Discussion
I dearly hope I can still be wrong on this, that I got it all backwards, and the Opportunity Party were all along pulling an impressively cunning ruse to 'pull votes from the Right' and take them to a Left coalition'.
And yet that very notion continues to feel like a generous portion of mass self-deception atop a populist biscuit that just melts in your mouth, slathered in lush, lightly caramelised dollops of Hope.
https://mastodon.social/@JulianOliver/117441750945288350
Hope I'm wrong.
@JulianOliver sadly you were 100%.
Wild that in your previous was the quote from TOP that they will first talk with the party with "the most votes", which is Labour! Now the flacid fash throating media is hleping ALL the liars incl TOP saying "most seats". Conveniently chucking out the cashed up stupidity that this was an FPP election and a fair whack of such stupidity would not have mathed in STV. They just love losers winning in a race to the bottom to gut the place.
Seeing tech bros on vivaldi server doing pretzels to make the corpo op that is TOP into anything other than an op is telling. I guess that is more paletable to the 6% instead of doing a minimum amount of logic and just getting the Greens to 20% for actual damn policy. Exhausting.
@controlfreak Yep, they actually flipped from most votes to most seats. They lied. Incredible that people are not talking about it more.
EDIT: and yes it is exhausting. Now it looks like we'll also have a billionaire funded referendum on MMP if the right bloc hold.
However, if the Specials hold for the right bloc, some tangible hope in the fact that as NAT have no list seats. As such, just one MP falling out of parliament (illness, life things, sacked), and we should be forced into by-election
@JulianOliver
Is that even possible if the preliminary results don't change for the better after specials are counted?
@RedRobyn If the Right bloc can hold seats in the Specials, then I think we'll possibly see a confidence-and-supply relationship emerge between the Right and Opp. Q's consistent signalling is that she wants to work with the Right, NAT in particular, whom her own family have a long history with. One thing to consider raised by a friend today, is that the goal may be to work with the Right, shed the disillusioned Left and Center voters that believed in them, pick up a tide of Right voters.
@JulianOliver
There's a possibility many of their policy wonks genuinely believe left and right are outdated concepts. Often people who tell me that have a bit of libertarian in their make up, but not much awareness that why the left is inconvenient is that the bottom line of caring for people and the planet we live isn't really consistent with the inequality inevitable with unfettered market forces.
I hope we are both wrong and that Michaela is right. Maybe we'll see a confidence and supply agreement that really does get genuine climate gains
@JulianOliver I dic think though that she was not signalling a preference for any party, just that she'd talk first for the party with the largest vote share
@RedRobyn Q initially said vote share, then flipped to seat share. She said that if Luxon won't pick up the phone "that leaves Labour". Opp described themselves as 'teal', conservative-green. Her mum was senior advisor to Collins. She's been photographed in front of NAT signage, never Labour or Green. In the minor-party debate spoke of the Greens in context of "extremism", yet never same language for NZ First, Act.
Opp appear to be Center Right, or worse. Hope I have it completely backwards.
@JulianOliver to be fair to her the largest share of parliamentary votes is the largest number of seats, and it's extremely probable that a chunk of the coalition partners party votes are really National votes, just as some of the Nat MP's electorate votes are really for NZ first or ACT.
And for all those coat tailing years two ticks for National in Epsom looked like an electorate vote for Hide or Seymour
And, there we have it. I'd also hoped to be wrong on this in my earlier thread, when I said that Opp just needed to drop land-tax to have Luxon's ear.
Opportunity's now published 'Bottom Lines' for a coalition don't include the land tax we were all to benefit from. Te Tiriti obligations are not in there either. And, presumably to soften things for the NZ First AKA The NZ Fishery Party, it's all about _gradually_ phasing out bottom trawling, whatever gradually means:
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/politics_election-2026/2460607/election-reminder-these-are-opportunity-s-five-non-negotiables-for-a-coalition
Election reminder: These are Opportunity's five non-negotiables for a coalition