The Front Page: Do culture wars win politicians votes?

British activist Kellie-Jay Keen-Minshull aka Posie Parker is escorted from Albert Park. Photo / Dean Purcell

Posie Parker’s brief but controversial visit to New Zealand got our politicians talking.

Whether defending free speech and ‘white cis men’ or standing up for one of the marginalised groups in this country, politicians from all sides of the spectrum weighed in on her visit.

This was the latest example of a more established international culture war making inroads into the local political context.

The concern is that issues like these can start to sow the seeds for greater polarisation across our society at a time when cultural cohesion isn’t as established as it once was.

Lara Greaves, associate professor of politics at Victoria University of Wellington, tells The Front Page podcast that culture wars are largely dependent on the level of polarisation across society.

“It’s people on the left hating people on right, and people on the right hating people on the left,” she says.

“There’s a drift in the level of respect of the other team or teams. And where that really plays out is cultural issues.”

Looking at the local context, Greaves notes that major studies in polarisation suggest that New Zealand is not as polarised as other countries - meaning that culture wars do not have as much impact here as elsewhere.

“We might see this on Twitter or on talkback radio, but there’s no body of evidence to suggest at the moment that New Zealand is becoming more polarised or that there’s any kind of culture war happening here,” she says.

Greaves also notes that while online discussions of culture war issues might create the impression that these matters are still up for debate, actual data shows that most people have already made up their minds on many of these issues.

“There was an Ipsos poll that showed that around 88 per cent of New Zealanders thought that transgender men and women should be able to live their best lives and only 7 per cent disagreed with that.”

The point here is that there often aren’t that many people sitting in the middle, waiting to be swayed one way or the other by a politician.

So is there any point in politicians becoming embroiled in culture wars at all?

Greaves says that there is about 10 per cent of the population sitting in the centre of any political context, who could go either left or right.

“When you look at the issues that affect those people most, polls show that the economy is a huge issue for people. It’s not clear how many voters you would actually win [in a culture war]. That’s why we perhaps see Labour and National engage less in that kind of polarisation.”

But Greaves adds that some parties can still gain from leaning into these big culture war issues.

Listen to the full episode of The Front Page podcast to hear Greaves’ view on which parties have the most to gain by courting controversy.