Voting's already happening for Kiwis overseas.
Monday, we start in-country. Two weeks later it's all over and counting begins.
The result looks as tight as a fish's bum.
Here's my predictions:
Opportunity won't get 5% and the Coalition will be returned to power.
I want to be clear, this is not based off a scientific poll-by-poll or electorate probability calculator.
It's just a gut feeling of how voters will behave once they get into the voting booth.
And the fact not everyone who's polled actually turns out to vote, and not everyone who voted is polled.
If Opportunity does get over the line, of course, Luxon will talk to them, but he's got a strategy and he's sticking to it.
Campaigning politicians and CEOs do that. There's no point having strategy you abandon at the eleventh hour.
For me, the key part of last night's leader's debate was Qiulae Wong's vibe on the Coalition.
If they get in, they'd support with confidence and supply only.
ACT and New Zealand First's more extreme wish lists might need to be put on ice in return for their support, plus a few sweeteners on innovation and the digital economy thrown in for good measure.
Either way, there's still a long road ahead.
We'll have started buying Christmas trees before the Governor General is swearing in a new government.
Ryan Bridge is a New Zealand broadcaster who has worked on many current affairs television and radio shows. He currently hosts Newstalk ZB's Early Edition - where this article was sourced.
7 comments:
TOPs founder Gareth Morgan isn't happy either.
On the Right we must absolutely recognise that a party vote that goes to National instead of ACT/NZF is a wasted vote.
BUT also recognise that an electorate vote for ACT/NZF is a similarly wasted vote (last election there were around 170,000 of these votes wasted on NZF/ACT candidates in electorates they had no chance of winning)
Those overseas votes are worth two or three seats down the line
Its interesting to think that both ACT's and NZF's core policies are considered extreme...only a few years ago they would have been viewed as very centrist.
Let's see:
1 - Equal rights (pretty centrist)
2 - Winding up the Waitangi tribunal because they were only ever meant to be temporary and they've strecthed so far beyond their actual remit that they've become an activist/ separatist body (pretty mainstream view).
3 - Lower taxation - and importantly, lower taxation that improves and invites savings and investment activity. (Seriously what idiots want to be taxed more? )
4 - Protection of the country's borders and citizens
I challenge any reader to find a policy from ACT that is extreme?
( I can think of one from NZF on the topic of nationalising a foreign owned bank & interfering in the gentailer market - but this is far less extreme than the communist manifesto of the NZ Greens version of the same - and on everything else they're very centrist policies.)
Q hit the nail on the head in the debate last week.
Winston is decrying the state of the nation while being the only politician who has been a constant presence in government, shaping the nation over the last 40 years. Housing unaffordability, record unemployment, healthcare, record infrastructure debt, brain drain…he has been there for all of it. He is the only one.
And people will still vote for him thinking that he will somehow fix it all, now that we are finally in 2026!
Well done TOP for opening our eyes and saying what we are all thinking.
Pull the other leg Anon 4:56
WE, as in TOP voters 3-6% at best .
A minion , a minor , of little consequence .
Lab 28pc Green 14pc Tpm 2pc but at least five seats, Top 6pc plud overseas votes favouring that bloc. Change coming
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