After the COVID-19 Crisis: The New Zealand General Election of 2020

• In Event: Elections During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

How and why do governments in representative democracies benefit electorally from successful crisis management? The COVID-19 pandemic has presented a dual challenge to public health services and to the economy. Many governments assumed a trade-off between the two. New Zealand’s centre-left coalition government argued that the best economic response was a health response, and pursued an effective ‘go hard/go-early’ elimination strategy beginning with a six-week lockdown from late March into early May, including a full border closure except for New Zealand citizens and residents, allowing in only a few others with skills or investments deemed economically strategic. An increasingly strict 14-day quarantine was enforced for new arrivals. After almost a hundred days following with no community cases during most of the crucial winter months, a fresh outbreak in August led to the two-week postponement of the scheduled general election and a brief regional lockdown in New Zealand’s biggest city. But by October 17, the day of the election, thanks to rigorous contact tracing and isolation of cases, life was back to normal and there were only a handful of community cases remaining in New Zealand, all fully contained. The Labour Party, the core of the coalition government, was rewarded with a landslide victory in the biggest net transfer of votes from one election to the next in New Zealand’s electoral history and the highest turnout in 20 years, gaining a comfortable parliamentary majority unusual in a country with a proportional electoral system. While the effectiveness of the COVID-19 response undoubtedly contributed to Labour’s success, other factors were evident. Effective leadership and clear communication enhanced the soaring popularity of Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern. A strong stimulus attenuated the economic effects. The ethos best illustrated by Ardern’s phase ‘a team of five million’ (the entire population of New Zealand) may even have revived confidence in government-led collective action and the advantages of social cohesion, thus prompting an ideological shift to the left. Using data from the 2020 New Zealand Election Study, this paper seeks to open up debate about the consequences of the COVID-19 in public opinion and electoral outcomes in a country likely to become a critical case in future comparative analysis.

Authors

• Jack Vowles, Victoria University of Wellington

• Sam Bigwood, Victoria University of Wellington