My Analysis

edited and added to.

With nearly 35% of eligible voters (approximately the same number as voted for the largest party) choosing not to vote the lack of faith in our politicians seems to be huge.

I was disappointed by Labour and the Greens failling to fire up in the national media on education. The Governor General's car being stopped and many other issues that arose all fading to obscurity within the day from a lack of politicians getting in behind them effectively.Meanwhile tales of tea pots tantalised the media/gossip for over a week feed by Keys and Peters.

With Labour basically allowing themselves to be branded as the big red stop sign (the not national party we'll stop asset sales) it is not surprising that they lost vote to other parties that where equally not national (who would also stop asset sales) but who also had their own message. Clean green future. Fight political corruption.

I would not have been alone amongst many voters who avoided the broadcasts and debates and just picked up a summary of highlights from the news media. And there impressions and interest is what counts. In the new media I missed any save our schools facebook you tube and twitter campaigns. A few of those going viral might have made a difference.

Meanwhile now it's over I wonder where's are all the womens voices in Labour? There's not a single one being pushed as a potential new leader in the media. Half Labours party list should be women, and it probably is but you wouldn't know it. Maybe it's time they joined the parties that have a mixed gender co-leadership model. I'd also like to see them rebrand from error message, angry , dangerous, spelling mistake red, to new colours, say pink and steely blue grey. They should focus on the for family message and even change their name, Whaanau or Legacy maybe.

The days of stirring up anger (as I watched one labour member advising and teaching another in Napier how to do a few months back, both now out of parliament) are past, the angry protest party that ran that as their message got hardly any votes. People aren't into anger these days, not with all the media campaigns against it.

Ads with Goff quietly hanging around idealic waterways, no one around, getting in some fishing, taking it easy, don't worry about voting, certainly wouldn't have got people fired up. He would have been better off with ozone holes, sun burnt children, skin cancers, polluted waterways, images of child poverty if he wanted to fire people up.

National meanwhile continue to market themselves well with lessons learned from John's days cutting people's jobs. As the reasonable, sympathetic, charismatic key spokesperson rides in on his white horse once issues are clear and a mix of fall guys to defuse anger who handle the frontline and negative stuff.

Why didn't Labour work on Key's image.

Got some spare cash in your family trust (ie you're a mum and dad investor) make sure your trust buys up lots of cheap shares in each wave of national asset sales. You'll be able to pass them on to some multinational at a large profit, which you then use to invest in the next round of asset sales. If the multinationals need to put up base rates for your schools electricity delivery to ensure a return tough, you've doubled your assets which you invest in the last most prime ones and more than cover the increases.

Perhaps they could have pointed out the path to John Keys success, for all those who aspire to be him. (The young men wanting to be him the women eying him up seemed a common media image. I saw video recently of a young dad training their two year old to say John Keys when asked who they'd vote for. Does Keys have a wife and children? It's not a feature they push if he does.) He apparently he has several houses including one valued at $10 million, but he started in a state provided house could he have got where he is without it? Did his solo mum get the dpb?, did he have to have  a student loan and privatised education or did he have a tax payer subsidised education from 3-23? That should have found out exactly what state funding  he benefited from that contributed to his success and which of those is he intent on cutting. Perhaps they could have used a charecter based on him to show how state support works and what happens without it.

On another topic with their big influence these days I do wonder how do they poll people. Is it phone calls to landlines? How many labour voters have a landline these days surely that would skew them if that's what they use. What protections exist to ensure results aren't hacked and altered at site? So much is hacked these days even from big internet orientated firms. How do we know the results many put in are the same as those that come out?

In the end despite national claiming a mandate and spinning an increase I think the overall the right wing vote has dropped this election, indeed only national sending in a former leader to close up shop at Act saw their number of seats rise. It certainly shifted left overall.

I'm not looking forward to the next three years, and I cringe at the damage that'll be done to the furture generation.We need stronger voice for education.