What will Nats decide to do about Winston?
And they’re off. The political year kicked off yesterday at Ra¯ tana, the historical epicentre of Ma¯ ori Labourism. In the baking Manawatu¯ sun on the Ra¯ tana Pa¯ , all the political leaders made the start-of-year pilgrimage.
The leaders went straight to their lines: Simon Bridges said that Labour wasn’t delivering for
Ma¯ ori, Winston Peters at his roguish best said that he was delivering the Provincial Growth Fund, and James Shaw, at his unthreatening best, asked the crowd to consider the Greens’ achievements. Jacinda Ardern, well, she was on home turf and is prime minister, so spoke in less retail political terms, and listed things that Labour has done.
This year’s election loomed large over all the proceedings.
Each election campaign has its own theory. Its own account of who New Zealanders are and what they want and what issues they will prioritise.
Parties then come up with policies accordingly.
Clearly the theory changes as the year evolves and is deeply informed by party polling. It involves a mixture of quantitative research in the form of polls, and qualitative research in the form of focus groups.
Labour now has at least one theory: that New Zealanders are a positive bunch and that running an overly negative campaign carries real risks, particularly for National, which, as the Opposition, is trying to find things wrong with the Government and the country.
According to a background briefing at the Labour caucus retreat on Thursday, the big difference between New Zealand, the United States, Britain, – and even Australia – is that most Kiwis think the country is heading in the right direction. Interestingly, that has been the case since before Labour was elected, more or less since New Zealand emerged from the global financial crisis.
Labour contends – and thinks its own grim experience in Opposition demonstrates – that, if voters are more or less happy with the country’s direction, being constantly negative about the joint can backfire. Subsequently, it thinks that National will have to be more positive in order to gain traction with voters. And, faced with a head-to-head positive-off, Ardern will leave Simon Bridges in the dust.
To this end, Labour is trying to set the narrative around a positive campaign – and subtly become the arbiter of what being ‘‘positive’’ entails. As Stuff reported yesterday, this involves Labour signing up to Facebook transparency rules and submitting its costings to a third party for review. Stuff understands that
National also plans to do the same.
This last point might excite political tragics, but there is no surer way to make voters’ eyes glaze over than getting bogged down in a battle of the costings. The only thing that matters here is which, if either, side of politics can paint the other side as dodgy on the numbers in a simple way. Think Steven Joyce’s $11.7 billion hole that became the hole that wasn’t in 2017.
There will be two big moments early in this political year. The first will be when the prime minister announces the election date. The second is how Bridges will deal with NZ First.
The fact remains that, at the moment, the only credible path into government for National involves NZ First being knocked out.
While it would be foolish to rule anything out with NZ First, it seems highly unlikely that, if given the option, it won’t simply continue in a government that looks similar, even if the proportions are slightly changed.
All of which means there is little to lose for Bridges if he rules out working in a government with Winston Peters early on in the year – a strategy that worked for John Key in his first election campaign as National leader.
True, he loses the option of getting into power with Peters, but, for the reasons above, that seems unlikely in any case.
If Bridges does rule out Peters’ party, he would give himself the opportunity and simplicity of being able to attack any NZ First policy he wants without fear of having to swallow any dead rats during coalition negotiations.
Second, NZ First made a big play in 2017 of trying to win over traditional National voters in rural areas. If Bridges ruled out working with NZ First, many of those voters would have to make a decision: whether voting for Peters was a vote for a Labour government and so unacceptable, or whether it was actually a vote for a handbrake on a Labour government, so an appropriate precaution.
This is where the election theories on voter behaviour come in.
If enough NZ First voters are jack of the Government, by showing his hand Bridges could seriously wick quite a few voters off Peters. Particularly if his strong polling holds. If his polling softens, however, the opposite could occur: votes could flow to NZ First to prevent a Labour-Greens government.
NZ First also has a big decision to make: when does it decide to start strongly distancing itself from Labour and the Greens? Go too early and the Government is destabilised, go too late and differentiating will be tough.
If the Nats can hold up their strong party vote, take some of NZ First’s vote, if ACT’s David Seymour brings in another MP, which on current polling definitely looks possible, and if the Ma¯ ori Party can gin up a seat or two, also a possibility, the electoral map suddenly looks much more interesting.
Make no mistake, National is battling against the odds here. NZ First is polling much more strongly than its previous periods in government. And Provincial Growth Fund cash is starting to flow into the projects around the regions.
Labour is also an incumbent Government presiding over very low unemployment, reasonable economic growth, and is about to announce a massive new infrastructure package. It also looks like it will increase its share of the vote from 2017.
Labour thinks that this will be enough, and conventional wisdom would support that claim, but MMP is not a two-horse race.
The fact remains that, at the moment, the only credible path into government for the Nats involves NZ First being knocked out.