Ardern re-elected in NZ

[Pies4shaw]

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-10-17/ ... d/12778444

Jacinda Ardern has declared victory in New Zealand's general election, securing a second leadership term.

The Prime Minister said New Zealand had shown the Labour Party its greatest support in at least 50 years and it was clear they would lead the government for the next three years.

"We will not take your support for granted. And I can promise you we will be a party that governs for every New Zealander," she said.

With the majority of party votes counted, Ms Arden's Labour Party has taken close to 50 per cent of the vote compared to around 27 per cent for the National Party.

The results so far suggest Labour may have secured enough votes to lead a majority government without the support of a coalition partner.

This has not happened since proportional representation was introduced in the 90s.

[David]

Great news. She’s one of the few rays of light in a pretty gloomy global situation.

[roar]

Goes to show the folks saying that she was only popular in other countries and not at home were full of it. Wishful thinking on their behalf, perhaps.

[Pies4shaw]

[stui magpie]

Good luck to her, well done.

Her handling of the Coronavirus certainly turned the tide for her at home, whereas 12 months ago things were a lot shakier and she was more popular internationally than domestically.

[think positive]

Good luck to her, well done.

Her handling of the Coronavirus certainly turned the tide for her at home, whereas 12 months ago things were a lot shakier and she was more popular internationally than domestically.

her reaction to that terrorist attack was really good too.

i wonder how many of the haters just resented a woman being there?

[Pies4shaw]

Is that right? The "preferred PM" polling numbers haven't had her with less than a 26% lead in the last two years (and, quite tellingly, that "low" 26% lead was actually a 36% to 10% rersult over Bridges: see https://static.colmarbrunton.co.nz/wp-c ... eport-.pdf ). It's certainly true that her numbers improved with her Government's response to the pandemic but the Opposition's numbers were always poor, bordering upon the pathetic.

The two-party-preferred polls purported to show a dip in her party's approval from about March to November of 2019 - but if one looks at the trend-lines, one can now see that was the result of poor-quality polling results, perhaps because people being polled way out from elections haven't really turned their mind to what they think about things and because the anti-immigrant populists might have been getting some single-issue traction following the right-wing extremist crimes in Christchurch. In any event, the internal UMR Research and Curia polls (which are the ones the two major parties there view as the reliable ones) never, so far as the publicly available data suggests, had Ardern's party behind.

Thus, in July 2019 - when the published polls would have had you believe that the Nats were ahead and Ardern was in trouble - the internal whispers were that the Nats were about to replace Bridges as leader:

There's nothing like opinion polls to get the chattering classes' gums beating.

The wide variation between the Newshub-Reid Research poll and 1 NEWS' Colmar Brunton last month had them frothing at the mouth. National loved the latter, while Labour loved the former - and the chatterers probably had the same feeling that Jim Bolger did after the 1993 election when he exclaimed "Bugger the pollsters".

It's the behind-the-scenes polls the parties have done for them that make the most interesting reading though, with their focus groups and the like.

As National heads back into its caucus today after a three-week break there'll be a lot of reflection as news of the Labour-commissioned UMR Research poll does the rounds.

Word around the traps has it that Labour's slipped slightly to 42 per cent while the Greens, who've been asserting themselves with cleaner cars, road safety and the ever so slight tilt at the up-until-now mortal sin of genetic modification gets a flicker, have picked up slightly to 9 per cent. New Zealand First has also increased slightly with its constant, and largely correct, claims that no one could do anything without them in Government.

So it's National that's bleeding and it looks set to haemorrhage, with growing whispers within the party that it'll be Simon Bridges' blood being spilled before too long. The party has dropped beneath the psychological barrier of 40 per cent, now sitting on 38.

It's the focus groups that'll concern National, with Bridges having about as much traction as a bald tyre. The last UMR poll apparently showed his unfavourable rating at more than 60 per cent, while those who favoured him were in the 20s.

The conclusion is that he can't win against Jacinda Ardern - but then regardless of who holds the job there's unlikely to be a change next year if history is anything to go by.

https://www.newstalkzb.co.nz/opinion/ba ... able-poll/

It took a few months longer for Bridges to be moved on and then a few more months after that for his replacement to be replaced, three months out from the election, by Collins. These things don't happen because the Opposition thinks it is in a good place - and the leaks from the internal rumblings tell you that, irrespective of what the media might have been writing, the Nats always knew they were down the very bottom of a hole.

[stui magpie]

^

Don't know. Everyone will have haters, but saying she was less popular at home than abroad isn't hating on her. Besides, NZ have had women PM's before and this election was between 2 female leaders, so the misogynists were shit outa luck there.

In Aus we just saw her on news grabs. Her domestic policies seemingly didn't have everyone loving her at home, but she's turned that around.

[Pies4shaw]

Ms Ardern's Labour Party comprehensively won a second term in office on Saturday with 64 of the parliament's 120 seats, meaning she will be able to govern outright without forming a coalition.

Labour received 49 per cent of the vote, with its nearest rival, the conservative National Party, on 27 per cent.

Ms Ardern's deputy prime minister in her outgoing coalition government, Winston Peters, lost his seat after his party failed to reach the minimum vote threshold.

More than half of the new government's members are female.

There will also be 16 Maori representatives as well as the first NZ MP of African origin, Ibrahim Omar, and Vanushi Walters, who has Sri Lankan heritage.

Although Ms Ardern has the numbers to govern alone, she said she was in talks with former ally the Green Party to build a wider consensus.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-10-19/ ... e/12783740

[stui magpie]

so 51% of voters, a majority last time I checked, voted for someone else.

[Pies4shaw]

The trend is the thing, of course. Ardern's party won 36.89% of the vote (and government) at the previous election and 49.15% at this election. That is, her party's proportion of the vote increased by a third. Meanwhile, the Nats dropped from 44.45% to 26.69% (a decrease of a whisker under 40%) and NZ First had 9 seats before the election and 0 after (having lost about 2/3 of its vote). Despite Ardern's enormous upswing in votes, the Greens still managed to increase their vote by over 20% and become the third-largest vote-getter in the country.

Her vote is massively better, in any event, than the LNP managed here in the last Federal election (41.44%).

[Tannin]

Interesting to see the right wingers suddenly regarding government with less than 50% of the vote as a bad thing. I mean, it was a great thing when Boris Johnson "romped in" with way below 50, and great when Trump did too, but now that it's suddenly bad.

Yer right

[Pies4shaw]

^ Any facile argument in a storm, I'm afraid.

[David]

[Tannin]

New Zealand doesn't have preferential voting, David.

However, they don't exactly have a first-past-the-post system either. Not quite.

They start with an ordinary primitive single member electorate, first past the post system (same as the UK or the USA), which as you know is one of the worst possible ways to represent the view of the people, and produces unfair results as routine.

However, that is only half the parliament. With the other half, they fix the problem. (Sort of.)

Everyone gets TWO votes. One is the ordinary sort (only FPP), the other the party vote. Any party which has won at least one seat (from the ordinary votes) OR got at least 5% of the overall party vote (that's the second one) gets extra MPs to take its representation up to a fair level (20% of the vote = 20% of the seats, for example).

It's a really weird system, but it works surprisingly well. It is clearly inferior to a full multi-member electorate, preferential vote, proportional representation system (which is the Gold Standard for fair elections), but in practice, albeit at the cost of extra complication, it mostly produces a pretty fair second-best result.