Across the Tasman, anger has propelled Pauline Hanson’s One Nation from a fringe outfit to the most popular party, on 31 percent in a recent poll, ahead of both Labor and the Coalition. Yet Australia’s preferential voting, which redistributes losing candidates’ votes, could still return a Labor government.
By Dr Oliver Hartwich
The same anger is loose across the democratic world, the product of a decade of crises that squeezed household budgets and loosened party loyalties. What it does to each country’s politics depends partly on how votes are counted.
In Britain, Nigel Farage’s Reform leads on 27 percent, while the Conservatives and Labour, who once took turns in power, now muster little more than a third between them. First-past-the-post rewards whoever leads in each seat, so a quarter of the vote would hand Reform far more than a quarter of parliamentary seats and possibly a majority.
In Germany, the Alternative for Germany (AfD) leads on 29 percent, ahead of the Christian Democrats and Social Democrats, the rough equivalents of our National and Labour. Proportional representation gives the AfD a proportion of seats that matches its vote, but the other parties refuse to govern with it.
New Zealand uses Germany’s system, yet our politics looks much calmer than elsewhere. National and Labour are weak by past standards but still hold more than sixty percent combined.
New Zealand has faced nothing like the mass, often uncontrolled immigration fuelling anger abroad.
Part of the reason is a built-in valve for disquiet.
New Zealand First has long played the role of shock absorber, drawing off disquiet and turning it into a moderate parliamentary force able to govern with both sides.
There is no guarantee it will always work like that. Britain, Germany and Australia each had a party order that looked permanent.
Public anger is genuine, the product of years of watching the cost-of-living climb and of rapid social change. What the populists offer in return, closing borders and intervening in markets, would fix none of it.
Political stability rests on something no electoral system can supply. It needs a government that delivers price stability and the prospect of a better life, and voters who see it doing so. That is what a decade of inflation and stagnant incomes stripped from voters elsewhere.
Democratic politics must deliver on these bread-and-butter issues. If it does not, voters will look for answers elsewhere, and no electoral system or shock absorber will hold them here.
Source: The New Zealand Initiative
Author: Dr Oliver Hartwich
The New Zealand Initiative Insights Newsletter
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Oliver is the Executive Director of The New Zealand Initiative. Before joining the Initiative, he was a Research Fellow at the Centre for Independent Studies in Sydney, the Chief Economist at the Policy Exchange in London, and an advisor in the UK House of Lords.
Oliver holds a master's degree in economics and business administration and a PhD in Law from Bochum University in Germany.
Oliver is available to comment on all of the Initiative’s research areas.