One of the line of questions asked of a poll of 1,000 voters was designed to determine the factors that contribute to their views on policy. It went like this;
- Respondents were presented with three electoral options and asked to choose their preferred option (or none of these.)
- Each option includes a party banner, a policy, a statement of ‘where the money comes from’ and an underlying description of the tax system being promoted: how fair is it?
- Respondents do the exercise 10 times – each time being presented with different alternatives. They might be a diehard National supporter, but even then, some policies or tax schemes may prove untenable. In other words tax may trump party allegiance.
By studying the collective choices made, 10,000 of them, we can determine the decision architecture of the voter – and also compare the attractiveness of the competing policies, parties, etc. This is how it turned out:
This is where it gets depressing. When the average voter is confronted by a question on policy their primary question is, “is this policy fair on me?”. That contributes 39% to their decision. Now of course, this is not a question on whether it’s fair on the people of New Zealand but rather – is it fair on me. Do I consider that it’s fair that I should have to pay rather than benefit from this policy? And you can imagine it really means, do I benefit or not. How depressing is that, that when it comes down to it, self-interest predominates – and we wonder why our politicians focus mainly on delivering us candy, and never tell us which taxpayers specifically will be paying for it. Are we really such children?
Next – contributing 31% to our decision – we ask ourselves who is promoting this policy. The importance of this factor reflects the well-known tribalism of NZ politics that sees only 30% of voters ever changing the party they vote for. In other words I support my party whether it’s right or wrong – through thick and thin. Again how childish is that – where a coherent and beneficial policy is rejected because it’s been promoted by a politician of the wrong hue. We recently saw this with Andrew Little rejecting Bill English’s raising of the age of eligibility for NZ Super to 67, even though Labour had previously promoted precisely that policy. This is not unusual in NZ politics – politicians from the”wrong” party cannot possibly have sensible ideas apparently to many voters. Again, pathetic.
The issue of third most concern to the average voter confronted with a new policy is who is going to pay for it. What we like most of all is seeing those people or those practices we don’t like for whatever reason being hit up to pay the cost. So we love sin taxes, pollution taxes, taxes on rapacious landlords, capitalists, anyone we are jealous of – being the target to fund a policy. So long as it’s not us of course - that type of issue contributes 24% to our decision process.
Which leaves just 6% of the decision-making from the average voter on a policy, left for whether the policy benefits the well-being of New Zealanders as a whole. That consideration is last and certainly least of how we determine our support for a policy being mooted.
When you look at this is there really any chance of New Zealand ever breaking out of the same old, same old Establishment party duopoly with their emphasis on disturbing as little as possible, rather than doing what is good for New Zealanders, current and future. You’d have to doubt it given that voters don’t want anything that doesn’t benefit them directly, want their preferred party to stay in power forever and want someone else to pay for everything.
That is realpolitik in New Zealand, the land of entrenched social and economic conservatism. We pity those at the wrong end of the gaping inequality divide, but there is no chance we will be proactive in helping them.
Showing 24 reactions
Sign in with
Facebook TwitterHowever there is also an insight in this that maybe isn’t so bad – as a sociologist and a teacher I long ago noted that all human activity is self interested – even Mother Theresa, Ghandi, and the like. Certainly children learn with incentives better than with an imposed expectation that they should just want to. The same is true of us all. In fact only those with the luxury of relatively extreme affluence have the the spare time and energy to act in purely moral, unself-interested ways. The trick is to notice that self interest and the best case outcomes ARE NOT mutually exclusive. So if TOP can provide policies that better NZ but make life for kiwis easier then it will be onto a winner – often this will be a case of how it is communicated.
I will finish with an example: When National crows on about its tax cuts no one has challenged that appeal to selfishness with the COST of those tax cuts to Kiwis. If I get $20 dollars a week back in tax cuts but the cost of that is: A catastrophically underfunded DoC and more natives going extinct, exacerbated public health waiting lists, more stress for those on the lowest incomes, less protection of our waterways etc I am going to feel that perhaps it would be better spent elsewhere and collectively to achieve greater and more important outcomes than a few more coffees for me.
If people understand the ‘why’ and are inspired by truly visionary leadership then they will put aside their self-interest in order to contribute to a much larger vision. If they’re not willing to set aside self-interest then it simply speaks to the lack of good leadership.
But imagine being inspired by a leader or politician who absolutely MUST reject a policy or idea simply because it came from a different party!?? This tribalism is incredibly immature and unproductive. Real caveman stuff. We need a step-change in political maturity, a leadership who can rise above this tribalism and genuinely inspire people.
The tough part now is that disengagement and disillusionment are well entrenched as a result of decades of gutless ‘leadership’ and status quo. The TOP policies are great but that’s only half the picture, we need a radical new model of engagement where evidence and transparency are king.
Curious though – the article mentions that the issue of third most concern is who will pay for it, and that people like to see people they don’t like pay for it. Does the equation change in the case where a policy would save money? For instance, cannabis law reform would save New Zealand $400,000,000 a year (according to Treasury figures) – how do people feel about who “pays” for this?
It seems to me that the percentages would change considerably if the policy under consideration saved the country money across the board.
I appreciate the genuine effort your party is making to communicate democratically with the voters. The literature you are producing shows that the values of party members are successfully informing the party rhetoric – which is in stark contrast to the Establishment parties.
Unfortunately there’s no way to identify votes that are cast for the wrong reasons, and eliminate these.
I kind of like the idea of the Swiss-style referenda. Presenting specific questions and alternative solutions (independent of a particular person or party, if possible) to voters might turn their attention more to the topic, and away from people or parties. Combined with a fast, efficient and secure online voting system we could get decisions on current issues and proposals in days or weeks, and keep the public engaged and provide them with the feeling that they’ve been heard. I know that I would like it much more to be able to have my say on various topics and individual policies, rather than having to buy a whole package every three years by ticking a box for a person, and another one for a party.
Still, that doesn’t address that so many voters will only vote for what appears to be in their self-interest.
The poll picks the primary decider, not how dominant it is. So some-one who’ll vote for “tax cuts for me” may have always voted National and even if there are no tax cuts this election time they’ll probably still vote National even if TOP is offering an 8% tax cut. Because TOP is going to bring in new taxes. New taxes – ooo, evil, evil people.
How to change all this? Dunno. There is no single answer (which is the politicians’ default setting). Compulsory voting, a tax credit only given to those that vote, term limits, change the voting threshold, Swiss style referenda as Janet mentioned, let 16 year old’s vote, cut the vote off at 70 years, etc. One, some, all?
We need a more democratic system like the Swiss who 3 or 4 times every year hold public binding referendums covering two or three topics at a time. This engages the public more. It stimulates discussion and debate.
Our democracy is stymied. The newspapers, the first step in creating a discussion or a debate, are printing more and more opinionated pieces rather than unbiased reported articles or investigative articles. These opinionated articles are usually not offering the facility to immediately “comment” these days, and have you noticed they are printing less “comments,” especially The NZ Herald.
People need to be prodded, encouraged, motivated to think a bit about where this country is going and there needs to be an immediate easy way to flick thoughts and ideas about. A huge unbiased online public forum!
People are working long and hard in this country and many do not have the time or energy left to think too much let alone research or write to The Editors!
In response to Aleixi’s calling the 5% threshold undemocratic, isn’t that exactly the point of having a threshold by preventing the tail wagging the dog due to MMP. if we didn’t have that threshold wouldn’t that also be undemocratic by holding the majority to ransom by radical minority demands?
As long as the established parties campaign to the largest demographic of voters, baby boomers, the status quo remains in force
The misfortune for society is that concepts such as ‘justice’ and ‘wellbeing’ get judged in dollar terms. Society has eroded the value of such thoughts.