I don’t think we’ve ever had such a sharp change in public opinion as we’ve had over the last decade or so, certainly not in the MMP era.
Labour went from an outright majority to barely 25% of the vote in one term, and now we’re set to have our very first single term government in a very long time.
It’s enough to give you whiplash.
If Treasury and RBNZ are correct that the low point of this economic cycle will occur this year, then people will feel like things are improving by election time next year. The public has a very short memory so I have zero confidence that they will vote them out for making the downturn worse.
National will campaign hard on how it’s getting better and the public will eat it up because they’re the party of FiScAl ReSpOnSiBiLiTy