National v Labour from the beginning
February 2nd, 2012 at 7:00 am by David Farrar
An interesting look at the election results of National and Labour since the first election they both contested.
Up until the 1990s, the gap between the parties was never that huge. A 10% gap was around as big as it got. Then in 1990 one had the first gap of well over 10% – almost 13%.
Then of course in 2002, there was the blowout to Labour who beat National by 20%, much the same as National beat Labour by in 2011.
There was also an interesting trend of declining support for both parties from the 1950s to 1984. We then saw both increase in support as Social Credit died, and then the volatility of MMP.
National’s growth over the last three elections under Brash and Key is quite remarkable.
Tomorrow we’ll look at the various third parties.
Related posts:
- Labour says mining views are close to National
- Asset Sales Labour v National
- Trotter on National and Labour
- Labour candidates picking up National voters
February 2nd, 2012 at 8:03 am
Don Brash sparked the biggest revival of the National Party. Well done for that.
Vote:February 2nd, 2012 at 8:41 am
Great job D
Vote:February 2nd, 2012 at 9:04 am
NZers are essentially people who get on with their lives. The battle is over that middle ground.
Vote:Labor battles within itself between union factions and moderates. National battles between right wing zealots and the moderates.
Whoever wins that race succeeds
. Athe moment score 1 for National. Five years probably another story.
A bit like in the USA where the GOP ideologues would like a social conservative but know he can’t be elected.
Would Labor want Trev Mallard as leader ?
February 2nd, 2012 at 9:37 am
Kinda supporting the principle that when you’re so far down, the only way is up that Labour have recently done their best to prove invalid…
Vote:February 2nd, 2012 at 10:19 am
Neil
Vote:Except the good people of Christchurch. Their sheer frustration is being taken out on the Councillors despite the fact that they elected them.
One can understand their position but until the land settles progress will be slower than they all want, including the Councillors.
Land evolves over hundreds of million of years and will not stabilise until it is ready to do so.
Insurers will not return until they have adequate solvency (see AMI) to survive possible other earthquakes. Their Insurers (Reinsurers) from around the world have suffered enormous losses worldwide of which New Zealand is a disproportional part of their losses against their income from New Zealand. It will take many years to restabilise the funds being expended by Insurers of all hues to bring back a balance.
These good people are looking for a scapegoat, like Whittall in Greymouth, and it’s the Mayor, Councillors and its staff.
However I still detect some political overtones in this frustration.
What good will a new Mayor do ?. He, or probably she, cannot make the land stand still. To build on sand over the years to build a lovely city was to say the least foolish, but you can only say that in hindsight. It has taken well over 100 years of construction to come to fruition.
All very sad, and conseqently frustration explodes somewhere. It is human nature.
February 2nd, 2012 at 10:33 am
I think the wilder swings in the MMP era might be reflective of votes migrating to third parties – when say National is performing poorly, people have a choice other than just voting for Labour – they can go to ACT or WinstonFirst or a range of other parties. Presumably people could also do this with third parties in earlier eras (Social Credit for example), but in general that was a wasted vote so most people didnt.
Vote:February 2nd, 2012 at 12:42 pm
It is curious that the combined Nation+Labour vote reached its nadir in 1996 – the year we got MMP. Since then that combined vote has risen, and the combined smaller party vote has declined.
Vote:February 3rd, 2012 at 11:03 am
“It is curious that the combined Nation+Labour vote reached its nadir in 1996 – the year we got MMP. Since then that combined vote has risen, and the combined smaller party vote has declined.”
People know what they are getting with the two big parties – plus they have history which gives them the inertia “I’ve always voted for [Party]” factor. Plus the fact that MMP is a hybrid electorate/proportional system gives an advantage to the leading parties of the left and right wing blocks.
I’d like to see the smaller parties operate similar to the way the 50 state governments in the US are often seen to operate as “laboratories of democracy” where different policy platforms and operating models can be tried and either fail or flourish and get picked up by the mainstream. I think the Greens do this well – they have a differentiated position on policy from the other major parties (http://theyworkforyou.co.nz/parliaments/49) and there are plenty of examples of their positions being picked up by Labour and occasionally National.
Only the Greens have managed to graduate from a small party system to become a more mainstream movement and they still need to pass one final test which crippled other small party hopefuls on the left (such as the Alliance and Maori party) – surviving government in coalition without imploding over policy differences with their coalition partner.
It’s a balancing act – if they have too many differences with their partner they pull away and get punished for not delivering stable government (Alliance/NZ First) if they are too similar and don’t have strong points of difference on issues that actually matter to people then they fail the “Why should I change my vote to you from Lab/Nat?” test and end up in the 1% club with the likes of Progressive, United and now Act.
Vote: