Jamie Whyte loses contact with reality; claims Act poll at 12pct
nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&...Posted Sep 17, 2014, 2:00 PM UTC
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nzherald.co.nz
Does he say they are polling at 12%? I couldn't find that in the article. He says that their polling has 11% of nzers supporting Act policies. He is also not saying 11% will vote Act. I think he recognises even if that 11% figure is correct, many of those people will vote another party e.g. National.
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I like how he says in one breath that ACT will not partake in a government that contains NZFirst and then in the next breath says that they're committed to seeing a Nationa-led government, which basically means that if they have to be in government with NZFirst, they'll happily do so if it means National gets into power.
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He doesn't say he won't support it, he says he won't be a part of it. He's essentially saying ACT will support a National Government on confidence, but won't sit at a Cabinet table or be in a coalition with Winston.
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This is true, I didn't take in the information terribly well I guess at 2am...
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ACT won't be a part of the next government, but not by choice ;)
ACT are polling at sub-zero, plus Conservatives are going to split the Epsom vote AND Labor supporters in Epsom are voting National stategically to kill ACT for good.
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How is that any different than David Cunliffe saying he will not be in government with Internet-Mana despite the fact he will use their votes for confidence and supply?
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So... ACT will have at most a couple of seats and have nothing more than the opportunity to give their votes to things they agree with.
Labour will be forming the next government and putting forward the majority of acts/bills/whatever and allowing others (like ACT) to give their votes to them.
So, quite different?
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Maybe he's adding all the results for ACT from every poll ever conducted together. Hmm, no, on second thought, that still wouldn't equal 12%.
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The ACT website is slow as balls. How can I trust them to run the country when they cant even run a website?! ^^^fucking ^^^/s
I legitimately want to read some policy this morning and it's not letting me qq
Anyone know what they have to say on all this spying malarkey?
Edit: Never mind, it's finally loaded.
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Your headline is false.
ACT are claiming 11% support for their policies, not for their party. They're saying that 11% of NZers agree with the same thing ACT agrees with. It's just that only a small proportion of them are prepared to back up their views with a vote for ACT.
Essentially he's saying that ACT has the potential to be much more popular than what current polls are showing because of the huge untapped constituent.
Or due to large number of voters that may agree with other parties more.
Probably more due to conservatives, greens and NZ First being much more savvy and pulling voters over to their side, and the tarnished ACT brand.
ACT is actually a much better fit policy-wise for some of the people that vote for those aforementioned three parties.
There's next to no overlap between the conservatives and the greens, so Act's problem may be that it is targeting too wide a demographic.
There's a clear split in the party between people who want to campaign on principled libertarianism and people who want to campaign on populist policies like "tough on crime". You can't be both a libertarian party and a hard right party at the same time without having inconsistent positions on a bunch of issues.
We're well aware of that. But for this election ACT is the only party that libertarians can vote for.
Also, a close friend of mine who is very well politically informed voted conservative-green last year and will be this year too.
And their solution to tapping that constituency was putting a philosopher in charge?
Jamie isn't defined by the fact that he is a philosopher. His most important identity is that of a classic liberal. Unlike John Banks (conservative) and Rodney Hide (populist) before him, his political views match up quite nicely with the party's core values. That's why he was appointed.
The media appear to disagree, they're going to great length to paint him as overly formalistic, and I believe there is considerable truth to that.
Jamie Whyte is the most reasonable and likeable ACT leader in ages. I admit that's not saying much, but in interviews he's genuine and smart and he doesn't try to spin things as much as most politicians do.
I think it's a bit of a pity that Act hasn't done better this year, because Jamie Whyte and David Seymour are vastly preferable to the likes of Don Brash and John Banks in my opinion.