Another boring election. Then ‘Jacindamania’ hit
WELLINGTON, NEW ZEALAND — No one had expected New Zealand’s Sept. 23 election to be much of a contest. The conservatives were expected to win, again.
But that was before Jacinda Ardern and a wave of support that’s now called “Jacindamania.”
The selection of Ardern as the Labour Party’s leader on Aug. 1 elevated a 37-year-old woman without the traditional setup of a husband or children to the head of a national party, and this country’s politics have not been the same since.
She is Labour’s youngest leader ever, as at home on social media as she is in policy debates. And she has already attracted global attention for condemning a television commentator’s question about whether employers should have a right to know whether a woman plans to become a parent.
“That is unacceptable in 2017,” she told him. “It is the woman’s decision about when they choose to have children.”
Her main achievement, however, may be disrupting an election that had been seen as a surefire win for the conservative National Party.
One recent poll showed Labour slightly ahead. Since Ardern’s rise, the party’s projected share of the vote has jumped by around 20 points.
“In the last two elections, it’s been relatively clear that the governing party would be the National Party,” said Andrew Geddis, a professor at the law school of the University of Otago. Now, he added, “we might finally have a real election.”
A rising star in Labour since joining Parliament in 2008 as its youngest sitting member, Ardern is unconventional, accessible and ambitious.
In an interview with The New York Times last month, she answered questions carefully but also joked about the stress of her new position. The number of days until the election, she said, is written in her diary “like a horrific countdown to Armageddon.” On Twitter, she has 80,000 followers, more than anyone else in the country’s Parliament.
Some political experts question whether Ardern has the experience needed. She has spent her career in the opposition and has not championed a bill in Parliament.
“The question will be whether she can add the substance and steel that New Zealanders may look for in a leader of their country,” Geddis said.