Election 2017

Inside the National-Labour chasm

However gloomy things were turning elsewhere, the Labour faithful earned themselves a stonking celebration in Nelson last night. The party soared ahead of National for the first time since 2005, leaping from 25 percent in 2014 to 41 percent.

As it happened, the party needed to replicate Nelson’s swing across the country. That it came up short is not for a want of effort across provincial New Zealand where Labour made significant gains - and not just at the expense of the hapless Greens.

In most cases, Labour’s vote outside the main urban centres returned to, even surpassing, 2008 tallies. In its birthplace of West Coast Tasman, for instance, the party went from 23 percent under Cunliffe to 37 percent yesterday. In the Wairarapa, Labour’s vote also surged by double digits, only about half of which can be attributed to the decline of the Green vote.

How then to grapple with Labour’s defeat - and, yes, I know there is no new government yet in place, and that coalition kabuki is notionally ongoing, but if you believe Labour can govern from here, I’ve got an airport tram to sell you.

Labour lost in Auckland, performing worst of all in seats with a high number of migrants.

Contrast New Lynn with Nelson, for example, to get the idea. Labour’s party vote actually declined by 500 votes between 2014 and 2017 in the West Auckland seat. This is despite the Greens tally dropping by 1700 - a factor, in New Lynn and across the city, that masked the severity of Labour’s problems.

In the nearby seat of Te Atatu, Labour’s party vote inched ahead but only by claiming roughly half the discarded Green pile.

The local MP, Phil Twyford, Labour’s campaign chair and architect of the Chinese surnames stunt, even managed to shave a few hundred off from his majority -- a rare but dubious achievement for an opposition frontbencher up against a minister in a third-term government.

In the absence of exit polling, we need to make some educated guesses about what explains the chasm between Labour’s relatively strong showing in places like Nelson, and the meagre gains in Auckland.

National’s strength among recent immigrants has emerged as a key advantage that, bedded down, could spell long term trouble for Labour. More than one in three New Lynn residents identifies as Asian, and about the same proportion of Te Atatu’s voters were born outside New Zealand.

If yesterday is any guide, National is building a beachhead around these vibrant and growing ethnic communities no less formidable than those Labour historically achieved with Pasifika and South Asian migrants.

Of course, National’s courting of Asian New Zealanders was aided in no small part by Labour’s unwise decision to make enemies of them.

If there was any doubt that Twyford’s surname gambit caused long-term damage to Labour’s brand among New Zealand’s fastest growing ethnic minority, surely last night’s results remove it. In seat after seat, the correlation between a high Asian population and a strong National Party showing is undeniable.

Among a slew of other challenges, Jacinda Ardern would be wise to treat outreach to these voters as a key order of business. The stakes are much too high to cede such a vital demographic to the Nats in perpetuity. A few weeks before the election, Ardern offered an equivocal non-apology apology about the surnames incident, but it clearly didn’t cut through. She needs to address this boldly and without delay.

There is good news for Labour, however. If there’s anyone within their ranks with the disarming personality and deft political skills to start undoing the damage wrought by hamfisted colleagues, it is Jacinda Ardern.

Offering Phil Twyford a well-deserved spell on the backbench would be an obvious, and welcome, place to start.