New Zealand: The 1987 Campaign

Abstract

In two important respects the 1987 New Zealand general election represented a crucial, ‘threshold election’. First, traditional patterns of party loyalty, political trust and turnout were being challenged to an unprecedented degree. Second, as a considered strategic response to that electoral instability, Labour pursued New Zealand’s first truly ‘modern campaign’, a campaign comprehensively built around polling, targeted appeals and the professional, managed use of the mass media (Denemark, 1991). These challenges to ‘politics as usual’, both electorally and in terms of campaign technique, occurred in a political system notable for its tranquillity. New Zealand’s ninety-seven-seat, unicameral parliament, selected every three years, is the locus of considerable, potentially transformative power. Its first-past-the-post electoral system and its relatively marked social polarity (urban working class versus urban business and rural farming interests) have historically served to delineate support for the two major parties, Labour and National. It has also promoted two-party government/opposition electoral contests for power, whilst stifling any significant longevity for the occasional surfacing of essentially protest third parties (Robinson, 1967). The relative consistency of this electoral, governmental and programmatic bifurcation sustained several important forms of political attitudinal stability: high levels of party identification (Lamare, 1984; Vowles, 1987), political awareness, concern and turnout (Bean, 1986; Nagel, 1988), political interest (Lamare, 1984), and political efficacy and trust in government (Robinson, 1967).