An Electoral Taniwha Is Rising.

Unexpected Participants: Labour’s own pollsters, Talbot-Mills, are reported to have detected a pronounced up-tick in the number of Māori aged between 18 and 35 who are indicating their intention to vote in this year’s election. This is not a demographic in which New Zealand psephologists (people who study elections) generally place much stock. Historically-speaking, roughly two-thirds of 18-35-year-old Māori have declined to participate in the electoral process.

THE FINDINGS of the latest Roy Morgan Poll are nothing less than a political bombshell. It is not only that the poll shows both National and Labour falling to roughly 30 percent of the declared respondents’ Party Vote. It’s not even that Act is now boasting 15 percent of the Party Vote – a share that would entitle them to 6 or 7 seats at the Cabinet Table. No, the explosive nature of these results lies in the fact that Te Pāti Māori (TPM) stands at 7 percent of the declared Party Vote. If that is the result on Election Day, then TPM could be looking at nine MPs. Moreover, Labour and the Greens would need the support of those nine MPs to form a government.

It may be objected that for several months now a plethora of polls have confirmed TPM’s status as “kingmaker” in the 2023 General Election. And, since the National Party has ruled out any kind of deal with TPM, the only King it will be able to crown is Labour. While correct, what this “So what else is new?” response fails to adequately register is TPM’s significant rise in the declared Party Vote. Add TPM’s 7 percent to the Greens’ 9.5 percent and between them the parties of the Far Left are currently representing one out of every six voters.

Boom!

What’s even more significant, is where TPM’s 7 percent of the Party Vote is coming from. Labour’s own pollsters, Talbot-Mills, are reported to have detected a pronounced up-tick in the number of Māori aged between 18 and 35 who are indicating their intention to vote in this year’s election. This is not a demographic in which New Zealand psephologists (people who study elections) generally place much stock. Historically-speaking, roughly two-thirds of 18-35-year-old Māori have declined to participate in the electoral process.

That amounts to tens-of-thousands of uncast votes – tens-of-thousands of votes which, if consolidated into a bloc, could reconfigure the electoral landscape dramatically. It is precisely this sort of reconfiguration which the Roy Morgan Poll has now made visible to the public. Young Māori are waking up politically and they are telling the pollsters that the overwhelming majority of the votes they intend to cast will go to Te Pāti Māori.

Why? What is it that has, to employ Shane Jones’ rather condescending phraseology, got the nephews off the couch? To those who understand that for every extreme political action there is an equal and opposite extreme political reaction, the answer is plain. It is the Act Party’s policies in relation to te Tiriti o Waitangi, co-governance and affirmative action.

Act’s leader, David Seymour has amassed an impressive number of former National Party voters by refusing to equivocate on the politics of race. Where National has been mealy-mouthed on race – frightened, no doubt, that too much frankness will drive away urban liberals – Act has been all-too-clear. Given sufficient parliamentary clout, it will first re-define, and then re-write, the Treaty of Waitangi. Act will then confirm the revised text by majority vote in a binding referendum.

This raw political meat has proved particularly appetising to those right-wing voters who are strongly of the view that all this “Māori stuff” has gone too far, and that National is doing far too little to roll it back.

That there are votes – lots of votes – in the politics of race has been clear ever since 2005, when Don Brash’s in/famous “Orewa Speech” saw National’s poll numbers go up by a whopping 17 percentage points. Seymour’s attitude in 2023 appears to be: “If you don’t want these voters Mr Luxon, then we’ll gladly take them off your hands!”

Did Seymour think at all about how Māori would react to what would amount to a unilateral Pakeha re-writing of te Tiriti, followed by a tyrannical Pakeha majority’s gratuitous ratification of Act’s new and improved version of New Zealand’s founding document? Does he, even now, have any idea of the fury such a course of action would unleash? Is he really so sure that young Māori New Zealanders, whose expectations of a decolonised and indigenised Aotearoa have never been higher, will just sit on the couch and watch him set their treaty – and their hopes – on fire?

Roy Morgan’s pollsters suggest otherwise. They’re telling us that an electoral taniwha is rising.

This essay was originally published in The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Star of Friday, 7 July 2023.

“Something Very, Very Different”: Why Rumours Of Labour’s Internal Poll Numbers Are Giving The Nats The Heebie-Jeebies.

Reasons To Smile: For some in Labour’s Caucus, the experience of taking fire (especially from people they considered friends and allies) has been a painful one. But the fact that they have remained at their posts, and returned fire, has not been lost on Labour’s traditional constituency. There have been no leaks, no private briefings, no wayward press releases. The Labour Caucus has – touch wood – rediscovered the power of collective commitment and responsibility. In the process, it has reclaimed a good measure of much-needed credibility.

 

CAMERON SLATER is appealing directly to members of Labour’s caucus on his Whaleoil blog. Why? Because he’s just got wind of Labour’s internal poll numbers. According to Cameron: “Their internal polls show something very, very different from the publicly available polls. Apparently the gap between Labour & National is about 6 or 7 percent when the public polls have it at 15%.”

 

This can only mean that, in the usually highly accurate UMR poll, Labour is positioned somewhere between 34-36 percent and the National Party somewhere between 40 and 42 percent. At that level of support, it’s ‘Game Over!’ for John Key’s government. No wonder Cameron is doing everything he can to sow doubt in the minds of Andrew Little’s colleagues.

 

Clearly, these results have brought on an attack of the heebie-jeebies in National’s ranks. How else to explain the usually very crafty Mr Slater’s tactical lapse? Calling people’s attention to what he’s heard about Labour’s internal polling – when it’s this good – has given a major boost to the Left’s morale. It’s also boosted the credibility of the other big rumour doing the rounds about UMR’s polling: the one that puts the combined Labour-Green vote at 49 percent.

 

Cameron’s post may also serve to confirm the rumours about National’s own internal polling. According to these, Labour’s much criticised ‘China Play’ almost immediately began shaking erstwhile Labour voters loose from National’s tree in large numbers.

 

That would certainly explain the way National suddenly went dark on the whole issue. As Matthew Hooton explained in his NBR column of 17/7/15: “Wedge politics are straightforward: You find a genuine problem, associate it with an unpopular minority, raise it with inflammatory language, or in a provocative context, and wait for your opponents to defend the minority. Then you stand with the majority against them.” With advisers as skilled in the dark arts of wedge politics as Mark Textor and Lynton Crosby, the Prime Minister was almost certainly warned against expressing too much solidarity with the targets of Labour’s campaign.

 

That job was left to TV3’s Patrick Gower, who has been waging a virtual one-man-war against what he insists are Labour’s “cooked-up” statistics. How disappointed poor Paddy must have been when his week-long assault upon Labour for “playing the race card” was rewarded with a marginal increase in Labour’s support (from 30.4 to 31.1 percent) in the TV3/Reid Research Poll. To rub salt in his wounds, the poll also showed the ‘Opposition Bloc’ of parties (Labour, Greens, NZ First) registering 50.9 percent to the ‘Government Bloc’s’ (National, Act, Maori Party, United Future) 48.2 percent. Completing Mr Gower’s discombobulation must have been Reid Research’s finding that 61 percent of New Zealanders support a ban on foreign investors buying-up residential property.

 

So, let us assume, purely for the sake of argument, that all the rumours are true and all the numbers are correct. It would mean that National has shed 6-7 percentage points directly to Labour. Interestingly, this is exactly what the Roy Morgan Poll of 17 July indicated. It had National down 6.5 points to 43 percent, Labour up 6 points to 32 percent, and the combined Labour-Green vote on 45 percent. Admittedly, the Roy Morgan survey only caught the first day of Labour’s China Play, but, by the same token, it escaped the effects of ‘Paddy’s Play’ entirely.

 

From the beginning of the year, Labour’s clear objective, and Andrew Little’s laser-like focus, has been to re-capture the roughly 10 percent of former Labour voters who have, ever since Helen Clark’s departure, taken to voting National with their Party Vote. Crucial to recovering that lost support are the two “Cs” – Connection and Credibility.

 

Labour's Caucus - Sticking To Their Guns.

 

Labour and Little must first connect with, and then remain at the side of, their electoral base. They must whistle their tune – and keep on whistling it – until their supporters start whistling it back to them. In lifting Labour’s vote towards that magical 40 percent mark, nothing is more important than saying what you mean, meaning what you say, and sticking to your guns.

 

For some in Labour’s Caucus, the experience of taking fire (especially from people they considered friends and allies) has been a painful one. But the fact that they have remained at their posts, and returned fire, has not been lost on Labour’s traditional constituency. There have been no leaks, no private briefings, no wayward press releases. The Labour Caucus has – touch wood – rediscovered the power of collective commitment and responsibility. In the process, it has reclaimed a good measure of much-needed credibility.

 

And if Cameron Slater’s right about the results of the latest UMR poll, they now have their reward.

 

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Monday, 27 July 2015.