Two million voters in search of a rationale: The campaign, factors and issues

Draft paper by Colin James to the Victoria University post-election conference, 23 August 2002

"They haven't settled down yet." So said Barrie Leay, the National party secretary, at the 1978 election, which decimated the National government's huge 1975 majority and slashed its vote by 9% to below Labour's. Ditto for the 2002 election.

The logic of the Clark government between 1999 and 2002 was consolidation. After the 1984-92 revolution (1) there was a strong public desire for stability and moderation. Both in policy and tone this is for the most part what Helen Clark and her ministers supplied after 1999. That set the lie of the battleground in the 2002 election.

This had two important effects on the campaign and the election. First, it assured Labour of leadership of the next government. Second, because the electorate reached that conclusion, many supporters of the National party went in search of a vehicle to make their vote effective.

In the hands of voters still learning MMP's levers this search produced an amazing campaign and equally amazing result. There had been a rule of thumb under FPP that the underdog major party made up ground during the campaign. In the 2002 campaign underdog National steadily lost ground. MMP prompted many non-Labour voters to use their votes in ways they would not have in an FPP election. (2)

In short, tactics were an issue. They were much discussed among parties, in the media and by voters.

Time and again during the campaign people of widely varying views and walks of life puzzled to me as to how they could or should use the party vote. I have had similar conversations since election day. My usual reply was to ask: "Why don't (didn't) you vote for the party that is nearest to what you believe in?" That was an MMP question, predicated on people voting for the party nearest their beliefs. The answer often was: "But that might give me the government I do not want." That was an FPP answer, predicated on people voting for a government or to block the election of, or to reshape, a government they disapproved of.

So there is some way to go yet before we have an election we can pronounce to be the first truly MMP election, as some people did of this one. (3)

Moreover, the ethos among MPs remains predicated on a winner-takes-all government. While minority government is now becoming the norm and forms of non-coalition arrangements with supporting parties are being experimented with (an MMP phenomenon but also possible under FPP, as in the 1910s-20s) and the chairing of select committees is being more broadly spread around other, including opposition, parties (an MMP phenomenon), the negotiations for support were still predicated on obtaining a majority to keep the government in office and majorities for its programme; there is still little attempt in budget-making, policy development and legislating to broaden the parliamentary constituency for a proposed course of action beyond the numbers needed to get a measure through the House.

Whatever the tissue of pretexts offered by the government for calling an election four months early, the actual reason was to capitalise on benign polls at the very least to maximise Labour's vote and preferably to obtain a majority in combination with Deputy Prime Minister Jim Anderton's Progressive Coalition. (4) Part of the calculation the electorate then made during the campaign, quite independently of policy considerations, was whether an absolute majority was desirable if Helen Clark was going to exercise it ‹ or at all. Clark attempted to counter this in her opening and closing television broadcasts and at other times and in other ways with declarations that it was a "privilege every day to serve" but she and humility are not obvious or convincing bedfellows.

So one tactical conundrum pondered by many voters was how to ensure a Clark government but not leave it unfettered.

This played initially into the hands of the Greens, especially among those who wanted a government influenced by a party to Labour's left but discounted the Alliance as an option. But disunity got in the way: the Greens threw rocks at Labour over genetic modification (GM) and Labour threw rocks back, with some ferocity after the "corn" affair, to which I will refer later. Disunity is usually punished: Labour in the late 1980s, National in the early 1990s, New Zealand First in the late 1990s and the Alliance in late 2001/early 2002 are recent examples. The open warfare between Labour and the Greens over GM may well have cost both parties votes among those who had thought of Labour and the Greens as a government combination.

GM highlighted the difference between Labour and the Greens. That difference is part of the point of voting Green in support of a Labour-led government: to get more action on the environment and more commitment to "free" and extensive social services and to restrain Labour's enthusiasm for free trade and military alignment with the United States. But the difference was also the trigger for a different tactical conundrum mulled over by a second sort of voter: how to stop the Greens influencing a Labour government. Anecdotal evidence from as far back as mid-2001 suggested many National voters were planning to vote Labour for exactly this reason.

For some National supporters voting Labour was not difficult: two good economic years plus some solicitous attention from the cabinet's top brass to business and farming leaders had softened antipathy and even in some cases generated warmth. Other National supporters had to hold their noses to vote Labour yet still did. Still others drifted off to New Zealand First and others again found a merciful release from apostasy late in the campaign when United Future emerged as an option. United Future and New Zealand First in fact explicitly campaigned as a mechanism to blunt the Greens. The United Future option incidentally had the added advantage of injecting a right-of-centre influence on economic and environmental policy, given leader Peter Dunne's generally pro-National voting record on those matters since 1996.

A third sort of voter wrestled with yet another tactical conundrum. This was triggered by dismay at National's performance, prospects, policy or campaigning. Judging by comments to me after the election and also by polling evidence, some went to ACT, some to New Zealand First and some to United Future. Among the factors: Bill English's lack of credibility as an alternative Prime Minister (some saw Winston Peters as more credible); National at no stage was seen as likely to lead a government; National's policy was muddled and/or insufficiently firm on a range of issues from deregulation to stopping Maori claims and immigration; and the campaign appeared amateurish and/or to lack energy on the ground. (5)

Polls played a part in deciding tactics. They were a means whereby tactical voters, of whom there were a great many, could work out how to achieve their aim. The NZ Herald DigiPoll post-election poll recorded 12% of all voters as saying polls had a "strong impact" on their party vote and another 22% said they had had "some impact". The figures for United Future were 11% and 51% respectively and 36% said they made up their minds on election day or the day before, indicating the vote for United Future was essentially tactical (though this is a small subsample and must be treated with care). Some 28% of Greens said they made up their minds on election day (another 3% the day before) and 31% ascribed some impact on their vote to the polls. The second issue to note is leadership. Because others, notably John Johansson, know far more about leadership and its influence on voting, I confine my comments here to the attempt by both Bill English and the Greens to questions Helen Clark's integrity.

In opinion polls Clark scored high approval ratings and was far ahead of all others as "preferred Prime Minister". In a pre-election issues survey by Colmar Brunton for TV1 58% agreed that "many New Zealanders will vote for Labour because they like Helen Clark". In TV3-NFO's matrix of characteristics Clark consistently scored highly positively and well ahead of English on every count. In part this may be put down to English's newness in the job: he became National's leader on in September 2001 and is not the sort of charismatic person who makes an instant impact. But Clark developed as Prime Minister, adding an easy approachability in public to the authority and credibility she had established in opposition. Her campaign walkabouts resembled the progress of a respected and accessible monarch. English was equally approachable but lacked authority. English attempted to bridge some of the gap by questioning Clark's integrity in the wake of a police report, made public on 5 July, on a complaint about Clark's having signed someone else's artwork for auction for charity. This had surfaced in the media in April and occasioned much mirth though little evidence in polls that voters marked her down for it then. This was even though she merely apologised for an "error of judgment" and did not own up to having done something wrong. It was that omission which prompted the complaint to the police who found prima facie evidence of forgery but not of such consequence as to warrant prosecution. English's attempt to exploit that finding did not resonate. (6)

What did resonate, at least temporarily, was an allegation by anti-establishment campaigner Nicky Hager in a book (published on 10 July by the Greens' 22nd-ranked list candidate, Craig Potton, but without the knowledge of the Green leadership) that Clark and the government had in late 2000 covered up the planting of some GM-contaminated corn. In fact, officials stated on 11 July, there was no conclusive evidence the corn was contaminated (reviews did not confirm an initial positive test, which may have been triggered by the presence of dirt). Nor, the officials said, was there evidence of a cover-up; only of muddle and incompetence among officials. There was reason to believe the officials: it was implausible that a one-year-old government (as it was at the time) that was intuitively suspicious of GM would cover up a finding of GM. (7)

Nevertheless, this incident may well have chipped Clark's reputation for integrity. Both Labour's and National's nightly tracking polls showed a 5% drop in Labour's support after 10 July (to 38% and 39% respectively, according to off-the-record interviews) which Labour did not fully recover.

Perhaps more pertinently, both incidents displayed to the public another (understandable) aspect of Clark's public persona ‹ overreaction to personal attacks to the point of appearing to lose control. She threatened to sue English and any media which published his allegations; she withdrew the threats the next day. After the corn affair, she accused the Green leadership, which too readily accepted Hager's line, of complicity in Hager's enterprise; she retracted that for lack of evidence after believable protestations of innocence by the Green co-leaders. Then on 21 July, when the Alliance published a poll purporting to show its leader, Laila Harré, surging into the lead in the Waitakere electorate race against Labour's Lynne Pillay (who in fact won), Clark said she doubted there was a poll; again, she retracted the next day.

A person not in control is a person not in authority. Her own demeanour, however sorely provoked (and she was sorely provoked), may have lost Labour votes. Clark's authority is a powerful plus for Labour and any derogation from it is likely to diminish Labour's attraction to voters. Clark also lost good media time and space in sideshows she didn't start but surely compounded. On 21 July before her comment about Harré's poll, she had declared to a party rally in Wellington she was going to push the government's positive record, ending her attacks on New Zealand First and the Greens of the week before. But TV1's 6pm television clips of her that evening and the following were not of the government's positive achievements but of her spat with Harré.

This introduces another factor: the media. Janine Hayward and Chris Rudd will deal with this more fully and intelligently than I can. I will make this one comment.

For around two decades politicians have been using "spin", stunts and manipulation to colour media coverage of campaigns, to which the media have become increasingly resistant and countered with attempts to set the agenda and circumvent the manipulation. In this election the media's ‹ and particularly television's ‹ role in this ongoing cat-and-mouse game may have influenced votes. In particular, the corn affair and TV1's "worm" ‹ both media events ‹ were vote-shifting events.

TV3's news presenter, John Campbell, recorded an interview with Clark on 9 July in which he put Hager's accusations to her as uncontested fact, without mentioning Hager or the book and without prior warning of the topic beyond that it was about GM. Clark had not been briefed about the incident and did not have the necessary information to respond to his questions. Worse, TV3 did not run the interview until next evening, after the book had become public, making it look as if Clark was refusing to respond to what had by then become public knowledge. For the good of my trade, I hope no-one in future, and especially the Broadcasting Standards Authority when it rules on this matter, mistakes Campbell for a journalist. Ethics matter, even when politicians are at their most devious and slippery. Ethics especially matter in an election campaign when people are deciding the shape of their government and need good information.

Had TV3 ‹ and, I have to add, the media in general ‹ presented all sides of the corn story at the outset, the impact of Hager's allegations would have been muted. The 5% drop in Labour's ratings can largely be put down to TV3. This was a classic case, I think, of the medium becoming the message.

An arguably equally influential media event ‹ this one TV1's doing ‹ was the "worm". This was the recorded composite reaction of 100 uncommitted voters to comments by the leaders of eight parties in a "debate" on TV1 on 15 July, presented as a line wriggling up and down as it recorded positive and negative reactions. The "worm" was not shown during the debate but an hour and a-half later, accompanied by a commentary.

The worm's warmest reactions were for New Zealand First and United Future leaders Winston Peters and Peter Dunne. There was a rough logic in this: uncommitted voters only 12 days from election day were unlikely to be supporters of the well-defined, old-established parties, Labour or National, or well-defined "flank" parties of the far left and right, the Alliance, Greens or ACT which invite a specific commitment to a point of view. News stories the day after the "worm" awarded Dunne a "win". United Future's poll ratings zoomed from less than 1% before the "worm" to 8% in a NZ Herald DigiPoll published on 20 July. Dunne, as a middle-of-the-road advocate of "balance" and "commonsense" became overnight a mechanism for moderate right-of-centre voters to ensure Labour was not captive of, or unduly influenced by, the Greens.

Quite apart from these two events, Labour ministers fretted that the style of media coverage ‹ by which they seemed to mean, television coverage ‹ obscured the "real" issues, the ones on which Labour could expect support. (8) In defence, the media could point to the blandness of Labour's message. Its 2002 "credit card" of seven commitment was so unmemorable that two senior ministers I invited after the election to recite the list could recall only one between them. Labour was so determined to avoid controversy in a "business-as-usual" campaign that it forfeited media attention to what it did say.

CONTINUED IN PART 2

NOTES:

1 The policy reforms after 1984 coincided with the assumption of independence, in the sense that in that period the nation developed a much more distinctive voice in an explosion of literature, music of all forms, film and graphic arts, as a generation born after 1945, not sharing its parents' sentimental attachment to Britain, came to maturity and made itself felt. The period should thus be seen as the independence revolution, the emergence from colony.

2 Tactical voting of the sort seen in the party vote in 2002 had been seen in embryo in electorate voting in the late 1970s and early 1980s. In seats where the third party, Social Credit, reached a certain critical mass, supporters of the underdog main party (usually Labour in safe National seats but it did happen also to National in some safe Labour seats) would move to Social Credit as the more credible option to unseat the enemy. In three seats, all National-held, this won Social Credit the seat. In the one seat where Social Credit did well but where neither main party could be considered weak, there was a three-way fight and Social Credit could not quite win the seat.

3 That voters grasped the importance of the party vote is born out by the NZ Herald DigiPoll post-election poll of 500 taken on 30 and 31 July: 79% said the party vote was more important (17% said the electorate vote); 92% of United Future voters, 90% of Greens and 84% of ACT voters were clear it was the party vote.

4 Clark and Anderton campaigned for the return of a government which explicitly contained both.

5 Discussion on 7 August with Wyatt Creech, former Deputy Prime Minister, with special reference to the Wairarapa electorate.

6 The TV1-Colmar Brunton pre-election issues survey showing a drop in distrust of politicians and the government from 75% in 1999 to 66% might be partly due to Clark's perceived authority and her message that she did during the term what she had promised in 1999.

7 This in itself was a most unusual event. At Science Minister Pete Hodgson's request, State Services Commissioner Michael Wintringham convened a press conference of officials from the Ministry for the Environment, the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry and the Environmental Risk Management Authority. Hodgson introduced the officials and remained in the room. While the officials conducted themselves properly, sticking to facts and events, that they did what they on a matter of high importance to the course and outcome of the campaign has raised important issues for future consideration if the political neutrality of the public service is to be secured in the public's eyes.

8 After the election Labour ministers were angry at media coverage of Labour in the campaign and Helen Clark is reported as having spent a good part of the first meeting of the new Labour caucus lambasting the media. Apart from the "corn" and the "worm", ministers complained at a style of television interviewing that constantly and intrusively interrupted answers to questions.