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TThe New Zealand Labor party led by Jacinda Ardern has achieved its biggest election night victory since 1946, garnering 49.1% of the party’s votes and 64 seats in parliament. While the result is, in effect, an election with little change in the sense that the next government will continue to be led by Ardern, the Labor victory is for the history books. Since the introduction of New Zealand’s Mixed Membership Proportional (MMP) electoral system, the Labor Party has not been mandated to rule alone.
For the former partner of the Labor coalition, New Zealand First, the result was a disaster. It appears that minority party voters were no longer attracted by New Zealand First’s promises to be a handbrake for change, preferring instead to cast their vote for ACT and the Greens, two parties with strong ideas on how to deal with the problems facing New Zealand. Zealand in the immediate future: rising house prices, income and social inequality, climate change and post-Covid economic recovery.
ACT ended election night with a staggering 8% of the party’s votes, down from 0.5% in 2017. The Greens finished the night with a respectable 7.6%, up from 6.3% in 2017. Both Smaller parties will keep the pressure on Labor for the transformational government that could not have been in his first term.
Like the revived Maori party. A setback was scored on election night, reclaiming the Waiariki Maori seat from the incumbent Labor candidate and potentially propelling a Maori MP back to the House. The Maori party will have to nervously wait for the special votes (expected to exceed half a million across the country) to be counted before it can celebrate. But once again, a strong and independent voice of Maori is likely to be heard in parliament promoting the interests of Maori, Maori and Maori.
For the main opposition party, National, the party’s 26.8% of votes last night represented its worst result since 2002. Given that the latest public opinion polls had predicted it would land at 31%, the drop to 27% would have been a big blow to the gut for leader Judith Collins, the party and her supporters.
It’s hard to remember New Zealand pre-pandemic politics, but eight months ago National led the Labor Party in polls. In February this year, National had 46% support and Labor 41%. Labor’s May 2019 budget had not gone well. His broken election promises in the KiwiBuild houses were a constant embarrassment to the party. Even Ardern’s handling of the terrorist shootings at the Christchurch mosque 11 months earlier had not resulted in a lasting improvement in polls.
National will have entered this election year feeling pleased by how little the public’s estimation has fallen since the 2017 general election, even though its former popular leadership triumvirate of John Key, Bill English and Steven Joyce have all retired. , and (then) new leader Simon Bridges. still learning the trick of his training wheels. The last thing he would have anticipated was for his vote to be cut nearly in half not eight months later.
And then the pandemic came, and the world as we knew it changed. It was Ardern’s doing as Prime Minister.
The Christchurch mosque shootings, the Whakaari White Island volcanic eruption. Turns out they were a dress rehearsal for the job of leading New Zealand through Covid-19. Close borders, adopt an elimination strategy, shut down parts of the economy at different levels of alert. New Zealanders literally trusted Ardern with their lives, and for the most part his government complied, leading the country to have one of the lowest rates of Covid-related infection and deaths in the world. Today, most of us can go about our daily lives without worrying about spreading or contracting the virus.
If Ardern accepted the challenge presented by Covid-19, the National Party failed. Without a playbook to lead an opposition in a pandemic, national leaders Bridges, then Todd Muller, then Collins simply couldn’t find a way to counter Ardern’s popularity or give voters a real reason to change. National’s top election offerings – job creation, infrastructure spending, and small business support – weren’t much different from Labor’s.
In the past, National has relied on the prospects of a tax hike to scare voters away from the Labor Party. She tried to run this line again in 2020. Ardern quickly stopped her in step and ruled out adopting the wealth tax proposed by the Green Party. Labor continues to propose an income tax increase for those who earn more than $ 180,000 a year, but this did not deter voters who know that something must be done to curb growing income inequality and who see a tax on the rich as part of the solution.
National will now need to take time to regroup. Because National did not technically “lose” the 2017 election (when it won 44.4% of the party’s votes versus 36.9% of Labor), it has not yet gone through the required bleeding and renewal phase before. that voters decide to return their support for that. Expect many changes in leadership and direction over the next 18 months.
The Labor euphoria on election night will not last long. Never before have there been such expectations to fulfill, in the words of Ardern in his victory speech, “all New Zealanders.” All eyes will also be on Ardern as he decides if he will come to terms with the Greens. Labor doesn’t need them to form a government, but they may find it better to keep them inside the store than outside, so they can get back to handling the economic recovery without being bothered by disgruntled noises coming from a former “enemy” on the left. .
Claire Robinson is Professor of Communication Design at Massey University in Wellington.
