I fell, kind of accidentally, into political psychology when I reached the point that I was allowed to do my own research – looking at voting in the first MMP election in 1996. It was clearly meant to be, as my birthday fell on election day. My father, a journalist, even pestered the party leaders to sign a birthday card for me.
Part of the reason for the proportional representation shift can be seen in the post-1990 election Parliament. Three parties made it in – National, Labour and NewLabour. NewLabour, otherwise known as Jim Anderton, got only one seat. The Greens got more nationwide votes than NewLabour but no seats.
In 1993, four parties made it in – National and Labour (level-pegging in votes) shared 95 seats, while the Alliance (NewLabour, Greens, Democrats and Mana Motuhake) and newly formed New Zealand First got two each, even though the Alliance and NZ First got a combined quarter of the nationwide vote.
In 1996, then, we went from having only a small number of viable parties to a veritable who-knows-what-will-happen? Ultimately, six parties made it in, and we saw the role that NZ First was going to play for the next quarter-century. How far we have come.
It is fascinating to me that the two most “extreme” parties in New Zealand politics at that time, the Association of Consumers and Taxpayers [Act] and the Alliance, both grew from the same wellspring – the fourth Labour government. And this also highlights what a challenge our politics became for political scientists steeped in first-past-the-post electoral systems.
For almost half a century, the concept of party identification had (and still has) a central role in understanding who we vote for. Party ID is a form of identity that reflects how a person typically thinks of themselves politically – as “a National voter” or a “Labour voter” or a “something-else voter” – and varies in terms of strength.
Party ID became important in the 1950s because it turned out to sometimes be a better indicator of who someone actually votes for than who they said they might vote for in opinion polls. And, if you do think of yourself as, say, a Labour voter but choose one year to vote for someone else, it’s statistically highly likely that next election you’ll return like a homing pigeon to Labour.
MMP wrecked this. Party identifications develop early in life and are generally more stable from election to election than who people actually vote for. How do you develop an identification with Act if they’ve only been around for two years before the election? Not to mention the NZ Superannuitants & Youth Action Party (only 1244 votes in 96). Or Animals First (3543 votes – we cared more about animals than pensioners or youth!)
So, this comes back to an ancient political psychology question – is voting an act of affirmation or choice? Of expressing who we are or a utilitarian vote for who will give us the most goodies? My initial crunching of pre-election data emphasises that sometimes we’re not voting for something, but against others. In this election, as in others post-MMP, NZ First is the poster child. Long an unusual combination of the disenfranchised older voters and those disaffected about here-and-now issues, we see the same pattern this year. Prospective NZ First voters are the most cynical and sceptical of all voters. They are particularly cynical about “woke” claims that Māori, women, and gender and sexual minorities experience discrimination.
Perhaps more interestingly, they are also the most ambivalent of voters when it concerns the party they say they’ll vote for. They do like NZ First but they feel less positive about NZ First than other voters are about their own parties (Act supporters, for example). The difference is that they really despise ALL the other parties.
