Here’s my thirteen predictions for 2023! (Yes, I said there’d be twelve, but #underpromise-and-overdeliver!) Note that I don’t think that these are all guaranteed to happen - I just want to toss some possibilities out there and start the conversation.
1. Labour will suffer a 2014-style collapse.
Labour lacks a clear advantage to base its case upon or many good outcomes to point to. Current trends continue into the election as voters outside Labour’s diehard base desperately search for any other party to rectify their disappointment. The growing pressure means that more and more MPs want to jump ship and are already losing hope. They decline to put their best effort into the campaign and attempt to rush through their policy priorities early in the year rather than dropping them. Even in the unlikely event that the party leadership looks for a Hail Mary like Ardern in 2017 or Muller in 2020, they are likely to just begin a Nationalesque downfall.
Speaking of which, here’s a detailed narrative of a prediction:
2. The Greens will panic and chuck Shaw for Swarbrick, but there won’t be a resultant surge in voters.
The Greens are afraid of falling below the MMP threshold, particularly because they usually underperform polls. That, combined with dissatisfaction amongst more radical members, pushes them to try oust him. Swarbrick nobly takes on the Ardern mantle and steps in to save the day, but she can’t actually attract many new voters. The public image of the party was already very left-wing and youth-oriented, except amongst some on the far-left for whom Swarbrick will be another centrist coat of paint. She won’t be able to get individual cut-through because the media will paint her as the personification of a left-wing revolt against reasonable centrist Shaw. The panic will thus continue until the party scrapes in fine on election night regardless.
3. (2a?) My only contradictory prediction in here, though to be fair you can sub this in for Swarbrick’s role in the above prediction: the Greens will boot James Shaw, then decide to replace him with somebody who is not Chlöe Swarbrick.
The Green membership are far more familiar with their MPs than the wider public and media, who know Swarbrick best for her high profile in her past couple campaigns and on drug law reform. Some of Swarbrick’s colleagues will speak more to the left-wing priorities, the interest groups, and the general community of the Greens than Swarbrick. Between drug law reform and Auckland Central, she necessarily must spend more time focusing on the wider public. Accordingly, the membership will surprise the public with a relative unknown - likely an MP of colour like Teanau Tuiono or Elizabeth Kerekere.
4. A prominent politician will come out of the closet.
Social stigma and threats of career suicide for being a rainbow person in locations like urban Wellington have decreased immeasurably in recent decades. Luxon is trying to tone down any perceived influence of conservative Christianity on National and focus on the cost of living crisis. Between that approach and Kindness Labour, nobody wants to take even an implied swing at identity, as everybody from Grant Robertson’s critics to Trevor Mallard were once wont to do.
This looks like a gruelling year that will knock many MPs (predominantly centre-left liberals likelier to be LGBT+ or comfortable saying so) out of Parliament, coming on the heels of years of COVID suppressing lives and leaving people stuck with themselves to figure out who they are. A lot of MPs will be looking at their careers and trying to figure out what they have to say about themselves in their last months. Statistically, at least one is likely to contemplate hitting the big red (rainbow?) button that is publicly coming out.
5. The minor party landscape will remain largely unchanged.
The Greens and ACT have locked in solid voter bases. They are disinterested in plays to expand beyond their current good fortune, particularly for fear of returning to their past states (2020 for the Greens, pre-2020 for ACT). The Greens are relieved to defy the historical curse on minor coalition partners and focused on their own kaupapa and internal community over persuading swing voters. ACT are still refining and celebrating the art of having multiple MPs. See my response to Stuff Prediction 6 for parties outside of Parliament, and 8 for the exception, Te Pāti Māori.
6. Labour MP Sarah Pallett will win reelection in blue Christchurch electorate Ilam.
Her victory last time against veteran campaigner Gerry Brownlee demonstrates her ability to run a good campaign. She has done nothing to affront voters since. The centre-right, change vote will split between Raf Manji’s spearhead for TOP, and whichever National candidate emerges from their substandard candidate selection process. That leaves her able to shore up centrist suburban voter blocs like women and parents, who are concerned about the gamble that the other two pose and hold sensitivities that National and TOP priorities do not address.
7. Te Pāti Māori will underperform expectations.
I still believe that they will profit off of discontent with Labour, but they will end up with 2-3 MPs instead of 4-5. Detailed voter data indicates their modern iteration is roughly equivalent to my criticism of Labour and the Greens: namely, that they are disproportionately supported and staffed by highly-educated and high-income people like me. That suggests they might be slightly overrepresented in polls like the Greens. More than that, the Māori Party are attractive for the media to build narratives around, especially with Waititi and Ngarewa-Packer focusing on attention-grabbing performances in Parliament).
Meanwhile, while I’m certainly not a good analyst for politics in Māoridom, Occam’s Razor suggests that, like any other voters, most low- and middle-income Māori voters care about the economy: their job, the cost of goods, any new opportunities. The party will struggle to connect with low- and middle-income Māori voters in the cost of living crisis, with their focus on issues like constitutional reform and Te Tiriti. They are oriented in the wrong direction for an election where their major breakthroughs will probably be stoushes with ACT about racism rather than through pioneering policies that will relieve the crisis in the short term.
8. The “urban-rural divide” (as overblown of a narrative as it is) will rear its head again.
Issues like Three Waters have been interpreted more through the lens of local versus central government, leaving arguments about ute taxes out of the frame for a while now. Dissatisfied farmers will make their voices heard, less through increasingly hard-right movements like Groundswell and more with spontaneous disgruntlement like the Morrinsville protest of 2017.
9. NZFirst will also underperform expectations.
As with Trump in the US, media figures frustrated to have been wrong when they counted him out the last eight times will assume that Winston’s ninth life will last forever. With ACT in such a strong spot, even as NZFirst leans to the right away from low-income regional voters, and with the voter pool for conspiracy parties being so small, the narrative and some rogue polls around NZFirst overstate who is actually left to vote for NZFirst. More than any other party, NZFirst’s voters die off. It has been six years since NZFirst phoned in a powerful electoral performance, six years of a rapidly changing world. Those are more than enough to significantly weaken their structural advantages and dim memories of the bygone past that Peters yearns for.
10. Wayne Brown will run his mayoralty into the ground, winning comparisons to dysfunctional administrations like the Trump White House.
Municipalities like Christchurch have elected candidates like Phil Mauger who are decidedly centre-right and for change from the status quo. They have also shown respect for their opposition and the wider process, genuinely intend to do well by their constituents, and have engaged with the nitty-gritty nuts-and-bolts of the issues people need fixed. Their success is hardly guaranteed and their stances aren’t all in the right place, but the basic foundation for public policy is there.
Wayne Brown possesses none of that. He has combined a suspect past track record with an aged inability to comprehend the present day landscape. He synthesises basic and blatant inexperience, ignorance and silliness with a defensive, sour contempt for anybody who points out how much of a honking clown car he is. He will make no headway on the major issues Auckland faces. He will invite showdowns with everybody from central government over Three Waters to Auckland Transport over public transit. He will be ensnared within expectations that no group will bother to try to work with him anymore. Think of him like 2017-2020 NZFirst, but without the power to pull levers of government. He will be gone in a term. By the end of 2023, all Auckland will agree.
11. Labour will promise free dental care.
The 21st century Labour Party playbook says that the way out of a losing election is a big, clear promise - interest-free loans, Kiwibuild, free uni. All of those are now dead-end corridors, and if they’re looking for a new gimme, few undeniably tantalising promises loom as large as this one, circling around the edge of politics and baring shiny-white pearlies every so often. At a stroke, Labour can cut through fears about delivery, and entice voters worrying about their bills who can cross this one off the list - if they tick Labour twice.
12. (10a? 11b??) National will riposte with abolishing GST on fruit and vegetables.
I only get partial credit for this if National do this “unilaterally” without Labour having moved first, of course. (Do I get most of the credit if they both promise to do this?) Anyway, Luxon’s National is largely helmed by liberals and happy to park their tanks on centrist ground if it will get them over the line. GST off of fruit and vegetables is an attractive way to address the cost of living, and a perfect opportunity for Chris Luxon to name the price of avocados and crudités green beans and carrots to prove he’s so in touch, he’s through the uprights.
The policy speaks to implicit right-wing values about rewarding the right way to live and explicit policies around incentivising healthier choices over Cheezels and Coke. (Give me extra points if ACT object on the grounds that this is “picking winners and losers in the economy” or a “market distortion” when what we need is to simplify taxation.) Finally, this is the perfect political response. Labour want to pay for your child’s fillings? National will make sure that their teeth don’t degrade in the first place.
13. Bonus Prediction!!!: A politician will go viral for doing a TikTok dance. (Or what they think qualifies as such.)
You know it’s coming sooner or later. Jacinda Ardern winning international praise for her deft sashay. David Seymour reprising his Dancing With The Stars days. James Shaw post-AGM desperately flossing to regain his party’s nomination. Somebody, somewhere, will buckle to the demands of the entertainment era. The ominous march of TikTok will claim us all, in the end.
Enjoy comparing these against your own expectations for the year ahead!
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