Cam Slater: The Tide Simply Went Out on Ardern

The latest Taxpayers’ Union/Curia poll is out and shows why Jacinda Ardern went back on her promises and statements about seeking re-election. The tide has simply gone out on her, leaving her marooned in a wasteland that ends in destruction.

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Labour falls one point from last month to 32% – its lowest ever level in our poll – while National is also down two points to 37%. ACT is up one point and the Greens are up three points with both sitting on 11%.

The smaller parties are New Zealand First on 2.8% and the Maori Party on 1.6%.

Here is how these results would translate to seats in Parliament, assuming all electorate seats are held:

 

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National is down two seats to 49 while Labour is down one seat to 41. ACT is up one seat and the Greens are up four seats to be on 14 seats each. The Maori Party is down two seats to 2.

This means a narrowing of the gap between the two major blocs with the Centre-Right down one seat on last month to a combined 63 seats and the Centre-Left up three seats to a combined total of 55.

The one number that ended a Prime Minister? Ardern’s net favourability goes negative for the first time:

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The outgoing Prime Minister’s net favourability rating (that is the percentage of New Zealanders who tell our pollsters they have a ‘favourable’ view less the percentage who say ‘unfavourable’) has been gradually declining for quite some time. Back in September 2021, she was on +32% but this month, her ratings went negative for the first time. She leaves office with a score of -1%.

Christopher Luxon similarly scores a result of -1% this month, but his trend over the same period has been upwards. In September 2021, before he took on the National leadership, he was on -33% and he has slowly managed to turn this around.

This month, with much media speculation about New Zealand First re-entering Parliament, we asked respondents for their favourability towards Winston Peters. He scores a very poor -40% and does badly across voters of the four largest parties.

But this year’s general election remains on a knife edge.

Taxpayers’ Union/Curia Poll

The tide is merely ebbing for Labour at the moment, but it has raced out on Jacinda Ardern. Labour polls daily so they would have seen the same thing in their numbers. You know it’s bad because none of their polls has been leaked. They only leak good polls.

There is a thought that Ardern was presented with a choice inside Labour, based on their perilous polling, go now and with some semblance of dignity or we knife you in a very bloody coup.

Her demeanour at her announcement was not that of someone leaving at the top of the game. Rather she looked frightened and concerned. I believe we are not being told the real truth about her sudden resignation, but that is by the by; she’s gone and the nation heaves a massive sigh of relief.

The reasons for her polling demise are numerous, but has any other modern NZ prime minister subjected the people they’re elected to represent to such nasty and divisive policies as Ardern has? It speaks to our good nature as Kiwis that there weren’t repeated serious protests and demonstrations, particularly with the way she upended thousands of lives and absolutely destroyed others. When someone scoffs at dividing the country into two classes and stripping one class of access to parts of public life, to work and to income, hollow death threats and ‘misogynistic’ slurs are a mild reaction.

When you essentially conduct a bloodless coup and upend our constitutional framework to bring about systems and policies that disenfranchise the majority in favour of a minority group, then you risk much more than just protests and demonstrations.

Let us hope that Labour’s new leader recants on some of the most divisive policy settings and tries to restore social cohesion through genuine action, not through forcing actions like censorship, cancelling and division.

Cam Slater is a New Zealand-based blogger, best known for his role in Dirty Politics and publishing the Whale Oil Beef Hooked blog, which operated from 2005 until it closed in 2019. This article was first published HERE