I was browsing a thread about New Zealand politics when I found a discussion about if Geoffrey Palmer had led Labour into the 1990 NZ election. One possible outcome of it would be an even more catastrophic loss than IOTL. Would that happen or not? What would be the effects?
Looking into this I decided to experiment. Let's see what happens if Labour loses every seat they won in 1990 with a 2,000 vote majority or less.
National: 85
Labour: 10
New Labour: 1
Mana Motuhake:1
MPs such as Helen Clark, David Caygill, Michael Cullen and Peter Dunne all lose.
Let's up the swing even more and have Labour lose all seats they won by less than 3,250 votes. Labour loses 2 more seats, but one of them is that of Mike Moore.
In either scenario New Zealand politics is dramatically altered, making OTL 1990 look like a close election compared to this historic curbstomping.
OTOH, the conventional wisdom does hold that the removal did little for Labour. And also 1990 was already the biggest landslide in NZ history. Besides, in both 1990 and 1993 Moore was liked more than Bolger and if it had been Moore vs Bolger rather than Labour vs National Moore would have won comfortbaly. So perhaps it doesn't matter, at least in NZ politics, who is the party leader but rather the platform and conditions they run under.
Is a much bigger National landslide plausible? If it did happen how would New Zealand politics be altered? It seems like an interesting PoD, so what would be the effects? What if?
- Keep Geoffrey Palmer as Labour leader in 1990. Unlike Mike Moore, who in six weeks got a fair amount of goodwill, and narrowed the poll gap from 40 points to 10ish, Palmer was unpopular, terrible at communication, and still keen to push ahead with Rogernomics (c.f. the Telecom Privatisation, the greatest of them all). That election goes from a crushing Labour defeat to a Canadian 1993-style wipeout. National wins 85+ seats, Labour is reduced to three of the four Maori seats, plus three others (David Lange in Mangere, Richard Prebble in Auckland Central, and Larry Sutherland in Avon). The rest go to Jim Anderton's New Labour. Anderton considers himself the "real" Opposition (and on these numbers, might actually be it). With Labour still engrossed in suicidal infighting (Prebble!), New Labour emerges as the clear party of the Left. Sooner or later, they are destined for Government.
While I can't find the relevant data online, I have browsed this:
http://www.press.auckland.ac.nz/en/...the-Fate-of-the-Fourth-Labour-Government.html
The polling data had the gap narrowing significantly after Palmer was replaced by Moore. What the conventional wisdom overlooks is that OTL 1990 was far from a "worse case scenario" for Labour. Of the 29 survivors, a large number had slender majorities, and another uniform swing of, say, 4% on top of what actually happened would have taken out nearly all of them (including Helen Clark, Michael Cullen, and Moore himself. The likes of Steve Maharey and Pete Hodgson would have never made it into Parliament). Moore's message in OTL was "let's pretend Rogernomics never happened, and start again." Palmer's message would be a dry technocratic justification of deeply, deeply unpopular policies.
Looking into this I decided to experiment. Let's see what happens if Labour loses every seat they won in 1990 with a 2,000 vote majority or less.
National: 85
Labour: 10
New Labour: 1
Mana Motuhake:1
MPs such as Helen Clark, David Caygill, Michael Cullen and Peter Dunne all lose.
Let's up the swing even more and have Labour lose all seats they won by less than 3,250 votes. Labour loses 2 more seats, but one of them is that of Mike Moore.
In either scenario New Zealand politics is dramatically altered, making OTL 1990 look like a close election compared to this historic curbstomping.
OTOH, the conventional wisdom does hold that the removal did little for Labour. And also 1990 was already the biggest landslide in NZ history. Besides, in both 1990 and 1993 Moore was liked more than Bolger and if it had been Moore vs Bolger rather than Labour vs National Moore would have won comfortbaly. So perhaps it doesn't matter, at least in NZ politics, who is the party leader but rather the platform and conditions they run under.
Is a much bigger National landslide plausible? If it did happen how would New Zealand politics be altered? It seems like an interesting PoD, so what would be the effects? What if?
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