Mike Williams: When it comes to voting the fun is in the details

Mike Williams. Photo / NZME

The last two weeks have seen the 2023 general election campaign move up another gear with two parties launching significant policies to take to the polls in October.

The big change from my time managing campaigns is, because of early voting, the sequence and timing of policy launches have had to change significantly.

Just a few elections ago it was possible, even likely, to make major policy announcements in the last two weeks of an election campaign. This was particularly likely if a party found itself behind in the polls with election day looming.

In the 2020 general election, however, around half of voters had exercised their right to vote in advance of election day.

Many, like me, cast their ballot at the first possible opportunity.

This development in part accounts for early policy announcements.

Two recent announcements have been of particular interest and could heavily impact the outcome of the October poll for rather counterintuitive reasons.

These policies have the potential to stir two sorts of voters – those who vote infrequently and those who split their vote.

These are often election-deciding groups but are usually overlooked by most pundits.

The Greens’ tax policy envisaged a universal basic income (UBI) that will not fall below $385 a week and the first $10,000 of earnings to be tax-free. This generosity for the poor is to be funded by a new tax bracket of 45 per cent on incomes over $180,000 and wealth tax of 2.5 per cent on owned assets over $2 million.

It should be noted that while the Act and National parties attacked the ideology behind the Green Party policy, neither quibbled with the mathematics underpinning the announcement.

The real impact of this policy could be on the percentage of enrolled voters who bother to turn out to vote.

Put simply, the poorer members of society are considerably less likely to vote than middle New Zealand or the well-off.

This fact is reflected in voter turnout in the safe Labour seats of Mangere and Manurewa where more than 30 per cent of those enrolled failed to vote in the 2020 general election.

On the other hand, in safe National-held seats like Rangitikei the non-vote amounted to just 15 per cent.

Research conducted by the Labour Party in 2006-7 demonstrated that these non-voters were overwhelmingly those on the lowest incomes.

We found that more than half of beneficiaries enrolled to vote required as a condition of their benefits did not cast a vote.

A key to success for the left-leaning parties – Labour, Greens, and Te Pati Māori – is a voter turnout closer to 80 per cent than 70 per cent.

The Greens UBI policy is likely to increase turnout, but the catch in my time was that communicating with non-voters was difficult.

Social media has made this much less of a challenge.

With 4.1 million Facebook sign-ups out of our population of five million, a new and powerful communication channel has opened up.

National announced a further softening of its “attack” on climate change by stating that farmers will be given more time to reduce emissions and would delay pricing on-farm emissions by up to five years.

This reflects Christopher Luxon’s so far apparently futile efforts to lure former National voters back from supporting Act.

Though Luxon says his wife bought an electric Tesla which qualifies for the “clean car” discount, National loudly opposes this scheme, labelling it the “Ute tax” and will abolish it if elected.

To be fair, the Luxon family may not have pocketed the discount when the Tesla was purchased as it is a rebate and is only paid on application to the IRD. It’s not automatically deducted from the price of the vehicle.

National’s weakening policy on climate change risks the second pitfall of the MMP - vote splitting.

This occurs when a voter supports a candidate from one party by giving their all-important party vote to another. This was a curse that befell National in the 2020 general election and could well strike again.

A clear example of vote splitting in 2020 was the Tamaki Electorate where National’s Simon O’Connor got 21,471 candidate votes yet National got 15,433 party votes.

This means that nearly a third of Simon O’Connor’s voters supported a party other than National.

This illustrates the risk Christopher Luxon and National take if they don’t have a credible policy on climate change.

This lesson should have been rammed home by the success of the Teal Independents in the recent Australian federal election.

In this election, National’s sister party, The Liberals, lost six of its safest seats – like Tamaki - to Teal candidates entirely on the issue of climate change.

With the two-vote MMP system, it is easy to vote for the candidate you usually support but make a statement of principle with your party vote.

Watch this space, the fun is in the details!

Mike Williams grew up in Hawke’s Bay and is a former Labour Party president.