or received, an unequivocal mandate. Promising a return to the “Decent Society” of happy memory, Bolger’s party romped home with just shy of 48 percent of the popular vote.
Three years later, after discovering that the Decent Society entailed the Employment Contracts Act, the Mother of All Budgets, and user-pays health care, National emerged from the last FPP election with just 35 percent of the popular vote. The anti-government parties, Labour, the Alliance and NZ First, between them accounted for 61 percent of the popular vote.
It is practically inconceivable that the 1993 election result, replicated under New Zealand’s current electoral system, would see the incumbent government returned to office. What happened in 1993, largely on account of the anti-government vote being split three ways, would not happen today, because under MMP the parties opposing the government would be allocated parliamentary seats in proportion to the number of Party Votes they received.
Barring something unprecedented occurring (like Labour entering into a “grand coalition” with National) if the 2026 General Election leaves the anti-government parties sharing 61 percent of the popular vote – as they did in 1993 – then they will have more than enough seats to form a government.
After all, the 50.6 percent claimed by Labour, the Greens and Te Pāti Māori in the Taxpayers Union/Curia Research Poll would still give them enough seats to govern.
National hung on in 1993 because, under FPP, 35 percent of the vote was enough to secure them just enough seats to govern. But National, Act, and NZ First, if they continue, as Bolger’s government continued between 1990 and 1993, to implement policies opposed by a significant majority of the New Zealand electorate, should not anticipate a similar, by-the-skin-of-their-teeth, happy ending.
And yet, this is precisely the advice being tendered to the Coalition Government by the Taxpayers’ Union and other assorted ideological cheerleaders. The very policies that are driving the Government’s numbers down, it is suggested, must not be discarded as electoral liabilities, but instead, “all options should be on the table”.
Rather than whistling past the graveyard, any government disposed to heed such advice should probably be praying in the church.
This essay was originally published in The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Star of Friday, 14 March 2025.
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