Why are Australian and New Zealand Labour parties so successfull

[augbell]

NZLB built a coalition with a populist party (New Zealand First) after last election, and is now high in opinion polls, as they siphoned off NZF electorate.
Meanwhile in Australia, ALB is ahead the Liberal Party in opinion polls.

Meanwhile, Social Democracy seems to collapse in Europe. SPD in Germany, PS in France, PD in Italia...

My opinion about this specific success is that they do not fear to speak to the working class. NZLB built a coalition with a populist party, which sounds very strange for European Socdems.

For 15 years Social Democrat Parties have had a political strategy that consisted to speak to center and center right and leave far left. I think this was a mistake. Behind the political compass there is sociological categories. By speaking to center and center right and leaving far left, they chose upper middle class instead of working class, their traditional base. They stopped speaking to them, which lead to this rise of the far right.

Other Socdems Parties that success, in polls or in government, are those who came back to a working class strategy, and who stopped this center strategy: Labour Party in UK, PS in Portugal...

This is my left wing pro working class analysis, but I'd like to know if you have other theories or explanations

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

Lot of potential responses here, but consider this: Barely a year ago, people were endlessly making fun of New Zealand Labour as a bunch of useless hacks only led by ultraboring technocrats. The ALP, at the end of 2013, was considered a walking disaster zone of a party and only really saved by a particularly disastrous Coalition government.

Perhaps one thing both parties share is that both the Labor Hawks/Keating governments and especially the Labour Lange/Douglas government were the biggest drivers of neoliberal economics in their countries' histories. Make of that what you will.

[Meclazine for Israel]

"Labor"

The election predictions are neck and neck, and people prefer Malcolm Turnbull by close to 20 points.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/newspoll

[Former President tack50]

For Australia it's easy. IRV functions almost like FPTP in that third parties rarely get in. So Australian Labour will automatically be one of the 2 large parties with a chance (there are only 4 third parties and independents out of 150 seats).

No idea for New Zealand. Maybe the fact that NZ labour seems to be the anti-inmigration party while the Nationals are pro-inmigraton. Which means that the New Zealand Labour party has held its working class base while other left wing parties haven't.

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

Have you people never heard of the Howard battlers or what? The ALP (and NZLab, for that matter) has just as much inner turmoil about not truly representing workers as any of the other social democratic parties mentioned in this thread.

[EPG]

AUS/NZ have lots of Chinese money sloshing about for basic workers. Europe doesn't. Easy to keep workers on board when there's lots of money.

Hamon's attempt at a socialism for the left-snark faction failed, more miserably than any comparably party in Europe, even more than PASOK.

[augbell]

AUS/NZ have lots of Chinese money sloshing about for basic workers. Europe doesn't. Hamon's attempt at a socialism for the left-snark faction failed, more miserably than any comparably party in Europe, even more than PASOK.

Hamon failed for plenty reasons, the first one being what the PS did when they were in power, that is to say centre right reforms. He was also in competition with Mélenchon, a former socialist, with more chances.

[EPG]

Macron did centre-right reforms while being a PS minister. The problem was that Hamon was very left-wing. Other election losers, like Jeremy Corbyn, have the same problem. Generally it is hard to find a government left-wing people approve of, if it doesn't have lots of free money (oil, Chinese export revenue).

[Atlas Has Shrugged]

Flawless beautiful Jacinda.

[Tetro Kornbluth]

They aren't?

[Lachi]

"Labor"

The election predictions are neck and neck, and people prefer Malcolm Turnbull by close to 20 points.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/newspoll

preferred PM numbers don't hold much meaning, as you don't vote directly for PM. HOT TAKE: They only do them so the Murdoch Media has something to spin.

[Meclazine for Israel]

"Labor"

The election predictions are neck and neck, and people prefer Malcolm Turnbull by close to 20 points.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/newspoll

preferred PM numbers don't hold much meaning, as you don't vote directly for PM. HOT TAKE: They only do them so the Murdoch Media has something to spin.

You are on the money there. Preferred PM is all you get sometimes. Malcolm has shot up in recent weeks after the budget.

It will be interesting to see if Shorten changes the immigration policy which has not seen one illegal arrival by boat since 2013?

Hard to argue with a policy of zero children drowning at sea.

[Sestak]

Flawless beautiful Jacinda.

[morgieb]

Have you people never heard of the Howard battlers or what? The ALP (and NZLab, for that matter) has just as much inner turmoil about not truly representing workers as any of the other social democratic parties mentioned in this thread.

TBF the Howard Battlers weren't anywhere near as poor as is commonly assumed. Most of those who actually voted Liberal were middle-class aspirational self-employed tradesmen.

[Mazda]

NZLB built a coalition with a populist party (New Zealand First) after last election, and is now high in opinion polls, as they siphoned off NZF electorate.
Meanwhile in Australia, ALB is ahead the Liberal Party in opinion polls.

Meanwhile, Social Democracy seems to collapse in Europe. SPD in Germany, PS in France, PD in Italia...

My opinion about this specific success is that they do not fear to speak to the working class. NZLB built a coalition with a populist party, which sounds very strange for European Socdems.

For 15 years Social Democrat Parties have had a political strategy that consisted to speak to center and center right and leave far left. I think this was a mistake. Behind the political compass there is sociological categories. By speaking to center and center right and leaving far left, they chose upper middle class instead of working class, their traditional base. They stopped speaking to them, which lead to this rise of the far right.

Other Socdems Parties that success, in polls or in government, are those who came back to a working class strategy, and who stopped this center strategy: Labour Party in UK, PS in Portugal...

This is my left wing pro working class analysis, but I'd like to know if you have other theories or explanations

Just to clear this up, NZ First is not what you would understand as a European-style populist party. They have a few populist policies on things like immigration, but not nearly as intense as you might expect given the fact that we have the highest rate of net immigration in the world. What they are is an Old Labour/Muldoonist coalition which derives support from the charisma of its leader. Winston therefore finds it very easy to work with Labour, as we share most of his values outside of a few policy spaces.

As to why we're doing well: we've led in two opinion polls in the last nine years, it's just that we're better at winning the support of minor parties (Greens and NZ First) and at ensuring that those minor parties are happy in Government and can differentiate themselves enough to retain some of their previous vote. National failed to do so and therefore lost United Future and the Maori Party.

Up until Jacinda became leader, we were at around 20% in the polls. A lot of the extra support we got (seeing as there were no policy changes in the interim) was based on her personality, her image, and the freshness of our leadership compared to that guy who had been on the National frontbench since the days of Dick Seddon.

Additionally, the timing of the change was perfect: everyone was paying attention to politics anyway, which they wouldn't have been a month or so before. It was also simultaneous with Metiria sh**tting the bed over in the Greens, which forced a lot of their soft support to reconsider their options. So we cannibalised the Green vote as well as a fair amount of the soft NZF vote to get to a position where we could lead a Government. There was also a bit of a swing from National, but this was made up by a Winston->National swing when racists realised that he wasn't sure to back National in the new context.

At the same time, I do think there are some broader reasons why we continue to be relevant to our electorate whereas European Social Democrats are often not. Our co-operative atmosphere and attitude of listening to stakeholders makes voters feel important; our proposed solutions to various crises seem to touch a nerve; we have monolithic control of a fair few demographics; and our Keynesian spending policies appeal to moderates while the results we get from that spending please all but the real die-hards.

It's worth noting that we left office in 2008 with a surplus and sovereign debt at 0% of GDP, so we haven't had the attacks on our financial management that some European sister parties have been wounded by.

Just to take people up on the immigration policy angle: from experience, our attitude hasn't really had much cut-through. If you feel strongly about immigration, you tend to vote for Winston. What we campaigned on was more in terms of preventing property speculation from overseas buyers who weren't moving here, and encouraging GDP growth which wasn't dependent on immigration, rather than actually on the numbers of immigrants. And yet we're still attacked as a bunch of limp-wristed liberals. So these hot takes about how all working class people hate immigrants, and NZLP got working class votes by ragging on immigrants, are in fact pretty far off the mark. We got working class votes because we promised to build houses so that their neighbourhoods wouldn't be filled with people living in cars.

[Lachi]

"Labor"

The election predictions are neck and neck, and people prefer Malcolm Turnbull by close to 20 points.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/newspoll

preferred PM numbers don't hold much meaning, as you don't vote directly for PM. HOT TAKE: They only do them so the Murdoch Media has something to spin.

You are on the money there. Preferred PM is all you get sometimes. Malcolm has shot up in recent weeks after the budget.

It will be interesting to see if Shorten changes the immigration policy which has not seen one illegal arrival by boat since 2013?

Hard to argue with a policy of zero children drowning at sea.

Thank god for people like William Bowe, and Kevin Bonham for their poll blogs.

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

Have you people never heard of the Howard battlers or what? The ALP (and NZLab, for that matter) has just as much inner turmoil about not truly representing workers as any of the other social democratic parties mentioned in this thread.

TBF the Howard Battlers weren't anywhere near as poor as is commonly assumed. Most of those who actually voted Liberal were middle-class aspirational self-employed tradesmen.

Well, this is a problem when we talk of the behaviour of the European working class as well. A lot of people associate the term with certain archetypes, irrespective of their income.

Tbh perhaps it might be time to discard the term altogether in psephology, because it is very ill-defined and malleable. What about analysis in other ways - owns their own home Vs rents? Salarymen Vs paid hourly? Has higher education Vs doesn't?

[parochial boy]

Have you people never heard of the Howard battlers or what? The ALP (and NZLab, for that matter) has just as much inner turmoil about not truly representing workers as any of the other social democratic parties mentioned in this thread.

TBF the Howard Battlers weren't anywhere near as poor as is commonly assumed. Most of those who actually voted Liberal were middle-class aspirational self-employed tradesmen.

Well, this is a problem when we talk of the behaviour of the European working class as well. A lot of people associate the term with certain archetypes, irrespective of their income.

Tbh perhaps it might be time to discard the term altogether in psephology, because it is very ill-defined and malleable. What about analysis in other ways - owns their own home Vs rents? Salarymen Vs paid hourly? Has higher education Vs doesn't?

tbh, I quite like the French way of doing it by separating out ouvriers (eg factory workers), employés (eg cleaners), artisans (eg plumbers/electricians), "technical professionals" and so on. Obviously it's still not perfect, but at least starts to recognise that a plumber and a cleaner aren't in quite the same situation or political habits.

Things like education level and home ownership are probably too closely linked to age (and people who have gone through technical training/apprenticeships are in a very different situation and have very different voting, or indeed not voting, habits to people without any qualifications).

we have monolithic control of a fair few demographics.

Mind expanding on this? I'm assuming Pacific Islanders, and Maori now that the Maori party have ceased to be relevant?

[Mazda]

we have monolithic control of a fair few demographics.

Mind expanding on this? I'm assuming Pacific Islanders, and Maori now that the Maori party have ceased to be relevant?

Pasifika voters are a big one, although there's a lot of intersecting groups and loyalties within that. For instance, my church is pretty evenly divided between Tongans and Samoans, and when Sam Lotu-Iiga sat for the local electorate for National, all the Samoans voted National and all the Tongans became even louder in their support for Labour. Samoans have been slower to return to Labour locally after Sam retired because we selected an Indian woman as our candidate.

The Maori Party are still relevant, actually, and they have chances to win a seat or two with the right candidates. Again, there's a complex picture which is based more on tribal and personal loyalties than party ties.

We also do very well with Indians (we wouldn't win Mt Roskill without them) and a few other South Asian groups.

As against that, National have the 1994-vintage South Africans and the Chinese locked down very firmly.

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

Are the diaspora Pacific Islanders in NZ more liberal than those who remain home? I ask because I know most of the Pacific Islands are supposed to have very evangelical influenced and clannish politics.

[EPG]

Have you people never heard of the Howard battlers or what? The ALP (and NZLab, for that matter) has just as much inner turmoil about not truly representing workers as any of the other social democratic parties mentioned in this thread.

TBF the Howard Battlers weren't anywhere near as poor as is commonly assumed. Most of those who actually voted Liberal were middle-class aspirational self-employed tradesmen.

Well, this is a problem when we talk of the behaviour of the European working class as well. A lot of people associate the term with certain archetypes, irrespective of their income.

Tbh perhaps it might be time to discard the term altogether in psephology, because it is very ill-defined and malleable. What about analysis in other ways - owns their own home Vs rents? Salarymen Vs paid hourly? Has higher education Vs doesn't?

tbh, I quite like the French way of doing it by separating out ouvriers (eg factory workers), employés (eg cleaners), artisans (eg plumbers/electricians), "technical professionals" and so on. Obviously it's still not perfect, but at least starts to recognise that a plumber and a cleaner aren't in quite the same situation or political habits.

This is what needs to happen and it's how I now think about political demography. The UK system is particularly sad.

I just realised that NZ, at least, is a really small but quite urbanised country. People probably know their representatives and this has seemed in many countries to minimise political system disruption.

[Mazda]

Are the diaspora Pacific Islanders in NZ more liberal than those who remain home? I ask because I know most of the Pacific Islands are supposed to have very evangelical influenced and clannish politics.

First and second generation still have the attitudes they came with, but they vote Labour because we didn't do dawn raids, because they're most often working class and because we have good relationships with their community leaders. Later generations are more liberal but mostly stay with Labour out of a mixture of tradition and identifying with our values.

This is what needs to happen and it's how I now think about political demography. The UK system is particularly sad.

I just realised that NZ, at least, is a really small but quite urbanised country. People probably know their representatives and this has seemed in many countries to minimise political system disruption.

We've had our fair share of disruption, mostly in the 90s - and if we'd had PR, that disruption would have come in the 70s. Whether this was because our MPs were inaccessible or because people were too personally familiar with their failings is up for debate, I guess.

The proportion of people who know their local MP depends entirely on how much effort that MP puts into local issues. But certainly if you want to meet your MP, it's pretty easy to do so. List MPs obviously have less of an automatic local profile (although if the party has enough money, they will set up an electorate office for the MP in the seat they contested at the last election, which helps) but they have more time to get stuck in, so it tends to even out.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Neither are particularly successful? Both parties have a large and loyal core vote of course, which o/c is basically just a reflection of the fact that Australia and New Zealand are replications of British-style class society overseas.

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

The most electorally successful Social Democrats in Europe are atm the Maltese Labour party, which clearly indicates all current Social Democrats need to increase their corruption levels by 200%. That and start building their own Dom Mintoffs.

[mileslunn]

It is more cycles I think.  Labour in both countries is not unusually strong but unlike Europe it seems social democratic parties elsewhere or at least in the English speaking world are holding their own.  In Canada during the late 90s was a really bad period for the NDP much like what social democratic parties in Europe are going through, but eventually they shifted their focus away from your traditional blue collar workers that they were losing towards younger voters, non-voters, and those in large urban centres and now govern two provinces and could soon depending on next week's results govern three.  In Europe it seems more traditional parties are falling although the centre-right ones since they appeal more to older voters haven't dropped as badly.  Otherwise, the appeal of far right to blue collar workers, rise of centrist parties (En Marche, The Citizens etc., note in Canada we have lots of Liberal-NDP swing voters so I find rise of centrist parties hurts those more on the left than right), rise of further left parties and more lack of identity and coherence is what is hurting them.  Australia and New Zealand haven't seen the same level of fracturing like you have in Europe.  You could also say UK is like Australia and New Zealand as while Labour is still in opposition, they did get over 40% last election which asides from Malta and Portugal, that is the type of numbers most social democratic parties in Europe can only dream about.