New Zealand Election 2017

[136or142]

I've been gone from here for awhile, so I haven't read over the posts, but, while good on Labour for promising to legalize abortion, after reading the platforms of both the Labour Party and the National Party, I fully endorse Damien Light and the United Future Party.

I now expect Future Mania.

I would suggest the slogan "if you don't have a United Future, you'll have a divided future."

[136or142]

I've been gone from here for awhile, so I haven't read over the posts, but, while good on Labour for promising to legalize abortion, after reading the platforms of both the Labour Party and the National Party, I fully endorse Damien Light and the United Future Party.

I now expect Future Mania.

I would suggest the slogan "if you don't have a United Future, you'll have a divided future."

UF's time was back in the late 90s, and early 2000s. They are dying, and will probably never go back into Parliament.

This is unfortunate because The National Party is basically a follower of right wing supply side economics nonsense while, under Jacinda Ardern, the Labour Party is basically a follower of further left post Keynesian Bernie Sanders 'quasi socialist' type economics nonsense.

No political party in New Zealand is representing the sensible center.

[136or142]

I knew I wasn't impressed with any of the parties all that much:

I side with
Green Party 59%
The Opportunities Party 57%
Labour 56%
Maori 51%
ACT 50%
Legalize Cannabis 49%
Mana: 49%
New Zealand First: 44%
United Future: 39%
National Party: 39%
Conservative Party 31%

[136or142]

It looks like Labour underperformed although I think in early August had you told most Labour supporters they would get 36% they would have then been quite happy.  Perhaps Jacindamania made some get over confident.  I think Labour was hurt by two things.  1.  Many progressives were afraid the Greens would fall below 5% so some voted strategically so the Greens wouldn't fall below 5%.  2.  The undecided vote which was quite high broke heavily in favour of National as it seems Nationals were still fairly popular and even if people liked Jacinda Ardern they weren't at the stage of throwing the bums out.  Otherwise Obama's win in 2008 and Trudeau's in 2015 were quite different as both were facing off against parties that had very low approval ratings thus why they succeeded where Ardern didn't.  If English had a 33% approval rating like Harper did in Canada or 25% like Bush did in the US, I suspect we would be talking about a Labour landslide.

My guess is probably National + New Zealand First but a Labour + Green + New Zealand First is certainly possible so otherwise Winston Peters will once again be kingmaker.

From what I've read getting the Greens and New Zealand First into a coalition will be nearly impossible to pull off.

[136or142]

Doesn't seem quite right to me as National did end up 7.5% end of Labour.  I'm not sure if the Greens are sort of an assumed Labour Party coalition partner as Labour and the Greens combined would have only been about 1% behind National.

[136or142]

Doesn't seem quite right to me as National did end up 7.5% end of Labour.  I'm not sure if the Greens are sort of an assumed Labour Party coalition partner as Labour and the Greens combined would have only been about 1% behind National.

The default in NZ is to count Labour and the Greens together.

Ah, well that's different.