It’s time to return to my thirteen predictions for 2023. The time has come to assess what I got bang on, what I was dead wrong about, and where things are a little hazier. Let’s get into it!
Labour will suffer a 2014-style collapse.
Much like with my electorate predictions, we start on a high: I was just plain right. Labour voters streamed away in all directions. The centre bled away to National and NZ First, most out of a sense of betrayal and a few to tactically moderate the new government. The left fled to the Greens and TPM. I will note that Labour’s MPs remained much more disciplined than I expected them to, aside from a couple of rogues like Greg O’Connor, and the change in leadership forestalled any rush of policy priorities. However, “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.” So true bestie. I earn one full point, kicking off this review at 1/1.
The Greens will panic and chuck Shaw for Swarbrick, but there won’t be a resultant surge in voters.
Also like my electorate predictions, we quickly veer off the road. Nope! Wrong in every sense. The Greens never really panicked throughout 2023; as Labour’s fortunes declined, theirs picked up steadily. Their leaders performed really well, better than I’ve ever seen them do, and Swarbrick wasn’t really front and centre. I was silly to assume the Greens would be hovering around 5% in polls at a time when Labour would also be ailing. The party has made this swap in 2024, but even then this has come from a place not of panic but of promise. 1/2.
(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.
This is also, obviously, wrong. The leadership contest shows that there is not another contender on the cards yet, and indeed in quick succession several potential options for the future have been lost. 1/3.
A prominent politician will come out of the closet.
This was a real wild card guess and so it’s no surprise that it didn’t come true. In fairness, Stuff’s Full Disclosure series chatted to political or at least adjacent figures like Grant Robertson and Ryan Bridge, but they had all already been out well before 2023. We’ve probably reached a stage norms-wise where it’s unlikely many politicians will go out of their way not to be open about their sexuality until later in their careers. Either it’ll be common knowledge, or something nobody knows because nobody’s asked and they’d volunteer the information if anybody inquired. 1/4.
The minor party landscape will remain largely unchanged.
I was right that the parties would largely stick to how they’d been behaving, but their fortunes changed a lot nonetheless. The Greens grew considerably even if there was little to note otherwise about them. TPM exploded back onto the scene, and NZ First also mounted a high profile return. ACT is perhaps the closest to where they started off 2023, but the election still represented a marked decline in their fortunes. 1/5.
Labour MP Sarah Pallett will win reelection in Ilam.
Hahaha no. This was always a rogue guess, and my perceptions shifted over the course of the year: I gradually travelled from a major Raf doubter to a genuine booster, while concluding either way that National were on track to reclaim the seat. I’m happy that I didn’t run massive cope or anything misleading; I'm confident I laid out the facts and the optimistic case of how MANJIMANIA!!! could set Ilam alight while being prepared for the likely outcome. In the end, National’s Hamish Campbell got over twice the votes that Pallett did. It’s looking pretty grim for my predictions at 1/6…
Te Pāti Māori will underperform expectations.
Ah, merde.
“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.”
I was right that the party is good at attracting media attention - this worked well in their favour! My estimation was that income/education splits would leave them worse off in a cost of living election. Instead, a wave of young people incensed by racism and inaction for their communities turned out across the country for the party’s candidates, even as many of them still party voted Labour. My worst miss. 1/7.
The “rural-urban divide” (as overblown of a narrative as it is) will rear its head again.
Nah, this just wasn’t really on the agenda. There was already enough going on. You can sort of hazily gesture at Labour's general trend towards centralisation, and particularly Three Waters, emanating from Wellington and sitting most uncomfortably in rural regions…but the rural-urban framing just wasn’t there. After all, so many of the seats that changed hands were in Auckland and Hamilton, and even in Christchurch there was a big shift to the right, marching the same direction as rural voters. 1/8.
NZFirst will also underperform expectations.
Hhhhhhhhh he always pulls it off somehow. Winston was, critically, able to a) pool the far-right vote - not that I think this was much of a factor in the result, but he’s certainly done his fair share of pandering to them - and b) win over a lot of ACT’s hard-right vote with surprising speed. He then merged them with the usual appeal you’d expect of being the canny centrist negotiator who’ll protect your super. There’s nothing to be said for the rest of the party; yet again, this was all the Winston show. 1/9. Is there any hope for my predictions?
Wayne Brown will run his mayoralty into the ground, winning comparisons to dysfunctional administrations like the White House.
I get a lot of things wrong, but when I get them right, I get them so damn right. YIMBYs may have started warming up to him in 2024, but within six weeks of 2023 starting, Wayne Brown was the most hated man in the country, our own Sleepy Joe. Watching that press conference live was a sight to behold, a final coda to the era of hanging on public leadership in a crisis - and the contrast with Jacinda could not be more evident. 2/10.
Labour will promise free dental care.
I was correct that Labour would go here, in a doomed final bid to convince voters the state doing more was better than what National and ACT were offering. While Labour obviously caveated the promise a lot, I don’t think it’s reasonable to have expected me to predict every caveat. Free dental has been tossed around as an idea for a long, long time; free dental specifically targeted at under-30s with phase ins in specific years has not. In the interests of fairness, I’m awarding myself a full point: 3/10.
(10a??) National will riposte with abolishing GST on fruit and vegetables.
Well, uhhh, a major party did propose this! I just picked the wrong one to do it. I do appreciate that National didn’t stoop to trying to match such an obviously daft policy. (There’s also the fact that TPM promised GST off of all kai, which never really factored into the political conversation.) I’m giving myself half a point for picking that this policy would be on the table: 3.5/10.
Bonus Prediction!!!: A politician will go viral for doing a TikTok dance. (Or what they think qualifies as such.)
Of all parties, you wouldn’t have picked that it would be the NZ First TikTokers popping off, but here we are. Sadly, they weren’t dancing, just delivering stunning vocal performances against interesting backdrops, and so I have to give myself just half a point, leaving me at a total of 4/13. Yikes! It’s a tough business, and I’ve tried to make sure in my 2024 predictions that some of these are a little bit more bankable. The most important thing, though, is that we had some fun!
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