thinking: relating- celebrating :-)

Ahh.. its that time of the year when everyone is hanging out for a Christmas break.

Summer in the Southern hemisphere is a grand time and even with the “not so positive” news about an extra ray of sunshine goes a long way.

After the elections in NZ it is time to get busy. Got plenty of deadlines on so thought I’d try a quick and simple poll to see what you all thought?

Feel free to write in your own answer or leave a comment as well.

This is a new service from PollDaddy. Each visitor gets only one vote.

We have used the flash version as it looks better.

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These results may change slightly but here are the almost definitive results in percentage terms and equivalent seats. The official table for this is over here and the seats should stay the same but may be small changes in the total numbers over the next day or so.

Another useful source to view is the 49th New Zealand Parliament on wikipedia which is being updated even as I write this.

The government looks like it will include National, Act and United Future at the very least (65 seats) with some potential to include a role for the Maori Party which has 5 seats of their own.

This is another historic moment as we have seen two giant political figures step out and one Halloween monster step back in.

Winston Peters NZ First didn’t make the 5% party threshold and he has conceded defeat and is out of Parliament after nearly 30 years.

Helen Clark after being PM for 9 years has announced she is stepping down from the Labour Party leadership after conceding defeat to John Key and the National Party. I hope Helen gets full credit for her work she has has been a great leader.

The Halloween monster is of course Roger Douglas of Act who gets a seat. All the cartoonists and satirists will be very pleased about that especially after his fire & brimstone speech earlier in the evening. It was like the time-warp from the Rocky Horror without the fun music. Rogernomics revisited is too hardline for most voters and is definitely not helpful for Key.

To be fair - Rogers demeanour may have had something to do with being asked for comments on Winston Peters stepping down by TV3. Peters entered Parliament in 1978 after defeating Roger’s brother Malcolm Douglas on a legal appeal /recount for the Hunua seat.

Consequently the smart move is to counterbalance Act (5 seats) with the Maori Party (5 seats) and continue to insist on a more centrist rather than right wing government.

John Key is sending all the right signals. It also appears that the convention in the National Party is for the leader to appoint Cabinet Ministers in a much more direct way.

If Key acts decisively to get rid of the dead wood in his front bench then he has a hope of repositioning the National Party as a more long term centre right option. To do this he needs to dump Lockwood Smith, Murray McCully, Nick Smith and Maurice Williamson at the very least.

The idealogues in Act - especially Douglas needs to be kept at bay as well. To help with this task there are a number of new National Party MP’s that have been elected. Tim Groser as Trade Minister will be a huge asset for example. Peseta Sam Lotu-Iiga in Maungakiekie also looks to be an excellent new MP.

Auckland Central has changed from being safe Labour to being a National Party seat. The Green Party vote very well there (15.4% of party votes) but even so the sitting Labour MP (Tizard) seemed complacent and arrogant to many former supporters.

Tizard is number 38 on the Labour list probably because she was expected to win the electorate vote. I don’t know the exact calculations but it seems like she is gone if the list counts down after the electorate seats and only 22 from the list make it in.

I did hear some sugestion that failing to get Tizard in was a failure of tactical voting in Auckland Central because too many Greens (3,695) voted for the Green candidate who could never win. There were plenty of grumbles from existing Labour Party voters unhappy with Tizard and her personal vote was clearly down.

In Mt Albert the Green Party got 10.4% of the Party vote including mine.  Overall though the Greens got around 6.5% of the party vote. It is less surprising that the Green Party polls much higher in the city seats but most polling had them at 8-9% so this is down but they do get at least 2 more seats in parliament.

In my view the Greens benefited from the social desirability bias especially in the city seats. It is more acceptable to say you are intending to vote Green even if you don’t follow through on the day.

NZ First had the flip-side of this effect. It was very uncool to say you intended to vote NZ First and so the polls had them at 2% but on the day they got 4.2% which meant that they under polled.

It is possible if more people had realised that NZ First actual support was at 4.2% then some voters might have helped get them over the 5% threshold. In essence NZ voters have to consider whether their preferred party will get more than 5% otherwise those party votes are wasted.

The other factor for the Greens would have been the credit crisis and perhaps more short term thinking along the lines of how can we afford the ideals of climate change and the like. Despite the good showing by the Greeens we now have the Act Party with increased influence and they are extremely cautious on climate change to say the least.

Perhaps the best result from this election is the elimination of uncertainty in the political system.

We have a result that is as definitive as it can be under MMP. Given the uncertain economic climate it is going to be tough making unpopular decisions in government but Key is making all the right noises.

As an ex money market trader this might even prove to be a bonus on the banking side of things.

If they can also get some support from the Maori Party then perhaps they will have a buffer for the road ahead and be able to keep some of the dead wood away from the rudder.

The NZ Election is November 8 which is tomorrow.  Labour needs the Greens and The Maori Party to make the numbers work and even then it probably won’t be enough. Official results from 7pm NZ time on 8th Nov.

Russell Brown has made a partial assessment of Labours very real progress in government over here.

Labour’s real achievements — net government debt reduced from 20 billion to two billion before the current crisis; unemployment down to levels many people didn’t think possible; a huge drop in the number of welfare beneficiaries, especially per capita; real wage growth; GDP growth that outstripped the OECD for years; a historic turnaround of trends in poverty; the repair of a public sector that was in dire straits by the end of the 90s; a serious attempt to address our savings problem via KiwiSaver and the Superannuation Fund; and a degree of stability that we now all take for granted — outweigh any counterfactual.

In 20 years’ time, those achievements will be regarded as prodigious and defining of an era. The fact that Helen Clark signed a painting for charity, or that her car once went really fast with a police escort on an open road; or the absurd mythology constructed around the departure of an under-performing police commissioner; none of these will be thought of as anything important.

It’s a measure of success that a string of key initiatives are now part of the landscape: National has had no choice but to accept and embrace Working for Families and the Super Fund if it wants to be in government. It has been obliged to promise that it will not sell Kiwibank or anything else“.

…I would say that telecommunications reform has been this government’s most impressive legislative achievement.”

Hopefully votes will remember the gains not the lack lustre campaigns from both of the main parties.

I’m personally hoping that the Greens take some votes off National.  At present it looks like the Greens get most of their recent support from former Labour party voters and hopefully they will get to 9-10% (might get them 11 or 12 seats.)  See election % seat calculator here.

Best guess is Nats coalition with 64 seats and Labour with 58. Even if the projected gap is less than 6 seats because the Greens and the Maori Party get a few more seats we are in for a new PM.

The sad thing about a National win is the absolute lack of talent on their front bench. The whole of the National campaign has focussed on John Key and away from the regular bumbles of the old hacks in that party. Lets hope John ignores the dead wood if he wins.

Key has presented a more centrist position than I believe most of his party would like. Odds are if they win the gloves come off and the real policies push more to the right. This is especially true now that the Act Party are in the National mix. (I note that Act are expected to get 3 seats - perhaps they only get 2 ?)

It is a very long shot for Labour unless there is a major last minute change. If the Maori Party wins more seats than expected then the numbers needed to form a coalition go up due to overhangs.

If I am correct the graph image below has been updated almost in real time up to7 Nov.

Fuller details are on the Wikipedia page by Mark Payne I’m picking this approach is better than any of the single polls.

Marks notes below.

“Refusals are generally excluded from the party vote percentages, while question wording and the treatment of “don’t know” responses and those not intending to vote may vary between survey firms.”

“Summary of poll results up to 7 November 2008 for all political parties that have exceeded the 5.0% MMP threshold. Lines give the mean estimated by a Loess smoother, with shaded grey areas showing the corresponding 95% confidence interval for the estimate. Figures to the right show the estimate from the smoothing line at the date of the most recent poll, with 95% confidence interval.”

Seats allocation will be close to this calculation from Curia

Update:4:23pm - new Roy Morgan Poll has gaps somewhat closed. NZ First support looks strangely high and the wildcard award goes to the Epsom seat where Labour Party voters are being encouraged to vote for National in order to beat Rodney. Although Rodney is probably safe. Ironically word is that Key who lives in Epsom electorate will be voting for Rodney although he is probably obliged to vote in his actual Helensville seat.

Of course the real question is given that we are over polled how many people will react based on the polls. A kind of Heisenberg effect on polls. The idea of a  social desirability bias or some other counter balancing factor may well influence voters on the actual day. MIght only be relevant for uncool causes like NZFirst.

For example the low showing of NZ First in the polls may actually help them get more votes in Tauranga where Winston could win at electorate level. In uncertain times we may even have voters who go for the status quo as that is more predicatable.

Perhaps the side effect most difficult to measure is the tradeoffs between Labour / Greens and National/Act.  Some voters might think that the Greens polling at a range of 10-11.5% is too high and must be taking too many votes off the main party so they might switch their vote at the last minute.

I’m personally hoping that we have a better idea of how MMP and coalitions work so that the Greens can poll as high as possible and use their influence where they see fit.

Hopefully by next week we will have a new Government elected and we can all get on with our lives.

Like many I have been keeping an eye on the Google chart below

2008 Election Results scroll down to the live graph/s

At the moment - late afternoon its lookimng very good for Obama with 207 247! 324!* out of the 270 EV’s that he needs. *In the space of 15mins the number jumped from 207 to 324 in favour of Obama. Looks like a done deal. Note: BY 5pm NZ time most of the US networks have called Obama as the new President.

I’m interested in what an Obama victory might mean for NZ and Australia ?

Obama and foreign policy generally?     (besides this list)

What do you think?

Looks like a night to watch the polls and hope the NZ elctions on the 8th will be half as interesting.

Version two of Swan Dive or Belly Flop? over at the NZX  Blog offers a glimmer of hope that at least some people are thinking about what is needed by way of ACTIONS rather than the pork barrel.

To quote Mark Weldon’s intro

“In terms of policy it has new ideas (e.g., lower corporate tax rate and the elimination of imputation, practical suggestions to improve public-private sector cohesion), significant refinements on previous ideas (e.g. refined proposals on provisional tax and depreciation), new analysis (e.g. on NZSF directing funds into the NZ economy in larger chunks, SOE performance, KiwiCo).

Some of these were entirely “externally” generated via feedback, especially on this blog. All benefited from such feedback. “

If you haven’t already go and download the updated discussion paper and have your input. The NZ Election is far too important to leave it to the politicians.  Have your say.

RE: the US Elections the History is Now discussion has a record number of comments and commenters so far. Media that enable online extensions are the big winners today.

One of the fascinating aspects is the role of micro blogs like twitter. Gives a clue to the various windshifts as you see them happen in a way that almost nothing else can.

I suspect many of us outside the US just can’t understand how a dinosaur and a clown were ever expected to go against perhaps the best Presidential candidate since the 60’s.

Even Thomas Friedman has noted that a vote for the Repulicans this time would have been rewarding incompetence.  He goes on to make quite a few other claims in this opinion piece from the NY Times.

‘In this election, the American public rejected these narrow notions of the common good,” argued Sandel. “Most people now accept that unfettered markets don’t serve the public good.

Markets generate abundance, but they can also breed excessive insecurity and risk. Even before the financial meltdown, we’ve seen a massive shift of risk from corporations to the individual.

Obama will have to reinvent government as an instrument of the common good — to regulate markets, to protect citizens against the risks of unemployment and ill health, to invest in energy independence.”

But a new politics of the common good can’t be only about government and markets. “It must also be about a new patriotism — about what it means to be a citizen,” said Sandel. “This is the deepest chord Obama’s campaign evoked.

The biggest applause line in his stump speech was the one that said every American will have a chance to go to college provided he or she performs a period of national service — in the military, in the Peace Corps or in the community.

Obama’s campaign tapped a dormant civic idealism, a hunger among Americans to serve a cause greater than themselves, a yearning to be citizens again.”

Roll on the 8th of November for NZ elections.

In case you missed the Obama acceptance speech - here it is (18m)

Change has come to America.. and the world.

Footnote: There was an interview with Player should popup George McGovern on Radio NZ this morning speaking with Kathryn Ryan.

Long-time Democratic Party stalwart who lost the 1972 presidential election to Richard Nixon. (duration: 15m43s)

McGovern mentions that Obama has the 3 I’s - Intelligence, Integrity and Imagination and compares him to Lincoln. They also talk about the huge sense of history and challenges that are being faced now.

I for one feel better about having a visionary in the White House. I believe he doesn’t actually get there till January but the next few months will hopefully see some detailed plans and the begining of some of those promises being realised.

Back in early 2007 a book called 8 Tribes was published. It was described then by the publishers as a

“snapshot of contemporary New Zealand (that) explores our unspoken class system and the hidden social boundaries that separate us from each other”

In January 2007 I wrote about this concept of social and cultural archetypes in a post called Tribal Demographics which might be helpful background.

With an election due on November 8th for New Zealand - my best guess is that the extended metaphors around the 8 Tribes idea will give a better indication of voting preferences and eventual outcomes than most of the poll indications to date.

And over here for more polls. Or for a graph go here. Why 123 seats? - overhang potential.

BTW readers from anywhere would find local equivalents of these tribes. The labels would be different but much broader than the -too generic to be useful- urban city vs rural country dichotomies that might have worked 50 years ago.

Note: to US based readers - Flight of the Conchords are (almost certainly) members of the Cuba St tribe

As I recall part of the difficulty in the last election was that the National Party leader at the time Don Brash acted and spoke as if he was always talking to the North Shore and Remuera tribes.

Unfortunately for him the election was won not by a single political party but by a coalition of those mostly affiliated to the Grey Lynn tribe.

Consequently I would expect conversations among members of the Grey Lynn tribe to offer some interesting insights into voting intentions.

• The questions are - What Can We Learn from 8Tribes thinking for the Election?

And -

• Have our politicians learned anything about communicating with the 8 or 9 different tribal groups described in the book?

As a member of the Grey Lynn tribe myself I do think that Labour is missing an opportunity to speak fluently to each tribe and losing votes to the Greens and the Maori Party as a result.

In fact the PM - Helen Clark is apparently trying to convince us that tactical voting for the Greens is a bad idea. I note that those directions came from a meeting mostly attended by members of the Papatoetoe tribe who might take such guidance on-board.

I’d guess that members of the Grey Lynn tribe will still vote Green and probably in greater numbers which is an example of how the same message can have two very different results. Even worse it is seen as patently self serving and wrong by many who would usually vote Labour.

Language is full of dialects and meaningful quirks. “Divided by a common language” was a description I believe George Bernard Shaw used to describe UK and US cultures at one very obvious level.

On a macro level we often see the use of coded words and expressions which are meant to cross reference and signal particular meanings best understood by the party faithful and often described as dog-whistle politics.

However such “whistling” is often described as being a negative thing whereas a wider understanding of 8 Tribes social meaning and context would be a more positive approach, in my view.

Perhaps some kind of misguided dog whistling is why 3 very senior National party candidates have made such obvious political blunders; Lockwood Smith and Maurice Williamson in particular.

On the other hand - despite Smith and Williamson both having been Cabinet Ministers they do tend to come across as prize dicks /dorks on occasion.

I would note that politicians have long been experts at working and reading crowds and I’d say their comments were meant for those crowds but not for the wider media.

When their partly intuitive and highly tuned crowd decoders kick in they can often be brilliant in that exact context; but the when the sound bites get broadcast we are often left scratching our heads to explain why they spoke in a particular way.

I therefore find it hard to believe Smith (MP for 24! years) and Williamson (MP for 21 years!) are idiots and make silly mistakes on the election trail. However, others are not so sure.

If John Key is hoping to become leader he needs to actively demote both of them for their foolish comments - unless of course they are just saying in public what the National Party believes in private.

Besides the 8 Tribes idea there is a wealth of research on cultural imprinting that all politicians (and marketers) should be aware of. For example - Rapaille’s cultural anthropology work deserves much more of a review than I have time for below.

Dr. Clotaire Rapaille wrote* in his ChangeThis Manifesto Know the Codes in July 2006 (17 pages Creative Commons - free to download) about how to discover and understand similar social territory. (And in published book The Culture Code )

“The Culture Code is the unconscious meaning we apply to any given thing—a car, a type of food, a relationship, even a country—via the culture in which we are raised.”

* A fascinating aside on Rapailles Influences from the well known - De Tocqueville, Freud and Jung to the lesser known Bettelheim, Laborit, Lorenz and Ruth Benedict.

Read more about Rapailles Influences here.

In July ‘07 there was a feature article on the 8 Tribes by Gena Tuffery over at Idealog magazine called Tribal Counsel. As Gena noted then:-

“Reaction to this new form of social shorthand was strong and varied—which perhaps proves the book’s argument. Although the eight suburbs used to identify the tribes aren’t indicative of literal location, some Kiwis I canvassed feel penned in by the geographical descriptors.

They protest that to be labelled a representative of the ‘achieving’ North Shore, ‘intellectual’ Grey Lynn, ‘staunch’ Balclutha, ‘entitled’ Remuera, ‘free-spirited’ Raglan, ‘unpretentious’ Papatoetoe or ‘community-minded’ Otara is no more character-revealing than, say, being dubbed Dopey or Sneezy.”

Gena spoke with Chris Brown of Sputnik and Jill Caldwell of  Windshift who co-authored that book. Caldwell* is still using the insights and approach gained from the 8 Tribes research to look at trends and group behavious such as July 08 Newsletter : The Tribes as Consumers Jill writes (newsletter)

“At higher income levels, we found an urban intellectual Grey Lynn tribe who, though having no strong economic need to do so, have embraced a plain vanilla Papatoetoe / Balclutha frugality as a kind of moral imperative - though with a dispensation for overseas travel to places of culture.

The cut-backs the Grey Lynn tribe make are designed to save money AND resources – saving power at home for example, reading the labels, watching the consumer shows on TV for tips, taking the bus to work.

There’s concern for how other people are coping and the ever-present Grey Lynn guilt at their own relative fortune.”

Ongoing research project for 8 Tribes

Back when I first looked at the 8 Tribes concept  there was quite an (offline) side debate about how this didn’t really reference the Polynesian dimension in New Zealand on a more tacit basis. The idea that race, culture and language are independent has been well accepted for many years now. (Franz Boas)

The cultural bias of the observers needs to be taken into account and the sketch of the Otara tribe doesn’t really capture what I believe is happening within NZ culture.

I’m not sure that the 8 Tribes book successfully addressed the dimensions of race very well but I’ll raise that for your comments and inputs. (Go here for comments including 2 from the original authors.)

What makes the upcoming election very significant is a new found sense of wider Nationhood including acknowledgment of Tikanga Maori in the wider population. We have seen nothing less than a Maori led cultural renaissance only hinted at by reflecting on how the tribal archetypes might combine.

For example the confluence of Cuba St and Grey Lynn has created a wider market for cultural production and appreciation. This was noted in a chapter on trends at the end of the book but perhaps it has accelerated since then.

The rise of the Maori Party and a wealth of articulate urban Maori / Polynesian leaders across a wide spectrum means that the Labour Party will just have to hope they can negotiate successfully with the Maori Party.  I’m thinking more Tiki Taane or Selina Tusitala Marsh* than John Tamihere here.

Although the Maori Party should dump the nut jobs like Turia who is clearly sucking up to the National Party.

No one really wants a rerun of Winston Peters cynical behaviour in pointless coalitions. He should get zero votes but inexplicably some people still like him. The Maori Party should have learned from that.

* David Eggleton wrote “Poems, as the zen koan has it, can communicate before they are understood.” (Unlike most politicians?)

It’s a stretch but perhaps the 8 Tribes analogy is best understood as a diffuse form of poetry in motion?

I have just been referred to a very funny poem by Selina Tusitala Marsh that communicates more succinctly to the electorate than anything coming out of the major parties. (Will see if we can get a copy and/or link.)

Update: Here is that poem by  Dr Selina Tusitala Marsh, as a response to the comments made my Lockwood Smith last week. It was posted on the AEN (Aotearoa Ethnic Network) Special thanks to a clued up reader.

‘Mr Locksmith loses the key on the eve of the big party’

Herow!
My name Fong or Wong…you chuse
my Engrand not bery  gud
but my hands dey quick
dey smal an fast
can sew your suit
can pick your fruit
can do many quick, fast fing
oh!  I gotta go
I gotta show my kiwi-mate
how to use da toilet
he from Samoa
he only got da flushing one

Mr Locksmith, he show me
how to dig da big hole
out back by da peach tree
we go see him now
he show us how to
squat and drop

Selina Tusitala Marsh

The emergence of the Ponsonby -proto tribe was noted as a trend that I would say has accelerated and it should not be ignored by the politicians. It should be no surprise that the Green Party has growing support among all tribes but especially Grey Lynn.

The political parties that communicate better with these 8 or 9 tribes will be the ones that do best in the upcoming election. Voters are much smarter than the sound bite signals we mostly hear.

Perhaps the best thing about the 8 Tribes concept is that it gives us a vocabulary  for discussing these ideas and articulating new ones. It also helps us uncover our deeper intentions and motivations and to decode our own cultural patterns and conditioning.

Thanks to Chris Brown and Jill Caldwell for the book which you can still buy. I should also make it clear that the analysis and opinions here are mine. Feel free to comment.

FYI - I did the 8 Tribes Diagnostic test in Jan 07 with the following results. Mostly Grey Lynn with Cuba St almost as high.

If you enjoyed reading this you may also like these earlier posts..

• Real change means more than a Heisenberg T-Shirt | 06
  
• Tribal Demographics | 07