David Farrar: Impact of World Cup on the election

Prime Minister John Key and Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard exchange rugby jerseys the Pacific Islands Forum opening ceremony at The Cloud at Queens Wharf, Auckland. Photo / Greg Bowker

Today is the start of the Rugby World Cup, and for many politics will fade out of mind for the next six weeks. The consensus is that this will help the incumbent Government, and that a successful hosting and even better an All Blacks victory will help the Government win re-election.

Now of course it was not the current Government that bid for the Rugby World Cup. The bid was led by Helen Clark around six years ago, and it was her Government that agreed on the timing with the IRB. It is possible that a motivating factor was the thought that if Labour had won a fourth term, then this could help them win an unprecedented fifth term, making Clark the longest serving Prime Minister.

But Labour lost in 2008, and it is the Key Government that inherited the Cup and the responsibility for making the tournament a success - at least from an organisational point of view.

But does winning or even hosting a major sporting tournament help an incumbent Government? Let us look at what history tells us. Few countries are as rugby mad as we are, so I thought a good tournament to look at would be the FIFA World Cup.

The 2010 World Cup was won by Spain, and they go to the polls on the 20th of November. The incumbent Government was 6% behind the Opposition when they won the World Cup and the latest polls have them 7% behind. No boost for them.

Italy won the 2006 FIFA World Cup. Two months prior to that Romano Prodi's party won 348 seats to 281 for the coalition led by Silvio Berlusconi. Two years later Berlusconi won 344 seats and the Government. So zero out of two.

Of course in these cases the elections were held some time after the sporting victory. There doesn't appear to have been a situation where a country has hosted or won a FIFA World Cup just before an election, as is happening in New Zealand with the Rugby World Cup.

The more likely impact of the Rugby World Cup is that it will reduce the ability of politicians to get headlines. This would be bad for the Government if they were behind in the polls, but could work out well for them as they have such a commanding lead.
Parliament will sit for the last time on Thursday 6 October. Two days later we will have the quarter-finals.

On the 20th of October the Governor-General will send a lackey to the forecourt of Parliament reading out a proclamation dissolving Parliament. The next day will see the play-off for third and fourth place.

On Sunday the 23rd of October the nation will watch the final, and half the country will turn up to work on Monday late and with a hangover. The hangovers should have worn off enough that by the end of the week voters may want to start listening to the politicians again.

By then, there will be just four weeks to go before the election on 26 November. Will that be enough time to close a 25 per cent gap? Labour may be regretting, with hindsight, deciding to hold the Cup so close to an election.

* David Farrar is a centre-right blogger and affiliated with the National Party. A disclosure statement on his political views can be found here.