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| Even Stevens: Over the 33 years between 1990 and 2023 (and allowing for the aberrant 2020 result) the average level of support enjoyed by the Left and Right blocs, at roughly 44.5 percent each, turns out to be, as near as dammit, identical. |
WORLDWIDE, THE PARTIES of the Left are presented as experiencing significant electoral decline. Certainly, in the 70 elections that took place across the planet in 2024 there wasn’t all that much for left-wingers to celebrate. But, does a review of New Zealand’s recent political history reveal a similarly receding electoral tide? How much evidence is there that, over the past 30 years, this country has become a part of what some commentators are calling “The Global Drift to the Right”?
The latest analysis detailing a worldwide decline in voter support for the Left was published in the right-wing British newspaper The Telegraph on 16 January 2025. Looking back over the past 30 years, journalists Meike Eijsberg and James Crisp felt confident enough to proclaim that “The Left is more unpopular than any time since the Cold War”.
Even so, the Left’s global average, based on the results of the most recent electoral contests in 73 countries, isn’t exactly dire. Indeed, at 45.4 percent, the level of public support would strike most leftists as comfortable. Sure, the Right, especially in North America and Europe, is currently riding high, but at 51 percent globally, the forces of conservatism are only a few percentage points away from defeat.
What’s more, in Africa and Latin America the forces of the Left remain in the ascendancy. Not to the same extent as a decade, or two, ago, but still – the success of Argentina’s Javier Milei notwithstanding – well ahead of the Right.
The Telegraph being The Telegraph, New Zealand’s ideological divisions have, for the most part been lumped-in with those of our Australian neighbours. The downfall of Jacinda Ardern is, however, noted with, one assumes, a fair measure of schadenfreude. Ardern was not liked by The Telegraph, which never passed-up an opportunity to devalue and downplay the extraordinary achievements of New Zealand’s young prime minister during the Covid-19 global pandemic’s first, terrifying, months.
Eijsberg’s and Crisp’s anticipation of a conservative victory in Australia similarly betrays their newspaper’s unabashed partisanship. Anthony Albanese may be no one’s idea of a charismatic political leader, but, to a great many Australians the alternative, Liberal Party Leader Peter Dutton, comes across as a hard-core – bordering on fanatical – right-winger. As things now stand across the Tasman, the safest bet would appear to be on a 2025 election that produces no clear winner – and lots of losers.
What, then, does the electoral record tell us about the fortunes of the New Zealand Right and Left over the past thirty years? Does the Left register a steadily descending trend-line? Are the parties of the Right entrenching themselves ever-more-firmly in the role of New Zealand’s “natural” leaders? Or are we presented with an altogether more nuanced history?
Between the election of 1990 and that of 1999, the most arresting feature of the Left-Right divide is the acute vulnerability of the Right’s overall position. National’s success in both 1990 and 1993 was entirely attributable to the unfairness of the First-Past-the-Post (FPP) electoral system.
Jim Bolger’s defeat of the Fourth Labour Government was presented – at the time, and still is today – as a landslide win. In terms of the popular vote, however, it was an extraordinarily close contest. Yes, National received 47.82 percent of the votes cast, but, between them, Labour, the Greens and Jim Anderton’s NewLabour Party attracted the support of 47.15 percent of the voting public.
The narrowness of National’s win never seemed to be fully appreciated by Bolger and his hardline Cabinet. The electorate’s embittered judgement on Bill Birch’s Employment Contracts Act, Ruth Richardson’s “Mother of All Budgets” and Jenny Shipley’s harsh “welfare” policies, was, however, rendered three years later, when National’s share of the popular vote plummeted from 47.82 percent to 35.05 percent. The Left’s share of the vote (Labour + Alliance) was 52.89 percent. That figure rises even higher, to 61.29 percent, when NZ First’s 8.40 percent is tacked on!
That National, with barely a third of the votes cast, was, nevertheless, able to form a government, vindicated in dramatic fashion the arguments of those who had promoted, successfully, a change to a proportional electoral system.
The power conferred upon Winston Peters and his moderate populists in NZ First, and, to a lesser degree, upon Peter Dunne’s succession of shape-shifting electoral vehicles, renders an accurate assessment of the Left-Right balance problematic.
In the 1996 election, the first held under the rules of Mixed Member Proportional (MMP) representation, for example, the anti-government parties collectively accounted for 51.64 percent of the Party Vote. The mutual mistrust of Peters and Anderton, however, resulted in a National-NZ First coalition government. The messy dissolution of the coalition, just 18 months later, made clear the unwisdom of “protest” parties pledged to unseating the government perversely restoring its leading players to power.
Over the course of the 18 years separating the general elections of 1999 and 2017, electoral success and ideological dominance (albeit in a muted sense) was shared evenly between the parties of the Left and the Right.
In the nine years that the Left Bloc was dominated by Helen Clark’s Labour Party, supported by Jim Anderton’s Alliance (later the Progressive Party) and The Greens, its collective share of the Party Vote averaged almost exactly 50 percent. The Right Bloc, by contrast, averaged just 39 percent between 1999 and 2005.
The Right Bloc’s nine years of dominance – from 2008 until 2017 – were the mirror-image of the Left’s. Its component parties – National, Act and the Māori Party – also racked-up an average of 50 percent of the Party Vote – while the Left Bloc’s average election tally similarly dropped to 39 percent.
With the benefit of hindsight, it seems altogether more appropriate to attribute this mirror-imaging to the quality of the contending block’s respective leaderships, than to grand ideological lurches. In Helen Clark and John Key, Labour and National were blessed with strong leaders who attuned themselves with remarkable accuracy to the mood of the electorate.
Throughout these 18 years, voter feeling was driven much more by exogenous events than ideological allegiances. The impact of 9/11 and the War on Terror; the Global Financial Crisis; the Christchurch Earthquake; these, and the way the government of the day responded to them, were what moved the electoral dial.
If 2024 feels more fraught and ideologically polarised than usual, that is, almost certainly, on account of the disruptive boost the Internet and social media have given to the generation and articulation of popular grievances; the impact of globalisation on core economic and social institutions, and the enormous global disjuncture occasioned by Covid and the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Overlay all that with the continuing slow burn of global warming, and is it really any wonder that everybody is looking to blame “the other lot”?
And yet, allowing for the obvious exception of the 2020 “Covid” election, which saw the Left Bloc’s share of the Party Vote soar to an unprecedented 57.87 percent, with Labour winning 50.01 percent of that on its own, the ideological balance of the last 30 years presents us with a curiously reassuring picture.
Over the 33 years between 1990 and 2023 (and allowing for the aberrant 2020 result) the average level of support enjoyed by the Left and Right blocs, at roughly 44.5 percent each, turns out to be, as near as dammit, identical.
Some might interpret this “tie” as evidence of a society split right down the middle and at daggers drawn. But, for most New Zealanders, it doesn’t feel that way at all. For most of us, it simply suggests that, although we may have to wait a little while for democracy to deliver the right (or left!) result, our side’s turn will come.
This essay was originally posted on the Interest.co.nz website on Monday, 3 February 2025.
14 comments:
Thank you Chris, good points but it seems a bit pointless to be reaching for precision when the definitions of Left and Right are themselves increasingly imprecise, when TPTB are merely rearranging the deck chairs while the ship is sinking?
The increasingly over regulated, over taxed, dysfunctional and totalitarian EU and UK, for example, are on a course for disaster, "living on the corpse of their dead fathers" *. Can they even see what the problem is? Their bureaucracy has grown fat while innovation and productivity has collapsed, the populous increasingly infantalised, incompetent and dependent. Their current course is unsustainable; everything is in place for a major disruption.
* That phrase is used in this brilliant talk, 9.39 minutes: https://youtu.be/zzx4cKJLphI
I can't really accept that the Labour Party is at all left wing. I wouldn't even call it 'centrist'. Labour abandoned the left at least 40 years ago. Now, all that exists at the left end of the political spectrum is a political void: there's no one there.
Incidentally, the effects of the electoral gerrymanders that favoured the 'Right' were made manifest in the 1978 and 1981 general elections. In both, the 'popular vote' favoured Labour. Yep: if there were such an animal as a democracy in this country, Labour would have occupied the Treasury Benches in 1978.
Cheers,
Ion
Some fine analysis. The old adage that new governments are never voted in but rather the old are voted out might tell the same story. But good to add flesh to the bones and gain an understanding of the nuances.
The global swing to the right in the last few years can be in part attributed to the reduced support from the majority, for measures to control climate change. The left are doggedly hanging on to the idea that we must save the planet from climate change, whereas more people are accepting the view that although we must work towards a more sustainable life style for the sake of the planet, we should not do so much as to severely hinder economic recovery. That's a philosophical stand that uses the logic that you can't make the changes that are needed unless you have an economy that supports it. In NZ's case currently, I believe there are three main reasons that the left are not way ahead in the polls given the furore with Maori. One is the lack of any imaginative policy. The second is Labours inability to convince anyone they are capable of running a good economy. and thirdly the Maori party leadership is brain dead and divisive. Imagine if the Maori party was led by popular intelligent people who sold the Maori story to the wider population in a rational and inclusive way. As Chris reflected the leadership has more to do with popularity than everything else. Although his business skills are good Luxons leadership and charisma are lacking so National are struggling in the polls. Labour would be doing even better than they are if Hipkins showed some initiative. We see in Aus, Britain and the US it's the leadership and the economy making the difference. Taking the moral high ground on issues works when times are good. The luxury of morals comes with good pay packets, security and jobs. People are realising farmers are important to us now. We might one day rely on fake meat and dairy but at present real food is in fashion again. A year or two back the population wouldn't have accepted the new polices on mining but we don't see much resistance to it now. If it means better times let's do it. The three year cycle didn't affect the last labour coalition because they did nothing except spend money, However the huge list of policies to set in motion from National sees them struggling against the clock. We do need four years.
Surely we have left and right main parties in name only. Both have been captured by the pressure of social media, pivoting to whatever message they are told will cost them votes if they don't.
Neither party have a spine, so they have abandoned contentious issues to both the minor parties and the judicial system. Anything to keep the salary coming in and to hell with the country.
Pundits seem to think that post covid elections are a special case in that incumbents got hammered all over the world – or at least the world that they take any notice of. And if we are split down the middle at least our 2 major parties are closer together politically than Republicans and Democrats at the moment or Tories and Labour in Britain.
And of course Ardern was excoriated and threatened online, and you can still see echoes of this on MSN. Female prime ministers don't seem excessively popular, even if they are right wing.
At least we don't have to choose between nondescript centrist geriatrics and utterly crazy lunatics as they do in the US. Yet.
As a former very long term Labour supporter, I truly fear the day they ever gain power again. Long gone is the working man, none of that lot would know one if he punched them fair in the face. Labour are all about aged university activism nowadays, honing their critical theory repertoire in a contest as to who can be the most devout follower of that religion. They are dangerous and completely delusional and would sell the people of this land to the tribal rentier class thinking themselves as folklore legends, modern Rosa Parks or Martin Luther Kings. Yep, they are that stupid. They are perfect in the modern order of the progressive left.
The Greens simply harbour too many diagnosis of incurable disorders that don't require lithium to be taken even slightly serious but voters think this bunch of extreme high rotate cause/university generated activists as environmental. They are anything but. But their threat is serious along with Labour.
Then TPM. Far Right?
Not mad, but calculating, hateful, deeply racist and who see the rest of us as potential hosts and enemies to be treated in the best tradition of pre European culture. They live with a burning objective to overthrow the white colonists. Kiss goodbye civilised NZ, hello a poorer version of Cuba, if this trifecta of horror takes power.
But then there's the other left. National. After a year in the shadows of its much more focused coalition partners, I watch with increasing concern that the Luxon managed National part of this government is almost as woke as their Labour sisters. I think they are beginning to unravel and I suspect they think they are the smart guys, stealing Labour Green idiotic climate dogma, thinking, as in delusional, that they can appease Maori activism. I now get why government departments and the courts take the piss out of the government they lead, it's because National think they are down with the cool kids in Wokeville.
Nationals/Luxon's financial illiteracy is getting embarrassing. Even the Hosk is too scared to ask the hard questions of our PM, probably because it cruel to harm defenseless animals like Christopher. But more likely even Hosking realises that far more important people are listening and the risk too great that accompanies showing our emperor is butt naked, quite so easily. I think NZ inc is that fragile.
In politics I've not seen quite the desert of talent that exists in the major parties today, and the Greens proving being an MP is by far the best paying job creation scheme for the terminally unemployable, ever. Lucky us!
The polls may not be wide but the sane vs the insane grows by the week!
So what you are saying (reading between the lines) is why is there no populist party here?
If there is one thing The Platform shows us is that there is a tight coalition (oligarchy), controlling what can and can't be said. It isn't the advertising managers fault; it is the institutional bias of the system. Public radio has become a progressive mouthpiece while commercial media is the corporate mouthpiece.
In the 1990's we saw the beginning of mass migration, but it was (we are told) "needed skills". Since then we have had an unmandated extra million with generous voting rights for non-citizens. We now can see the results.
When Shane Jones was interviewed by Corrin Dann in response to "send the Mexicans home") he waffled but couldn't bring himself to say we have, far to much migration. The best he could do was call NZF a "nationalist" party, (which was empty rhetoric under the circumstances).
Meanwhile Winston has a press conference with "Bish", (where "Bish" would like to double the size of Auckland) and their strategy is (a never ending) "build more houses".
Peters, who for decades stoked reactionary sentiments amongst disillusioned voters, might until now have functioned as a firewall, keeping at bay a variant of populism that will inevitably be more harmful to democracy, [oligarchy].
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Luke-Oldfield/publication/373842720_Man_alone_Winston_Peters_and_the_populist_tendency_in_New_Zealand_politics/links/650040eb25ee6b7564e698be/Man-alone-Winston-Peters-and-the-populist-tendency-in-New-Zealand-politics
What an interesting analysis - thank you Chris Trotter. It reaffirms my idea that a study of Sun Tzu's surprising approaches to understanding his field of endeavour and tactics is essential for cleaning one's mind of the clinging snot-like didymo sticking rigidly to the preconceptions of past sketchy decades.
But Aristotle also: i“Education is bitter, but its fruit is sweet.” ~ Aristotle.
“All knowledge should be subject to examination and reason.” ~Aristotle.
“Man is a political being.” ~Aristotle “We are what we do repeatedly. Separate
him from law and justice and he is the worst.”
famous quotes from aristotle auth.gr https://www.auth.gr
'Left' in the words and minds of people who call themselves Left, seems to hold no more truth than 'Right' in the words and minds of people who call themselves Left. Perhaps not you, Chris, but 'the Left' ( a tiny proportion never as big as they wish to be portrayed) never say 'Right' about those others, as you do here, Chris - its almost always Far Right.
Your view that NZ is almost evenly divided between these two poles is almost certainly untrue. Most don't think in these terms at all.
Red shoes? Blue shoes? Not common.
Shouting by a v v few who choose to label their cruel and absurd shoes ( Germaine Greer had a most amusing description that cannot be included here, but if the shoe fits, Cinderella... ) chosen by them as somehow being the vanguard of what nonobsessed people have on their dependent appendages without gross self referential labelling (it used to sell newspapers), is just tiresome.
It is leaking into Parliament now. The returns will be poor, I predict.
It looks like governments of all stripes have conceded big chunks of their authority to the unelected bureaucracy, effectively devaluing the authority of we the people.
The recent revelations of the activities of USAID, among others, show an out of control (though nominally under the auspices of The State Department) , unaccountable outfit. Peddlers of woke ideological imperialism? Matt Tiabi:
"USAID’s budget has been cracked open and Americans are leafing, transfixed, through its colossal library of crazy-ass contracts. From $39 million for “Gender Equality in Water, Power, and Transportation” to “Recognizing the Third Gender in Bangladesh” to “Ukrainian Resilience Through Fashion” to a “TransFormation Salon” to a pre-Taliban plan to help “Afghan Women Enter the Financial Sector,” it’s a bottomless pit of “I don’t want to pay for that.”
A trip through USASpending.gov led me to an “art therapy” contract whose deliverables include things that look like (but can’t be, of course) suggestive pics of queer teenagers"
https://www.racket.news/p/nation-shrugs-as-godzilla-eats-washington
You have a blog site open to comments, yet as per normal, 10 days later, not a single comment is published. Is there any point to Bowalley Road? Like at all?
There are a lot of lies about USAID put out there by the Trump administration for the gullible, who should be fact checking but never seem to bother. At least as long as it fits in with their worldview. Many of the donations ascribed to them have in fact been made by some other organisation, and on the scale of things have been piddling.
what's more of a worry is Musk's minions– Some of whom are very young and have absolutely no experience in anything and shouldn't be allowed within cooee of any government organisation – firing people in charge of nuclear secrets/weapons and airline safety. But no doubt the gullible will find an excuse for it.
Honestly the idea of some 19 year old with no job experience except working for his father and being a camp counsellor having access to huge amounts of personal information should fill everyone with horror. Especially as he seems to call himself "big balls". I would think that his mental age is much less than 19 to be honest.
Incidentally anonymous 19:54 – you are correct it is getting difficult on this site to have a conversation. Not that it's ever been particularly easy.
Well said David. Your hero Trump is a prime example. Not only is Elon musk unelected, but he is also not properly appointed.
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