Te Tai Tonga
Posted: July 27, 2014 Filed under: 2014 Election, Labour, Mana Party, Maori Party 2 Comments
The announcement that Laila Harré had jumped ship from the Greens to lead the Internet Party ruffled a lot of feathers in the Green Party, and today’s announcement that former Labour MP Georgina Beyer is standing for the Mana Party in Te Tai Tonga is likely to have draw a similar opinion.
The big question is if she can win it. In the absence of any polling in the electorate, the best starting point is the 2011 result. Labour’s Rino Tirikatene won with a 1,475 vote majority over the sitting MP, Rāhui Kātene of the Māori Party. Despite a competitive race in which the seat changed hands, only 57% of voters bothered to turn up.
During the 2011 campaign, Mana candidate Clinton Dearlove surprised many. He performed very well during debates and in the media, but suffered simply because he didn’t have an adequate campaign machine to get his message out around this huge electorate. He only gained 1,360 votes in the end.
So what can we expect in 2014? Even if the Mana Party haven’t improved their campaign machine ( though with the support of Kim Dotcom’s millions, I wouldn’t count on it), Beyer is likely to be the beneficiary of her higher profile, and the media interest that will attract. If she can double the Mana vote, which is a huge task, then that might make some impact.
That said, Rino Tirikatene now has the advantage of incumbency (which is a huge benefit in an electorate this size). As well as that, he no longer has to face Kātene – who did run a decent campaign.
The demise of the Māori Party will certainly change the dynamic in Te Tai Tonga, but it is hard to see Georgina Beyer giving Tirikatene much of a run for his money given the size of his existing vote.
Social media gurus
Posted: July 18, 2014 Filed under: 2014 Election, Campaigning, Labour Leave a commentSometimes you just have to laugh.
Like at a senior MP sharing a story about how the leader is a liability…
Or a Labour candidate sharing a graphic asking people to Party Vote Green…
Scary that 26 of Rawiri’s fan’s liked the Party Vote Green message!
Look, I know Labour’s electoral strategy relies heavily on hashtags, but please make that the last time anyone uses #ElectoralAct1993.
#Labour2041? As I said, sometimes you just have to laugh.
Seriously though, from what I’ve been told, an 8 page social media guidebook has been circulated to caucus and candidates. I have no idea if it covers this sort of stuff or not. But regardless, someone needs to be cracking some heads together (that Rawiri post has now been online for three days) and telling candidates that these posts need to come down, and not happen again. Like I said yesterday, when Labour are struggling to get their message out at all, they shouldn’t allow candidates (or the leader) to create distractions.
How not to release policy
Posted: July 17, 2014 Filed under: 2014 Election, Campaigning, Labour, Policy 2 CommentsNZ Labour’s woes are well documented. The latest round of polls – both with Labour sub 25, are frankly, disastrous. On these numbers Labour will be lucky to get deputy leader David Parker re-elected, and the prospect of any new list MPs just looks like a fantasy.
But it’s not all doom and gloom. From my distant perspective, it looks like Labour is running some excellent on the ground campaigns. Some of the MPs look like they’re making great visits (David Shearer and Chris Hipkins seem to have had a really sucessful visit through the regional North Island). Kelvin Davis is getting good media from his work helping flood victims in his electorate. I’ve heard that some electorates are smashing their voter contact targets. The fact that they’ve even managed to agree to targets at all amazes me (I have previously sat in a Labour meeting where the idea of targets was quite literally dismissed as “boss talk”).
And as Phil Quin pointed out on the Q+A panel the other week, Labour do have some very good policy positions. Chris Hipkins really needs to be commended for the work he continues to do with education – their school donation and class size policies are really solid vote winners.
Unfortunately, Labour seems to have since dropped them like a lead balloon.
Using Facebook as a sample of Labour’s external comms*, let’s have a look at what they’ve done with the education announcements…
2 July – Labour announce their school donation policy with a nice graphic on Facebook. Lovely stuff.
3 July – Cunliffe posts a story about how the PPTA back’s their policy. Nice touch.
5 July – Saturday of party congress. Cunliffe announces iPad for every child policy with another nice Facebook graphic.
6 July – Sunday of party congress. Leader’s keynote speech. Presumably in the speech Cunliffe announces their major policy of employing 2000 new teachers to reduce class sizes. But you wouldn’t know that from his Facebook page which stays completely silent on the matter.
7 July – David Cunliffe is awkwardly holding a sausage.
8 July – David Cunliffe meets the Japanese Prime Minister. Does he talk about education? We’ll never know.
10 July – A week after the key note speech a video of it is posted online. Without any mention of the policy. You have to watch the 36 minute video to discover that Labour wants to reduce class sizes.
10 July – Chris Hipkins launches Labour’s excellent education manifesto. It’s a beautiful document that really easily sets out some great policy. Does Cunliffe or the Labour Party mention it? Nope.
Number of mentions of Labour’s education policies after they’re announced: 0. Number of times David Cunliffe has mentioned that they are reducing class sizes on Facebook: 0.
Hell, it’s even depressing to look at a Facebook feed of all Labour candidates and party pages. The last time anyone from Labour talked about education was Grant Robertson three days ago.
Labour candidates should be told to post about it. They should be told to do a visit, then talk about how the education policy is relevant to that visit afterwards. People aren’t going to vote Labour because you have dunked yourself in a pool of icy water. They will vote Labour if they think that improving our kids’ education is worthwhile, and that Labour is the best party to deliver that. You have a good policy. Go out there and sell it!
In a week where Labour committed hundreds of millions of dollars to make worthwhile and significant changes to education, candidates should not be posting videos of ice water challenges. There are enough distractions from Labour’s core messages thanks to donations scandals, Kim Dotcom etc etc, Labour shouldn’t be using Facebook to create even more diversions.
And by totally going to ground and refusing to go out and sell Labour’s policy, David Cunliffe doesn’t even look like he wants Labour to win.
* Facebook certainly isn’t and shouldn’t be Labour’s only communication tool, but given they can easily use it to reach an audience of hundreds of thousands of people, they would be criminally negligent to ignore it. And sadly it doesn’t look like they’re picking up the slack here in any other medium.
Whip the whip.
Posted: June 25, 2014 Filed under: 2014 Election, Campaigning, Labour Leave a comment
An old Labour Party web address has been given a new lease of life on a Hamilton election billboard with a direct link to the Prime Minister’s Facebook page.
Hamilton West candidate Sue Moroney became the unwitting champion for the National Party when the recycled election sign she erected last Friday was altered and tied to the PM’s personal account.
Labour used the web address http://www.labour08.co.nz during the 2008 election campaign and Moroney had it obscured with masking tape for the run to the September 20 general election.
A few days later, the tape was removed from the sign, the domain registered and linked to Key’s Facebook page that showed pictures of last week’s meeting with US President Barack Obama.
Moroney, as chief whip, should know a lot better. Her name is being used to authorise Parliamentary Service funded materials, and if past precedent is anything to go by, she will be one of the senior members of they party’s publications committee, whose job it is to sign off on anything the party puts out.
Now she’s gone and got the party a shoddy newspaper story because she’s been sloppy and used six year old election hoardings (that have already lost her two elections). If I were a campaigner I’d be wondering why on earth she had anything to do with a committee designed to stop crap like this happening.
Her response is also textbook Moroney:
That’s a very bad look for the Prime Minister to be connected with that sort of politicking in Hamilton.
Um. It was probably a bored activist. Hell, Tim Macindoe is so relaxed about his contest in Hamilton West that he’s gone on an overseas holiday. Talk about an over-inflated ego that thinks that John Key is somehow connected to some grand campaign to undermine Sue Moroney. The only one at fault here is her.
How to lose friends and alienate people
Posted: June 17, 2014 Filed under: 2014 Election, Campaigning, Conservatives, National Leave a comment
A reader has sent me this gem from Colin Craig’s Conservative Party.
Now, I’m no genius, but if my entire political future rested on being gifted a safe seat by the National Party, I’m not sure I’d use my campaign launch as a vehicle to simply attack National:
Had a guts full of National’s abandoning their principles? Had enough of their arrogance? Had enough of them ignoring referendums; like the one on asset sales and the one on anti-smacking? Had enough of Bill English’s borrowing habits? Had enough of the two waka Government?
Come and meet the man who isn’t afraid to say ‘enough is enough’. Come and hear Colin Craig’s antidote to National’s toxic behaviour. Come and meet the man who will give our next Government some backbone.
Now look, I know Colin and his millions are the only asset the Conservatives have. But can they please get photo of him where he doesn’t look like he’s just killed someone?
NZ Facebook pages
Posted: June 9, 2014 Filed under: 2014 Election, Campaigning, Labour, National 1 CommentAs you may know, I have been trying to keep my 2014 candidates page up to date with not only the names of the candidates, but a link to their Facebook page if they have one.
If you’re reading this blog, there is a pretty good chance that you’re interested in New Zealand politics, but are probably also very partisan. So while you probably are interested in what some of the candidates on the other side to your team are doing, it’s unlikely you want to Like their pages.
One handy feature that Facebook has is you can create lists of pages, and you can simply follow the list. So, if you are as tragic as I am, you can now have the joy of following these lists I have created…
NZ Politics – Parties and Leaders
NZ Labour Party – 2014 candidates
NZ National Party – 2014 candidates
Hopefully people find these useful.
And thanks to those people who have been sending me info on selections, and candidate Facebook pages. Please keep them coming in!
Greens fail to rejuvenate
Posted: May 25, 2014 Filed under: 2014 Election, Democracy, Greens 2 Comments
The Greens are the first party in New Zealand to release their party list for 2014. You can read it here. Given all of their MPs will be elected as list MPs, it’s advantageous for them to get this out of the way asap.
It is a very conservative list – they’ve opted to upset as few people as possible with it. None of their existing MPs have decided (or been forced) to retire and while there has been some minor rearrangements in the order of their 14 MPs, only one new candidate has been slotted in above sitting MPs.
Their press release puts some lovely spin on it though. You see, given they’re aiming to get 15% of the party vote, which would equate to about 20 seats. It’s nice and aspirational, but they obviously don’t put much belief in it, given with only one exception, their new candidates are all ranked above 15.
The Polity poll-of-polls shows the Greens currently hovering at 11.8% – marginally above where they polled in 2011. This would get them roughly 15 MPs, and their only new MP would be a white middle class male.
So nice work on the spin Greens, but this really is the most conservative list you’ve produced in years.
Keir Leslie
Patrick Leyland
Guest Post
James Caygill