Kossacks! Leave your cares, your Russian scandals and your horrendous healthcare battles to one side for just a few minutes and give some thought to other progressive struggles around the world. I have for you the story of what might turn out to be the progressive comeback of the century…
Overshadowed by all the great dramas of US political life at the moment, there is one little country that is having its own political drama this weekend (and I’m not talking about Germany!). Why do Kossacks care about New Zealand? Well, as someone who has posted on DK for a while, I’m always amazed how many Kossacks see New Zealand as a safe haven should things really go pear-shaped in the US. And you’re very welcome – we’d love any progressives to join us on the other side of the Pacific. Think of us as a smaller, wetter, version of Australia without the sharks, snakes and poisonous spiders.
So, how is it looking in the ‘safe haven’ on the eve of a general election?
To establish the scene, contemplate the key players… First up is the three-term government dominated by the National Party with a cast of smaller parties keeping their coalition alive. Think of them as pleasant-talking, smoothly-plausible, neoliberals-on-steroids – market fascism with a smiley face… They are led by Bill English — the kind of leader that a casting agency chose to specifically appeal to your rural cousins. National are the classic villains of any decent movie… the avuncular distant family members visiting for Thanksgiving whom, once the plot has progressed a bit, turn out to be smiling psychopaths that have stolen your family silver and disinherited your children. Up against them are a variable cast of characters. Under our proportional system of representation we have a couple of plucky challengers on the progressive left. Anchoring the political spectrum of decency and progressive politics is the Green Party (editorial alert – they are my folks) with earnest and decent leader James Shaw. He’s been somewhat overshadowed by the blazing comet of Jacinda Ardern spanning the Centre Left as the fresh and young leader of the newly rejuvenated Labour Party. Both Labour and Greens are full to the brim with talent and idealism. Between them they have emerged from a state of near chaos to arrive – like Jeremy Corbyn in the UK – at the brink of a sensational upset.
The DK International Elections Round-up did a great job of covering the phenomenon of Jacindamania. After taking over the Labour party only seven weeks ago, the young and charismatic Jacinda Ardern has taken Labour from only 24% in the polls to the giddy heights of 44% only last week. Remembering that New Zealand has a form of proportional representation (and all governments are coalitions), it was looking good for a progressive’s dream team: a winning coalition between Labour and the Green Party! It was a sensational achievement in only seven weeks. A 20% climb in the polls, and hope where none had existed for nine long years...
Since then, the plot has turned a little sour and, much as we would expect in a Hollywood-scripted superhero movie, the forces of evil have fought back. The governing National party has unleashed a series of calculated lies that seem eerily reminiscent of the descent of the US into ‘post-truth’ politics… Think Trump, think the mendacity of the Brexit campaign… think right wing scum inventing lies with the sole purpose of unsettling and un-nerving voters who were attracted to Jacinda Adern’s positive message of change for New Zealand. Dammit, it worked! National has moved back up to around 45% yesterday, with Labour slipping back to 37% or so it seems… But is there a chance for our superheroes to get off the mat and still win for team Red/Green tomorrow?
To find out, tomorrow’s election will play out around a set of dramatic themes:
1) A potential Youth-Quake! The current polling has been estimating youth turnout at around the same level as the previous election in 2014. Yet the on-the-ground evidence is of massive lines of young voters taking advantage of early voting where you are allowed to enrol and vote at the same time. Jacinda has brought a voice to her generation and the vibe feels fantastic. I’ve been walking around my university campus today soaking in the atmosphere as 100s of students have been lining up to vote for the first time. They love Jacinda, they love the Greens, they hate National… So, how many of them are there? Our Electoral Commission (Hint: here is a useful idea for a functioning democracy – put your elections in the hands of an independent body that sets the rules and doesn’t allow any party interference!) has been struggling to keep up with new voter enrolments. They announced a provisional total at the end of last week that still showed young voters (18-24) as being under-enrolled, but they also admitted that they had run out of capacity to process new enrolments and hadn’t included any ‘enrol and advance vote’ registrations from the many advance polling booths.
So, Question #1: Has the Youth-Quake happened? On current evidence we just can’t tell.
2) Are the polls accurate? At the moment, the collective polling wisdom from New Zealand’s TWO main polling agencies is that National is about 7-8% ahead of Labour. Not enough to form its own government, but enough to commence coalition negotiations with a party from outside the progressive coalition called NZ First. Yes, you were reading that correctly… we have TWO main polling companies. Last election we had six. But with the corporatisation and dumbing down of media, paying for polls is something that got cut from media budgets. Some of us have links to the major party campaigns, and their internal polling is showing a closer race. National’s internal polling suggests a 4% lead to them. Labour’s is closer… But internal pollsters are also admitting that the electorate is volatile with a lot of movement and still around 15% undecided. They are suggesting a margin of error of around 4% on the polls. In a proportional representation system, a polling error of +/-4% is a lot!
Add in to that polling error the fact that young voters just might be turning out at a higher rate than the polling samples suggest and many things start to become possible….
Question #2: what happens if the polls aren’t accurate?
3) Who can escape the Death-Zone! New Zealand’s quaint system of proportional representation is generally good. I particularly like the fact that it mandates that the final number of representatives in parliament must match the exact proportion of the vote received by that party. So, no more gerrymandering! If you get 43% of the vote, you get 43% of the representatives… with one huge exception! The electoral system isn’t supposed to be clogged up with endless small parties getting 1 or 2% of the vote (think Israel or Italy), so New Zealand has as threshold of 5% of the vote to get into parliament (there is a way around this, but it doesn’t always succeed). If a party doesn’t get 5% of the vote, whatever votes it had received are then redistributed to all the other parties. This is the ‘death zone’ of voting in New Zealand and it can make or break a potential coalition.
Two vitally important smaller parties have been flirting with the death zone in recent polling. The Greens (my beloved party!) have had a horror campaign and only two weeks ago were polling at 4.5%. When voters start to see that kind of number, they start to think: ‘if I vote for them, they may not make 5% and then my vote gets re-distributed – including to parties I really hate! Maybe I shouldn’t vote for them?’. Like the Greens, another smaller party – NZ First – has also been hovering around the Death Zone. A natural partner for National (but actually having gone into coalition once with Labour in the past), NZ First is essential to the chances of a future National Government…
Since then, however (remember that this election is scripted by Hollywood), polling for both the Greens and NZ First has been edging away from the Death Zone, but not by much, not much at all (and did I mention that 4% margin of error in the polling!).
So, the first number everyone will be looking at tomorrow night is what is the vote for the Greens and NZ First in relation to the 5% death zone. If either falls under, the chances of their side of the political spectrum making government collapses. Moreover, if the Greens fall below 5% and out of parliament, your faithful Kiwi Kossask correspondent will then re-live all the worst moments of November 2016… Just imagine if your party not only lost a massively high stakes election, it then ceased to be a parliamentary party at all!!!! The stakes are high for us Green voters… (did I mention how many times I’ve wandered over to the campus polling precinct today… those young voters are our Green bedrock).
Question #3: have the Greens and NZ First escaped the Death Zone?
4) The Aftermath. New Zealand political junkies love the first episodes of Season One of Danish political drama Borgen. That is our life! Remember Birgitte starting to forge together a winning coalition of parties after election day… remember the old racist populist party leader going fishing for a couple of days so that no-one could reach him to negotiate a coalition… Denmark stole that plot-line straight off New Zealand!
On the day after the election there are four potential outcomes that might start to be assembled over the following weeks:
1. A government of ‘National Disgrace’ in which National is able to make a coalition with enough little parties to form government. Please no, no, no, no…..
2. A National/NZ First coalition – slightly more moderated than the first option, but still an unhappy outcome.
3. A Labour/NZ First/Green coalition – Can Jacinda Ardern turn out to be the master negotiator that Birgitte from Borgen was? Could she use the power of an inspirational vision of the future to lure even NZ First into a coalition of hope… On current polling, this is the most likely way for our heroes to win this battle. It would likely take many weeks of negotiating, and I can just imagine the wily old lizard Winston Peters (leader of NZ First) shuffling between Labour and National seeking out the most satisfying trophies and baubles…
4. A Labour/Green coalition. Hollywood would script it this way. The Youth-Quake occurs! The polls are wrong! New Zealand sees the greatest come-back for progressive politics in many generations! From 24% and dead only 7 weeks ago to leading a progressive coalition into government! New Zealand’s youngest Prime Minister, the first leader who is from the post- Baby-Boom generation, a person bringing hope to a dis-enfranchised generation of new voters and a legion of new political activists…
Please let Hollywood be the script-writer for the final reel of this drama tomorrow….
Saturday, Sep 23, 2017 · 11:38:36 AM +00:00 · smelly pirate
The night is drawing to a close in NZ and I can give an update on the four options…
We have (just!) avoided the calamity of a National majority (Option 1). But we also failed to land the knock-out blow on behalf of the Centre Left (Option 4). That option landed about 4-5% of vote short of where it needed to be...
Instead, we now have NZ First and their leader Winston Peters open for business as to which side of the political spectrum will lure him into coalition (Option 2 or 3).
The wooing is going to be unsubtle and nauseating. And most pundits think that he is more likely to side with National than Labour.
So, the chances of Jacinda Ardern becoming our youngest ever Prime MInister rest with one of our oldest and most unpredictable politicians… And — thanks to the careful and untheatrical glories of our electoral system — we’ll need to wait at least 2-3 weeks for the coalition talks to conclude!!!
The mood at the Labour Party headquarters tonight was: ‘Jacinda is going to be our next Prime Minister… it is not a matter of ‘if’, it is a matter of ‘when’…