What Went Wrong

Further to the Greens' apparent anxiety expressed in recent days, it has now been reported that the party are, possibly feverishly, undertaking the task of performing a post-mortem on their election campaign in an attempt to figure out exactly where it all fell apart. To me it seems that they are making too big a deal out of it and as a consequence making it harder for themselves. From what the party co-leader Rod Donald has said, it appears that the organisation has already successfully identified all of the things that could have possibly attributed to the election result with which they are so disappointed.

What's rather puzzling is that at the same time, there seems to be a feeling within the Green Party that there exists some kind of singular, magical answer; an ultimate totemic final nail in the coffin that will prove to be the reason why they are now three MPs down on the election of 2002. Of course, it doesn't require rocket science for one to realise that the Greens' relatively poor level of support that they've received this time around is simply due to the factors that they have already highlighted.

Perhaps the most significant of these was the so-called "two-party squeeze." It's not so much that the downfall of the minor parties -- which would inevitably lead to the practical end of MMP -- is occurring, but merely that National has made its comeback. I know for a fact that many left-wing voters, stricken with fear of a centre-right coalition gaining power and who were potentially going to cast their votes in favour of the Green Party, instead chose to push some support Labour's way for the sake of ensuring a solid defence was put up. A significant number of those who swung would have been youth voters, and it is the whole truth that the Greens derive a highly significant proportion of their votes from the young age group. This could be fairly perceived to be one of the most likely factors that led to the Greens' average result.

For all the emphasis that it has received, I would perceive nonetheless that the party's electoral advertising campaign was merely a secondary contributor to the negative nature of the result. The concepts of the billboards were a good idea on paper -- and were actually notably striking in that context -- but in practice they were undeniably weak, failing to catch many people's eyes, and the grey font in particularly was undoubtedly too hard to read for the few people who did notice them. The billboards strongly resembled the sort of roadside advertising that has been seen employed in local body elections. They were far from adequate as something being used in a full-scale General Election campaign. The television advertisements were not much better, depicting a young Maori boy and a presumably Pakeha girl, dressed in white and set against a white background, describing the importance that voting Green held for future generations. Although the message was quite clear, the delivery came across as cheesy and trying-to-be-cute as opposed to a dire imploration, which is what it felt like it was supposed to be given the campaign line of "It's your vote."

I don't think that anyone, regardless of which ideological allegiance (or lack thereof) that they have subscribed themselves to, would disagree with the statement that the Greens' mainstream advertising campaign this election was significantly inadequate, and that as such it is at the most partially to blame for the party's electoral disappointment. However, if one looks to Labour's advertising campaign, the perception of quality that is felt is generally not much better than the sentiment towards that of the Greens. Particularly alongside National's simply unforgettable "Tax. Cut." campaign which utilised the half-and-half billboards, Labour's campaign was virtually self-acknowledgedly weak. With little use of party colours and the non-presence of the party logo, Labour billboards had the potential to go unidentified as such if people did not read the small print down the bottom that read "You're better off with Labour."

Television advertisements tended in the same direction as those of the Greens, putting significant weighting towards the "aaw"-factor, and seemingly relying on an insistent and hopeful-sounding guitar riff that tied the whole visual media campaign together. In light of the fact that, despite a not-quite-good-enough advertising campaign, Labour managed to hold onto its vote and lose almost no electoral ground, I don't think that a similar shortfall on the Greens' part can be said to have contributed a great deal to its electoral shortcoming -- a correlation that some have alleged. The Greens' misfortune is quite simply a natural result of National's resurgence into severe parliamentary relevance, and there is not much more to it than that.