The liking Jacinda factor in 2020 is not particularly going to help Labour this year. People feel let down by her. The only thing helping them is that Luxon still isn't widely trusted. Labour would have dropped much further in Polls if there was a viable 3rd choice. I'm lower income and more to the left than swing voter noted in article, but am age 50's female swing (mostly liked National under John Key, voted Labour last time), and I don't want to vote for either of main parties this time round. My mum is in her 80's and has been a dedicated and LIFELONG Labour voter - but will not be voting for Labour this year either. We were both huge Jacinda fans and feel let down by her. Not for the cost of living and inflation stuff largely out of her hands, but over the housing issues (so little done over so many years), and increasing gaps between rich and poor in NZ + declining lifestyle for average income working folk over Labour tenure (the disintegrating health system doesn't help either). How a LABOUR Government with a majority can be so ineffective at making significant changes to improve lives for people on lower to mid incomes depresses me for the future. We all know National won't be an improvement there.
Thanks Henry, I appreciate your analysis and contrary to some in the twitter feed, I don't believe you have displayed anything other than unbiased opinions based on the survey. What I find interesting is this whole focus on Jacinda Ardern as PM. I absolutely understand that we live in an age of personality politics now, but it's interesting (looking at comments here and on twitter) that people who are lifelong Labour voters feel let down by "her" alone.
I believe a reason for lack of delivery by this government is because as soon as they were elected they had to focus their efforts (and spending priorities) trying to maintain their popularity with swing voters, i.e. keeping them wealthier than the general population rather than follow through on some more "left-leaning" policies. This is the norm now for any centrist party which is what both Labour and National are so I don't expect to see much change with the predicted change of government in 2023.
Despite the polls, a lot of the swing voters are actually in a much better position than the average voter now, just look at the wealth gap. As with a lot of things in our personal lives, perception is sometimes different from reality. We are ALL worse off due to the cost of living issue but lower income/renters are so so much worse off.
It's pretty sad that politicians spend so much of their effort on popularity rather than driving change and improvements for all
Interesting but I think you should look into how many life time Labour voters have left the fold because they no longer recognise the Labour party.
I am one and know quite a few who are appalled at the Government's behaviour (Identity before Unity, Authoritarianism over Democracy, Lies and Obfuscation before truth and lack of action (Housing, Education and Crime ...) on important issues. We no longer recognise the Labour Party and suggest you consider its founding principles and charter and see how far away from that, that we have travelled.
Can you mention the sample size of the swing voting set? You said it was 15% of 2020 Labour voters (seems low to me to be honest!), and if 55% of the entire set of 3000 were Labour voters, that puts about 250 people in your swing voting set--is that about right? In that case, while the survey has a MoE of 2%, breaking down the swing voting set, if my stats are right, you get a 90% confidence interval of the proportion/MoE of about 5% for breakdowns within the swing voter set.
Awesome analyses, and I totally believe you had that Zizek comment ready at hand :P
Based off the demographics of swing voters shown here, I don't think there's much Labour can do really to stop most of them swinging away again. The swing towards Labour and Jacinda in 2020 was very probably just the 'clinging to existing authority during a crisis' that we see all over the world time and again. Now that the covid crisis has 'passed', the need to maintain stability with the existing authority is gone.
Their social issue stances are the real indicators here that they will swing back to whichever party more aligns with those views. But maybe Labour have managed to convince a significant amount of wealthy middle aged white people that Maori-Crown relations still need to be improved substantially?
Oh and we can't forget the actual thousands of new migrants who have become eligible to vote following the 2021 residency visas thing. As a recent migrant myself, I'm pretty sure that most of them won't be voting Labour given the absoltue shambolic horror show INZ and immigration policy has been over the last few years.
Thanks for this Henry. The sort of analysis that should be filling our (NZ) news feeds every day.
The liking Jacinda factor in 2020 is not particularly going to help Labour this year. People feel let down by her. The only thing helping them is that Luxon still isn't widely trusted. Labour would have dropped much further in Polls if there was a viable 3rd choice. I'm lower income and more to the left than swing voter noted in article, but am age 50's female swing (mostly liked National under John Key, voted Labour last time), and I don't want to vote for either of main parties this time round. My mum is in her 80's and has been a dedicated and LIFELONG Labour voter - but will not be voting for Labour this year either. We were both huge Jacinda fans and feel let down by her. Not for the cost of living and inflation stuff largely out of her hands, but over the housing issues (so little done over so many years), and increasing gaps between rich and poor in NZ + declining lifestyle for average income working folk over Labour tenure (the disintegrating health system doesn't help either). How a LABOUR Government with a majority can be so ineffective at making significant changes to improve lives for people on lower to mid incomes depresses me for the future. We all know National won't be an improvement there.
Thanks Henry, I appreciate your analysis and contrary to some in the twitter feed, I don't believe you have displayed anything other than unbiased opinions based on the survey. What I find interesting is this whole focus on Jacinda Ardern as PM. I absolutely understand that we live in an age of personality politics now, but it's interesting (looking at comments here and on twitter) that people who are lifelong Labour voters feel let down by "her" alone.
I believe a reason for lack of delivery by this government is because as soon as they were elected they had to focus their efforts (and spending priorities) trying to maintain their popularity with swing voters, i.e. keeping them wealthier than the general population rather than follow through on some more "left-leaning" policies. This is the norm now for any centrist party which is what both Labour and National are so I don't expect to see much change with the predicted change of government in 2023.
Despite the polls, a lot of the swing voters are actually in a much better position than the average voter now, just look at the wealth gap. As with a lot of things in our personal lives, perception is sometimes different from reality. We are ALL worse off due to the cost of living issue but lower income/renters are so so much worse off.
It's pretty sad that politicians spend so much of their effort on popularity rather than driving change and improvements for all
Interesting but I think you should look into how many life time Labour voters have left the fold because they no longer recognise the Labour party.
I am one and know quite a few who are appalled at the Government's behaviour (Identity before Unity, Authoritarianism over Democracy, Lies and Obfuscation before truth and lack of action (Housing, Education and Crime ...) on important issues. We no longer recognise the Labour Party and suggest you consider its founding principles and charter and see how far away from that, that we have travelled.
Can you mention the sample size of the swing voting set? You said it was 15% of 2020 Labour voters (seems low to me to be honest!), and if 55% of the entire set of 3000 were Labour voters, that puts about 250 people in your swing voting set--is that about right? In that case, while the survey has a MoE of 2%, breaking down the swing voting set, if my stats are right, you get a 90% confidence interval of the proportion/MoE of about 5% for breakdowns within the swing voter set.
Awesome analyses, and I totally believe you had that Zizek comment ready at hand :P
Based off the demographics of swing voters shown here, I don't think there's much Labour can do really to stop most of them swinging away again. The swing towards Labour and Jacinda in 2020 was very probably just the 'clinging to existing authority during a crisis' that we see all over the world time and again. Now that the covid crisis has 'passed', the need to maintain stability with the existing authority is gone.
Their social issue stances are the real indicators here that they will swing back to whichever party more aligns with those views. But maybe Labour have managed to convince a significant amount of wealthy middle aged white people that Maori-Crown relations still need to be improved substantially?
Oh and we can't forget the actual thousands of new migrants who have become eligible to vote following the 2021 residency visas thing. As a recent migrant myself, I'm pretty sure that most of them won't be voting Labour given the absoltue shambolic horror show INZ and immigration policy has been over the last few years.