I find the detail of this Wikipedia page to be amazing. It was shared 2 months ago (thanks @SamC). The main things that have changed since then are a continued slight dip in Labour/National and a slight rise in Maori/ACT.
If you have the time and energy then remember to read the policy proposals by the parties that you don’t like as well as the parties that you do like.
I find it really interesting that National have a pretty consistent lead in the party polling, but Hipkins has a consistent lead in preferred PM
Kiwis like charismatic leaders. I’m not saying Hipkins has an awful lot of charisma, but Luxton appears to have a negative amount.
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People only see two potential governments, and are sick of the one we have, so a National led government seems like the only option.
But even the staunchest National supporters wish there was someone other than Luxon to lead the party.
National’s problem is that the most ambitious people to take over from Luxon now (after getting rid of everyone else) would be either a return to Collins which would fail, Willis or Bishop.
Willis has had a few gaffes, including the biggest policy to date on the tax shift and under the microscope it’d be interesting to see how she held up. Bishop is one of those people who if you like him, you like him, but if not you find him immensely unlikeable.
National has a real shortage of likeable candidates, dont they?
National have also had a lot of oxygen in the first half of this year with the various missteps from Labour. They’ve also got a crap ton of money that they’re throwing in blanketing the country in their billboards. They’ve probably only been up a week or so and im already sick of them all.
What will be interesting is seeing how Luxon/Willis perform in any face to face debates with their counterparts. I suspect Hipkins may thrash Luxon on likeability and actual ideas/communicating them. When Luxon’s being challenged on something he quite literally starts to turn red and can get noticeably short tempered.
Willis I think is debsoc trained so would probably fare better, but since becoming deputy a lot of the policy ideas she’s promoted seem a bit factually / implementably dubious so whether she actually has a deep understanding of things is probably in question and may not do so well if a debate was on issues/facts.
Probably a bad sign for Labour that I can’t off the top of my head think of who their deputy is at the moment - although that’s also a bad sign for National because the reason they are so heavy into Luxon/Willis is because of how unlikeable the former is!