Posts by tussock
Last ←Newer Page 1 2 3 4 5 Older→ First
-
Legal Beagle: Election 2014: the no…, in reply to Robert M,
If the left told people to vote Blue candidate, it would just drive more National voters to the Yellow one. They have over twice as many party votes, they can elect whoever the hell the want with a 67% split.
It makes more left votes nationwide to complain at what National's doing in Epsom and casually drop people out of the odd close race. Plus, Green voters in Epsom actually want National in, for the most part, so would vote for the Yellow candidate too, and it would cost the Greens party vote.
-
Hmm. Noticed another trend in my data digging.
I suspect there's a good 250k people vote for anyone who will keep the Greens out of office. The dedicated anti-Green vote is still bigger than the actual Green vote. It's National this time because that was the only way to guarantee it. That dooms anyone trying to set up government with them.
Like, the combined Labour-Green vote has been very high in the past, but only when Labour had higher stated preferences for forming a government, and then those anti-Green voters fled to Labour's other options just to keep the Greens out. I think it's real.
-
Hard News: Five further thoughts, in reply to Katharine Moody,
How does NZ maintain its sovereignty going forward is the real question.
I don't think talking up the looming oil crash is a vote winner. Talking up the jobs and lower prices and economic boost we'll get from building renewables, that works. Or could work, at least, in theory. The interested people can figure out for themselves that it'll help in important ways later too.
But really, our leaders mostly don't give a fuck about climate change because trying to help costs net votes. Obviously the economy will crash if we don't get there in time, very hard, unlike anything ever seen before, but that doesn't win votes either. Not here. All people care about is today.
Like the dairy boom. It will crash, banks will be ruined. But propping it up in the meantime is a vote winner. Even though that makes it worse. Always.
-
Hard News: Five further thoughts, in reply to SteveH,
That [lack of climate change attention] makes me very angry.
There was a big debate. Youtube. Climate voter. 99 minutes.
It's horrific how few shits the National party give. They see climate change as a way to game an international set of agreements to profit from shorting the market. And it's really just all about giving a lot of money to people here for burning coal, because that's how our country fucks up the system the best.
Their opinion on climate change is that they can't personally stop it, it's some future government will be paying the bills, so just don't fuss and grow your GDP and whatever will be, will be. Being part of the solution is not on their radar. Building for the future is "picking winners" and a cardinal sin. Quarterly profit sheet, gentlemen, stay focused.
-
Hard News: Five further thoughts, in reply to Dylan Reeve,
It makes sense that raising the cost of something (human labour) will reduce demand (jobs) for that thing.
There is no evidence for that. It's bullshit. Johnny Walker Black Label. Chicken Nuggets. Diamonds. You charge like it's worth a lot, people buy more of them. I don't know where you want to go with this. We could say it "just makes sense" that people with more money in their pocket will spend more money. That high wages for matching productivity grows the economy. That demand is driven by the wallets of the people who work for someone. That low wages destroy training and job security incentives and result in lower productivity to match the reduced wage.
EDIT: PAY PEANUTS, GET MONKEYS. -
Hard News: Five further thoughts, in reply to barnaclebarnes,
More than one National voter I have spoken with would have voted Green if they had not ruled out working with National.
People really need to go read the Green party's core principles. The four pillars.
* Ecological wisdom
* Social justice
* Grassroots democracy
* NonviolenceThey're not kidding. It's not about posturing for them, they are honest brokers, if you want to get vote they're not getting you need to move yourself because they will not shift. They have never shifted. The fucking Values party was the same thing before you were born. They will still be the same after we are all dead.
They can work on their messaging and presentation, they can't give up devolution of power and social justice to hunt National votes. It can't happen. If anyone wants to hunt National votes, it has to be Labour. They've got the credibility for that from the 80's, not to mention the 90's.
-
Hard News: Five further thoughts, in reply to Dylan Reeve,
The ideas [the right] express just make sense when they're outlined
No. That's their presentation, not their fact. The problem for the left is our policies are true and based on evidence, and thus complex, while the right's policies are terrible and hateful and based on lies, and thus very simple.
So the left keeps trying to explain why they're correct, and the right just says "the sky is orange" without blinking and moves on. You do a thousand pages of detailed costings unlike anyone else but you're the "loony Greens" so no one even notices. Simple lies repeated often beat complex reality every single time.
Seriously, the National party has openly said that cutting people's wages is a great way to increase people's wages. Up is down for those people, they just say it with unbridled confidence.
-
Hard News: Five further thoughts, in reply to Matthew Hooton,
Also, National finds itself torn apart by factionalism when its poll rating falls below 35%. When it is above 35%, these factions strangely disappear. I suspect something like that is true in all major political parties. Labour never seemed to have any factions 1999-2008, for example.
Chicken and egg. If you don't show any factionalism, you are presenting a vision everyone can live with, and you get over 35%. It's the same for the minor parties, when they bicker and divide it fucks them up.
-
Hard News: Five further thoughts, in reply to Yamis,
The seats are meaningless. The gain is the Green voters being better with the tactical split this time. They lost a bunch of seats to National by splitting the candidate vote in 2011, not this time. Well, Central Auckland, never mind.
-
So, digging in the old numbers myself. I always consider the enrolled non-voters just as much as the voters, people staying home can change.
National's got 37.0% of the electorate this time. That's all of them, really. No one stayed home. They haven't had that good in ... forever.It's short of the 39.4% that Labour/Alliance got in 1999 (dropping to 33.1% post-Afghanistan). But it's bigger than any other pre-election deals in MMP.
In context, FPP elections were won on about 27%. MMP elections have dragged that up to about 37% minimum, thus it's much harder to govern alone. National have done it though.
Labour-Green is not a government in waiting, the numbers simply are not there. They've got 28% for three elections in a row (assuming specials trend Green like usual). Whatever the Greens grab from National in the short term (which they do), Labour loses again in the long term. It's not going to work. I'm Green, it's sad, get real.
What Labour got is essentially irrelevant. I mean, the left has never recovered from Afghanistan. National did not have the numbers in any way until 2007. Brash & racism didn't matter, Labour got it back. But they've never recovered the losses from their left in the Alliance.
Māori/Mana hold around 1.5% on top of that 28% for L/G, the Māori seats are relatively small beans in MMP without that overhang, it's useless to Labour, it's such a low vote with the low life expectancy (ouch, but true, so many too young to vote, so few old, not to mention the new prison rules). They'd be better with them as overhangs.
The gap in turnout, to get Labour 37%, is to the left of Labour. They need an Alliance-like party to soak up the conservative socialist vote while they hunt down soft-bellied National party voters. That's their government-in-waiting. The Alliance-Green split seems to work, grabs those namby-pamby liberals as well as the church-goers. Keeps them out of National, but the left is absent and Labour cannot abandon the centre-right "i've got mine" vote to National by hunting it.
And if the left just got old and voted National instead, then there is no majority for Labour anywhere outside where National sits. They need to move in.
They can try to dump old respected MPs in safe seats into in a new party, drag in whoever else they can dig up from the past, pull in SC and whatever else is running loose, put in some of that young blood from the ruins of Mana, declare themselves pacifists and socialists, and see if it polls.If there's no left when it's real, when it's a government-in-waiting again, when it's got respect and suits and ties and attends the right churches, then fuck it, get on with being National-lite with the asshole tax policies and you get to at least protect the schools and hospitals.