Posts by Mr Mark
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Speaker: An Open Letter To David Cunliffe, in reply to giovanni tiso,
"The cognitive disconnect .... is frankly staggering"
Yep. Goff, King et al - the core of Labour's Right faction (Neo-Liberal, somewhat socially-conservative (relatively-speaking), anti-Clark Moore supporters through the 90s). Both had serious thoughts about joining ACT in the mid-90s. Mallard probably best placed in the Careerist Soft-Left faction (Clark-supporter through the 90s and early zeros but increasingly aligned with the old Establishment Right faction).
All of them united by their core ABC membership. Robertson supporters until it suits them otherwise.
It's Cunliffe's supporters who want to de-select these old Rogernome fossils in 2016.
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Speaker: An Open Letter To David Cunliffe, in reply to Mr Mark,
Although I guess the third option would be 2011 National voters (and perhaps voters for various other parties) moving into non-voting in 2014 at a higher rate than 2011 Labour supporters.
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Speaker: An Open Letter To David Cunliffe, in reply to Stephen Judd,
There's still a contradiction at the heart of what you and Keir Leslie are arguing, Stephen.
Essentially, you, Keir and James are suggesting that, on the one hand, countless numbers of life-long Labour voters in Ilam have told you that, for the first time ever, they won't be Party-Voting Labour because they just can't stand Cunliffe. That implies that they were all still Party-Voting Labour in 2011 when the Party was led by Goff.
But then, on the other hand, you're suggesting that Labour's 2014 Party-Vote in Ilam is only very slightly down. Indeed, you yourself, Stephen, are now suggesting that once the Specials are counted, "we'll probably equal 2011". Which I'd have to agree with, assuming the Specials fall in the same pattern they did last time.
There's no logic there.
How can Labour lose countless numbers of Party-Votes in Ilam (compared to 2011) from dyed-in-the-wool Labourites who just can't bring themselves to vote for a Cunliffe-led Party and yet also maintain their Party-Vote share ? You've suggested it didn't come from increased turnout. The only possible answer is that either: (1) Anti-Cunliffe former Labour voters weren't all that heavy on the ground after all or that (2) they were compensated for by a whole swathe of voters who have swung to Labour since 2011 and don't seem to have too much of a problem with Cunliffe at all.
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Speaker: An Open Letter To David Cunliffe, in reply to Keir Leslie,
"And it worked: Ilam did pretty well in what was a tough year for us"
Ahh, right, well now I'm totally confused. Your close confidante, Ilam Labour Candidate, James Dann, tells us "I lost count of the times I door knocked someone who told me they had voted Labour all their life, but wouldn't vote for us as long as you were leader....While those examples are strictly anecdotal, the result on election night isn't."
James' former campaign manager, PAS regular, Stephen Judd, then confirms that he came across "lots" of these 'life-long Labour but will never vote for a Cunliffe-led Party' people in Ilam during the campaign.
And yet now you suggest that, despite these untold hordes of vigorously anti-Cunliffe erstwhile Labour supporters, Labour actually did pretty well in Ilam after all. A fact confirmed by a quick comparative Ilam Election Night Result analysis I've just done. Labour's Party Vote down in Ilam by significantly less than nationwide (admittedly, I've been unable to take any boundary changes into consideration).
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Speaker: An Open Letter To David Cunliffe, in reply to Craig Ranapia,
"....but if Labour wasn't polling well after weeks of blanket and largely uncritical coverage..."
Yep. And coverage that involved a good deal of reader/viewer exposure to both Cunliffe's personal style and to his unequivocal 'True Red Labour' rhetoric. And the Party soars to 38%, giving poor old Steven Joyce the collywobbles.
Then that highly unfortunate quiet/bordering-on-invisible period over Summer, together with the equally unfortunate modus vivendi with the ABCs on the policy front = the initial erosion of support to 33% in Jan. Followed, of course, by the full-on MSM lunacy from February pretty much through to Election Day.
Not that Cunliffe didn't make one or two blunders, mind you.
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"You led Labour, a party that was polling in the mid-30's, to one that sits firmly in the mid-20's."
Shouldn't have thought so. Labour were certainly not polling in the mid-30s when Shearer stood down. The moment Cunliffe won the leadership, Labour's support soared to 37/38%, then fell back a little, but still averaged 35% for 3 of the first 4 months of his leadership (after a good deal of exposure in the news media during the leadership primaries, complete with strong Real Red Labour rhetoric and imagery).
Even as late as January this year, Labour (33%) was still averaging a little better than during Shearer's final months (31-32%).
Then, of course, the relentless MSM onslaught (occasionally in combo with the Dirty Politics brigade) and the deliberate subversion of the campaign by various members of the Parliamentary and Extra-Parliamentary wings of the ABC faction, followed by various ABC MPs campaigning solely for the Candidate Vote.
As for "....you let down your leader at the most critical point of the 2011 campaign / you then destabilised the elected leader" , given you're a Robertson supporter I really don't know how you can say that with a straight face !
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"unnervingly close to the 1950s"
Whoa there ! That sounds like Boomer talk to me !
Let's not get too carried away with the Jock Phillips version of post-war social history. You know, the one in which anyone unlucky enough to be born before the saintly Boomers arrived is cast as some sort of uber-conservative, ultra-conformist pantomime villain while the chosen generation born 1946-54 (first-wave Boomers) are apparently all wonderfully enlightened, progressive and liberal.
My (Pakeha) Grandma, as it happens, was one of a number of Labour Party activists who in the early 50s, put forward a remit to the Labour Party Conference (either 1952 or 53, can't remember which) that called for compulsory Maori language and culture classes in New Zealand schools. The remit was defeated, obviously, but the point is: things were already beginning to stir by the 50s.
Or, to put it another way, there certainly were progressives before the (highly self-promotional) Boomers arrived and, equally, more than a few Boomers are deeply conservative. Significantly more, in fact, than the current Boomer-centric historiographical Orthodoxy would have us believe.
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Hard News: It was 30 years ago today, in reply to Hebe,
Well, yeah, Hebe, but I'd suggest most of the 830,000 people who voted Labour were either unaware of Douglas's newly-formed agenda or assumed, as my 19 year-old self did at the time of the 1984 Election, that the Lange Cabinet would rein him in. (incidently, I'd at least partially question the idea that Douglas had a Road-to-Damascus conversion as late as "the end of 1983". His Alternative Budget of 1980 - for which he was, of course, demoted by Rowling - did have elements of what was to become Rogernomics, albeit in a more haphazard way, combined with elements of traditional Keynesianism. I think he'd been moving slowly but surely in that direction since the late 70s).
Here's what 1984 Labour voters (and other voters) expected.
1984 pre-Election Poll Question: In your opinion, has government intervention in the New Zealand economy under National in the 1980s been 'about right', 'excessive', 'misdirected' or 'too little' ?"
1984 Poll..............All Voters...........Lab Voters
Excessive................33.......................39
About Right.............31.......................4
Too Little.................1........................1
Misdirected.............35.......................57As later analysis of the poll suggested "responses were notable in that despite the unpopularity of the Muldoon style of intervention (except among 1984 National voters), the principle of intervention was generally endorsed and the size of the "misdirected" category - particularly with respect to Labour and Social Credit voters - was unexpectedly high."
Certainly, from the stats, it's clear that only a third of all voters in 1984 and less than 40% of Labour voters thought Muldoon's interventionist policies 'excessive'. Significant interventionism of one sort or another was endorsed by two-thirds of all voters and more than 60% of Labour voters at the time of the Election.
When I think of my parents, on a relatively low income, putting all their spare change into these little white plastic Labour '78 and then Labour '81 Election campaign 'piggy-bank' boxes, with the aim of doing their little bit for the election of a social democratic government (and thousands around the Country doing the same thing despite barely being able to afford it).... the sheer arrogance and zealotry of Douglas, Prebble, (the particularly waspish) Bassett and their fellow-travellers defies belief !
And yet, as derisive as I was of the Fourth Labour / First ACT Government, it also happened to coincide with my early / mid 20s. My cheekbones were high, my dark eyelashes were long and my hazel eyes were unusually pretty to the women-folk. It was a period in which I received an enormous amount of attention from the femme fatales and, so, strangely enough, I greatly miss it - despite the viciousness of the Friedmanite loons in power.
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Hard News: Decidedly Undecided, in reply to Andrew Robertson,
Cheers, Andrew.
When I have time*, hopefully within the next couple of weeks, I'll post a brief overview (on my blog) of the debate so far, including some of the discussion here. And I'll include my response to some of the points made by you, Thomas, Steve and others. I'll also set-out some more data that hasn't yet received much attention.
I appreciate your very calm, relaxed, magnanimous approach to things, Andrew. More light, less heat. I also greatly appreciate the fact that Colmar Brunton has provided significantly more detail on methodology than the other polling companies. In stark contrast, 3 News Reid Research give absolutely nothing away. No idea of who is and isn't excluded from the final results, no indication of the number involved...I'm also looking forward to Roy Morgan fulfilling their promise to provide detailed demographic breakdowns at some point before the Election...I wait in hope and expectation....
*(You'll notice half my (small collection of) posts are unfinished or abandoned. I've got the motivation but not the spare time. And my natural inclination is towards more detailed in-depth analyses. That, unfortunately, requires a good deal of spare time. As does the production of nice / smooth / eloquent / powerful prose. )
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Hard News: Decidedly Undecided, in reply to steve black,
Finally, I'll just briefly take your alternative model # 1:
"...that 8% of those polled answered "I favour a change of Government" AND say they will give National their party vote. That's because they want a change of the rag tag band of small parties supporting National."
National's share of the entire sample in Fairfax-Ipsos Polls over the last two years has oscillated between 37 - 44%. So, 8% of those polled equals roughly 20% of National supporters. Seems unlikely to me that such a large minority of respondents who favoured the Party presently in power / a National-led Government - would reply Yes, I favour a Change of Government simply because they preferred National to govern alone. I'm prepared to accept that a very small minority would go down that route but nothing like a fifth. And a small minority of Nats would make no real difference to the claim that, among the Undecideds, those favouring a Labour-led Government massively outnumber those happy with the status-quo.Ultimately, though, it all comes back to the most likely scenario. It's impossible to be absolutely sure about anything.