Yeah well she definitely wouldn't want to walk about in central Wellington or, god forbid, Newtown. Things could go horribly wrong.
Given the polls and the fact that Labour have ruled such a tax out, won't that just encourage those homeowners to vote Labour? Pushing Labour towards 50% is the only way to ensure this tax won't happen. I doubt any Green voters owning homes worth $1M will ...
Yes good post Graeme, and Peter too. Rather than criticising the wage subsidy on the basis that some took advantage, we might wonder if it is in fact an efficient and more equitable model for other forms of welfare. I thought of this when during one of the...
It will be interesting to see in this election how close the final few weeks' polls are to the actual result. They could be expected to be closer than ever, especially as a good chunk of people answering pollsters' questions at this stage will have ...
Yes logically a coalition or a confidence and supply arrangement. But even without either or those, Labour could on those numbers govern alone as a minority government with the Greens on the cross benches, as long as the Greens don't join Nat and ACT and ...
Further to this, this is the Herald's intro text: Election 2020: How Judith Collins and National ... - NZ Herald 10 hours ago — Several polls in recent months have put Labour not just heading for victory, but capable of governing as a single-party majority...
What amazes me is why National, under 3 different leaders, has consistently thought there are votes to be gained from undermining and trashing NZ's Covid response success story. For months it was Australia had the best approach, then Taiwan was great (yay,...
The Herald was running it as their top story online this afternoon, with a big picture of a smiling Collins. Very odd as it was 2 days old and from another news site.
She doesn't deserve to be in a party for telling the truth?
This is entirely anecdotal and of no wider consequence, but my mother-in-law, who descends from 150 years of Pakeha farming stock and has voted National every election for 60-odd years, has said she has voted two ticks for Labour. I've got a whole lot of ...
Yeah too many Lees in National. Melissa has been quiet lately though. Not unusual, what's amazed me is how few Nat MPs have featured in the mainstream media coverage (while presumably busy in their own electorates). Keeping their heads down?
I’m not sure that this is quite correct. Stuff reported her saying she’d voted for Simon O’Connor - ie she must be enrolled in Tamaki, not Papakura. Which is odd, but allowed. But then she was photographed posting a ballot into a special votes box, so that...
Not quite this I don't think. I suspect she feels if Nats can get 35-37% in defeat it will be enough for her to stay on as leader. And in her mind, get another crack in 2023, maybe in a more suitable electoral climate. The Nats caucus might have other ...
His figures propose Nats 37.5% and Act 8%. The latter is the highest Act have been in any poll in the last few years. I don’t see they’d stay there if Nats climb over the 28-33% they’ve been in recent polls.
Yes the ‘paths to victory’ theorised by Manhire and others require major shifts between blocs, not just between parties. It requires National’s vote to rise significantly to c 40% without taking any of those votes off Act, and for the Greens to dip under 5...
I’m a bit confused by Collins’ voting. According to Stuff, she said she voted for Tamaki MP Simon O’Connor, which suggests she lives and is enrolled in Tamaki. I believe MPs no longer need to live in the electorate they stand in so that’s fine. But she was...
Yeah it's the brazenness (or desperation?) of it. Imagine if John Key had knelt in a church before an election! Bill English or Jim Bolger never did such a thing, and they were known to be religious. Honestly I've never seen a major party leader in NZ ...
Yes I noted this article above. But none of the commentators have mentioned that she went out of her way, she chose to go there and do a special vote outside her own electorate. She would be expected to vote (early or on the day) in her own electorate but ...
To be fair, she probably didn't order the police to clear the church with tear gas.
Some push back on this too: Election 2020: Judith Collins accused of 'politicising' her faith to win over Christian voters (paywalled). Quotes Ben Thomas, Neale Jones and Bryce Edwards expressing surprise at her newfound faith. Edwards says: "Collins' use ...
Odd though, as most party leaders make a big deal of voting in their home electorate, showing they are part of their community. I can see why leaders/MPs will want to vote early these days, as it is another photo op/campaigning moment at a time when it ...
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/300123462/election-2020-live-judith-collins-prays-and-votes-jacinda-ardern-promises-to-battle-rheumatic-fever Just a couple of questions: Collins has been around NZ politics for two decades. I don't recall her ever really ...
Nigel Roberts once said that all election predictions are safe as long as you start your sentence with 'I'd be very surprised if ...' Well I'd be very surprised if the voting blocs revealed in the last dozen or so mainstream polls (and especially the last ...
Funny how the journalists who get these gigs seem to be the most excited by them. The voters, not so much?
Yeah I agree, upper houses are an out of date idea. They can and have provided some useful balance of representation and scrutiny of legislation in countries where they exist, but very few (no?) countries are creating them if they don't have an historic ...
Didn't both Roger Douglas and Ruth Richardson resign/get sacked as Finance Ministers? So possibly not great examples. The governments they were part of got 6 years and 9 years in power respectively, but they held the role for 4 and 3 years only. Douglas ...
The Big Lebowski?
Not a well-reasoned analysis to me. When Trotter says: It is important to recall that in 2017, with “Jacindamania” in full-swing, Labour could attract no more than 37 percent of the Party Vote. That was 7 percentage points shy of National’s 44 percent. ...
Thanks, a good post and interesting article. I see the Greens as the last 'movement' in NZ politics, a grouping of people who believed in something rather than simply being a vehicle for gaining and holding political power. Labour were a movement until ...
Just to note also, that while the Greens have flirted with the 5% threshold a number of times, they have polled under 5% just two times out of the total of 43 CB, RR and RM polls held since the last election: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_...
Yeah and NZ has proportional representation and a Westminster Parliament. Trump of course lost the popular vote by several million. Under NZ's old FPTP system Judith's hero Muldoon won two elections while losing the popular vote (1978 and 1981) by ...
Cats, with their independent spirit and beguiling purrs, have captured the hearts of humans for millennia. In New Zealand, felines are no exception, boasting the highest national cat ownership rate globally [definition cat nz cat foundation]. An estimated 1.134 million pet cats grace Kiwi households, compared to 683,000 dogs ...
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