OPINION
Although I voted on the second day of advanced voting, I am still watching the entire election campaign with great interest. This election is about swinging voters, and also the large number of ‘undecided’ voters that the polls continue to throw up. That makes it interesting.
It is possible that a portion of voters fall into the category of ‘shy Tories’ – a phenomenon discovered in the 1987 British election, when the polls showed a landslide to the left, but on the night, Margaret Thatcher won her third term. It was concluded that many people who were asked their voting intentions did not admit they were going to vote Conservative. Yet they did…in droves. The Conservatives won, when all the polls said that they were on their way out of government.
Now, in the current woke world where the media and some of the polling outlets are seriously left wing, how many people are going to admit to voting National or ACT? When we see people being cancelled, marginalised and attacked for expressing a view different from the party line, are you really surprised that the polls are showing a percentage claiming that they will vote for Labour or the Greens? If it was an issue in 1987, how do you think people feel now, when to express an even slightly opposed position can result in the loss of your livelihood?
Think of the many thousands of people who took the vaccine, not because they wanted to, but because they may have lost their jobs if they refused? And when governments turn the police, with water cannons, on peaceful protesters, you have to wonder what kind of a society we live in. These are not the times to express a discerning view: not publicly anyway.
Some of the polling companies are media based. And we all know how uncompromisingly biased most of our media outlets are. I watched the small parties’ Leaders’ Debate last Thursday night. All of the leaders were asked if it was ever OK to tell a lie in politics (sound familiar?) All four of them, Rawiri Waititi, Winston Peters, David Seymour and James Shaw, replied with an emphatic ‘no’. It was a golden opportunity to ask James Shaw about the inconsistency surrounding his qualifications, but Jack Tame is an uncloseted leftie. Waititi just railed about Maoridom, including the ridiculous claim that Maori ‘science’ should be used to solve climate change. Everything he said indicated his ultimate desire to have a racially divided country. The audience only ever applauded either James Shaw or Rawiri Waititi. They must have been recruited from the local communist party. The panel discussing the debate afterwards (Jessica Mutch McKay, Janet Wilson and Kris Faafoi) gave their winning votes to either Shaw or Waititi. David Seymour was only mentioned to point out how annoying he was. There was some truth in that but he said a lot of really good things as well. And Winston was described as ‘tired’. Our state-controlled media will not allow dissenting views. It has never been more obvious.
Once we have our new, centre-right government, nothing is going to change, as far as the media are concerned. Remember in 2017, when Steven Joyce pointed out Labour’s ‘fiscal hole’ of $11.7 billion? He was roundly ridiculed by the media, including my all-time favourite presenter, Hilary Barry (sarcasm, if you didn’t realise), because they simply couldn’t tolerate the idea that Labour had got it wrong. They had, of course, and Joyce was right, although $11.7 billion pales into insignificance as we stare into the abyss of government debt nowadays.
As we get into the last week of campaigning, suddenly, Jacinda’s face is all over the media. Why is that? She’s gone, isn’t she? Well, yes, but in her day, she was very popular. The polls show that 4.5 per cent of voters still name her as their preferred prime minister. And, with amazing coincidental timing, the media (in this case RNZ) are claiming that Jacinda’s Covid policies saved 20,000 lives. But how can they possibly know that? No one knows what would have happened if things had been done differently. It is just a bare-faced attempt to remind people how Jacinda ‘saved us’ all from that nasty disease and that we should remember that when voting this time. However, this obvious attempt to use Jacinda as a prop for Labour’s election chances is likely to backfire. Jacinda left office because she had become resoundingly hated. Her control over the populace during the pandemic had gone too far, and her desire to divide the country, first on vaccine status and then on race, was seen as despicable. Putting photos of her on the front page of Stuff is more likely to remind people of why they dislike her, rather than remind them of how wonderful she was.
Bob Jones is predicting a landslide to National-ACT. The polls are not saying that, of course, although they do predict a change of government, but how big that change will be will depend on how many ‘shy Tories’ we have here – those who may intend to vote on the right, but would never tell a pollster so in a million years. We’ll know soon enough. Maybe it will be 1987 all over again.