Dirty Politics & Labour

Now with the dirty politics scandal put to bed for the mean while, it’s worth thinking about the damage done to both campaigns from the revelations contained within Hager’s new book.

There’s a perception amongst the public that of course this must be great news for Labour. Surely voters would decide not to vote for National and instead vote Labour, well in fact it’s possible the book has actually done more damage to Labour’s campaign than Nationals.

The truth is winning elections isn’t about winning the middle ground and appealing to the most New Zealanders anymore. No, in an age of low voter turn out simply appealing to ones own base is all that is required. A strong and ideologically true labour party or a true blue National party can win the day. You no longer have to be centrist. The ‘Third way’ is much like so called “impartial journalism”, these ideas are dead and buried. Welcome to a new age of clear devision in politics.

So how do the two main parties play with voter turn out in order to affect an election. Well there’s two very different strategies that, almost universally, parties on the left and right apply.

Parties on the left including of course The New Zealand Labour Party focus a lot of their energy on actually encouraging people to vote and supporting those that otherwise wouldn’t. Contrast this with political forces on the right that use negative politics techniques designed to put people off voting. They play on the fact that when people think politics is dirty, rather than change their vote, they just simply won’t bother voting. However the reason why this is beneficial to the right is in the fact that certain groups of people are more likely to be put off voting than others. Those groups are Independence (which effect both parties fairly evenly) and the already disenfranchised and disaffected. It’s that second group that hits the left vote hardest. So basically negative politics is an effective burt force and blunt tool that inflicts more damage to the left than it does to the perpetrator themselves.

Of course those on the left don’t have a strategy of getting people to vote because they want to run a non-parasan public service. They know that the same groups of disenfranchised and disaffected are more likely to vote for them. In fact the ways of identifying who are most likely to be their supporter are more sophisticated than most would ever expect: Lessons learnt from the 2008 and 2012 Obama campaigns. It’s that targeting of voters and the information held that can make a big difference. However, I believe there’s something altogether more ethical in getting people out to vote and have their say even if you know it’s because they agree with you than trying to throw mud and disengage people in democracy.