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.
It’s part of a global pattern. All over the world, political parties who were incumbent in the covid aftermath were mostly voted out by 2024. Most reportage attributes it to reactions to economic conditions caused by covid.
We are also seeing a rise in populism, which can be fickle.