The NZ Loyal Party in the 2023 New Zealand General Election: An Analysis of Voting Correlations and Political Context

The 2023 New Zealand General Election, held on October 14, marked a significant shift in the country’s political landscape, with the centre-right National Party, led by Christopher Luxon, forming a coalition government alongside ACT and New Zealand First, displacing the incumbent Labour Party. Amidst this contest of major parties, smaller parties like NZ Loyal emerged, seeking to carve out a niche in an increasingly fragmented electorate. NZ Loyal positioned itself as an anti-establishment, populist party with a focus on sovereignty, individual freedoms, and skepticism toward mainstream institutions. This essay examines NZ Loyal’s role in the 2023 election, analyzing its voter base through voting correlations with other parties and situating its performance within the broader political and social context of New Zealand at the time.

Background and Ideology of NZ Loyal

NZ Loyal was founded in June 2023. The party’s platform was rooted in a rejection of overreach by the globalist elite and a call for New Zealand to reclaim its independence from international organizations like the United Nations. Key policy positions included opposition to water fluoridation, the use of 1080 poison, tax increases, and “gender programming,” alongside advocacy for reduced government spending and greater individual autonomy. The messaging resonated with a segment of the population disillusioned with traditional politics, particularly in the wake of pandemic-related disruptions.

In the 2023 election, NZ Loyal secured 1.2% of the party vote, translating to approximately 34,000 votes. While this fell well short of the 5% threshold required under New Zealand’s Mixed Member Proportional (MMP) system to gain parliamentary representation without an electorate seat, it nonetheless reflected a notable presence among minor parties. To understand NZ Loyal’s voter base and ideological alignment, this essay analyses its voting correlations with ten other parties: ALCP (Aotearoa Legalise Cannabis Party), Labour, National, Greens, ACT, New Zealand First, Māori Party, TOP (The Opportunities Party), NewZeal, and Freedoms NZ.

Voting Correlations: Insights into NZ Loyal’s Electorate

The provided correlation coefficients offer a statistical lens through which to examine the overlap or divergence between NZ Loyal voters and those of other parties in the 2023 election. These coefficients range from -1 (perfect negative correlation) to 1 (perfect positive correlation), with 0 indicating no relationship. Below, we explore the implications of these correlations.

Strong Positive Correlations

New Zealand First (0.82)
The strongest correlation exists between NZ Loyal and New Zealand First, a nationalist and socially conservative party led by Winston Peters. This high positive correlation suggests significant overlap in voter priorities, likely driven by shared skepticism of government overreach, emphasis on national sovereignty, and appeal to voters disillusioned with the major parties. New Zealand First’s return to Parliament with 6.08% of the vote after being ousted in 2020 indicates a resurgence of populist sentiment, which NZ Loyal also tapped into, albeit on a smaller scale. Both parties’ messaging around “putting New Zealanders first” likely resonated with similar demographics, such as older, rural, or working-class voters.
ACT (0.60)
A moderately strong positive correlation with ACT, a libertarian-leaning party that secured 8.64% of the vote, highlights a shared emphasis on individual freedoms and reduced government intervention. While ACT’s policy focus—free markets, law and order, and welfare reform—differs from NZ Loyal’s broader anti-establishment stance, their mutual appeal to voters frustrated with bureaucratic overreach likely explains this overlap. ACT’s urban, affluent voter base contrasts with NZ Loyal’s likely rural and grassroots support, suggesting the correlation reflects ideological alignment rather than identical demographics.

Moderate Positive Correlations

ALCP (0.36)
The moderate positive correlation with the Aotearoa Legalise Cannabis Party points to a shared anti-authoritarian streak. ALCP’s single-issue focus on cannabis legalisation aligns with NZ Loyal’s broader advocacy for personal choice, including medical freedom. This overlap may reflect a protest vote against mainstream parties perceived as overly controlling, particularly among younger or fringe voters.
NewZeal (0.34)
Led by former National MP Alfred Ngaro, NewZeal’s socially conservative platform, rooted in Christian values, shows a moderate correlation with NZ Loyal. While NewZeal’s focus on family values and opposition to progressive social policies differs from NZ Loyal’s sovereignty-driven agenda, both parties likely attracted voters seeking alternatives to the secular, centrist establishment. NewZeal’s modest 0.29% vote share suggests a smaller but ideologically adjacent constituency.
National (0.31)
The correlation with National, the election’s winner with 38.1% of the vote, is intriguing. National’s centre-right, pro-business stance contrasts with NZ Loyal’s anti-elite rhetoric, yet the positive correlation may indicate some crossover among conservative voters dissatisfied with National’s perceived moderation under Luxon. Rural voters, a traditional National stronghold, may have split their support with NZ Loyal over issues like farming taxes or environmental regulations.

Weak Positive Correlation

Freedoms NZ (0.06)
The near-zero correlation with Freedoms NZ, an umbrella coalition including parties like Vision NZ and NZ Outdoors & Freedom, is surprising given their shared anti-mandate and freedom-focused platforms. This weak relationship suggests NZ Loyal carved out a distinct niche. Freedoms NZ’s fragmented structure may have diluted its appeal compared to NZ Loyal’s unified messaging.

Negative Correlations

Greens (-0.27)
The negative correlation with the Green Party, which achieved a record 11.6% vote share, reflects stark ideological opposition. The Greens’ progressive, environmentalist agenda—emphasizing sustainability, indigenous rights, and social justice—clashes with NZ Loyal’s rejection of “woke” policies and international climate commitments. This divergence underscores NZ Loyal’s appeal to voters hostile to left-wing priorities.
Labour (-0.26)
Labour, the incumbent party that saw its vote share plummet from 50% in 2020 to 26.91% in 2023, shows a negative correlation with NZ Loyal. Labour’s pandemic-era policies, including lockdowns and vaccine mandates, were lightning rods for NZ Loyal’s critique, driving its voters toward anti-establishment alternatives. This antipathy likely intensified amid economic challenges like inflation, which eroded Labour’s support.
TOP (-0.24)
The Opportunities Party, with its evidence-based, centrist policies, exhibits a negative correlation with NZ Loyal. TOP’s focus on pragmatic solutions—like tax reform and housing—contrasts with NZ Loyal’s emotive, populist approach, highlighting a divide between technocratic and anti-system voters.
Maori Party (-0.17)
The weaker negative correlation with The Maori Party, which won six electorate seats, reflects differing priorities. The Maori Party’s indigenous rights focus and left-leaning social policies diverge from NZ Loyal’s universalist, sovereignty-driven platform, though the weaker correlation suggests less direct antagonism than with Labour or the Greens.

Contextualising NZ Loyal’s Performance

NZ Loyal’s 1.2% vote share placed it among the more successful minor parties in 2023, outperforming NewZeal (0.29%) and Freedoms NZ (0.46%) but trailing TOP (2.1%) and several parliamentary parties. Its emergence late in the campaign—registered just months before the election—limited its organisational capacity, yet its grassroots momentum enabled it to outpace other fringe contenders. The party’s billboards became a visible symbol of its presence.

The 2023 election occurred against a backdrop of economic strain, with high inflation and a cost-of-living crisis dominating voter concerns. Labour’s sharp decline reflected fatigue with its six-year tenure, while National capitalized on a desire for change. NZ Loyal, like New Zealand First and ACT, benefited from this discontent, offering an outlet for voters frustrated with both Labour’s progressive governance and National’s perceived establishment status. Its strongest correlations with New Zealand First and ACT suggest it drew from a pool of right-leaning, populist, and libertarian-leaning voters, a bloc that collectively bolstered the centre-right coalition’s victory.

Broader Implications

NZ Loyal’s correlations reveal a polarised electorate, with its voter base aligning more closely with right-wing and populist parties while rejecting left-wing and progressive ones. The high correlation with New Zealand First (0.82) underscores the potency of nationalist, anti-elite sentiment in 2023, a trend mirrored globally in movements like Brexit or Trumpism. However, its failure to reach the 5% threshold highlights the challenges minor parties face under MMP without an electorate seat or broader coalition support.

The party’s appeal was likely amplified by lingering pandemic-era grievances, as evidenced by its overlap with ALCP and ACT—parties championing personal freedoms. Yet its weak link with Freedoms NZ (0.06) rejects the concept of a unified “freedom movement.”

Conclusion

In the 2023 New Zealand General Election, NZ Loyal emerged as a minor but notable player, channeling anti-establishment sentiment into a 1.2% vote share. Its voting correlations—strongest with New Zealand First (0.82) and ACT (0.60), moderate with ALCP (0.36), NewZeal (0.34), and National (0.31), and negative with Greens (-0.27), Labour (-0.26), TOP (-0.24), and Māori Party (-0.17)—paint a picture of a party appealing to right-leaning, sovereignty-focused voters disillusioned with the mainstream. While it fell short of parliamentary representation, NZ Loyal’s performance reflects a broader undercurrent of populist discontent, offering insights into the evolving dynamics of New Zealand’s political landscape as of March 17, 2025.

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The Long Walk Out Of The Desert

Of all the trials and travails that the West has suffered over the past 120 years, one of the most arduous remains. Although the West went through a renaissance of its own greatness some centuries ago, this was mostly limited to scientific and artistic achievements. There is still a Major Renaissance to come. The first stage of this is to overcome Abrahamism in all aspects: the Long Walk out of the Desert.

The phrase ‘Long Walk out of the Desert’ was coined by an X poster known as MarbleBust. In this context, “The Desert” refers to the desert of Abrahamic religion, where white people have been wandering, lost, for many centuries.

Desert life is infamously cheap. The history of the Near and Middle East is the history of one massacre after another. Out-group antipathy has never in human history reached such extremes as in these desert cultures. And their religions reflect this: they are cruel, deceitful, treacherous, monstrous. All of Judaism, Christianity and Islam are supremacist in nature, considering outsiders somewhere between filth and cattle.

Whether owing to exaggerated and prolonged degeneracy, unfortunate chance historical events, a counter-reaction to the Roman Empire, an unusual gullibility on the part of the Europeans or perhaps that we are now in the Kali Yuga, the desert religions are predominant in Europe today. This puts us in a situation where, in order for us to return to spiritual narratives suited for us, we must abandon those that have been pushed on us for centuries. We must take that Long Walk out of the Desert. That requires a solid grounding in our history.

The desert religions conquered the West in stages.

The first stage was the decision of Constantine in 313 CE, with the Edict of Milan, to accept Christianity as a legitimate religion. Up until then, it had been recognised by the Romans for what it was: yet another Jewish slave cult based around some egomaniac’s claims to be the prophecised Messiah. They treated it as they would have done any other degeneracy. But with the Edict of Milan, Christianity started to be treated with respect by European rulers.

The second stage was the decision of Theodosius in 380 CE, with the Edict of Thessalonica, to make Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire. This was the date upon which Europeans abandoned the religions of Europe for the religions of the desert. If there was a Long Walk into the Desert, this was when it began.

The third stage was when Theodosius, in 391 CE, outlawed the practice of European religion. This was mostly due to pressure from Christians obeying passages such as Exodus 22:20, which calls for the destruction of worshippers of gods other than Yahweh (Yahweh is a jealous god). From this moment onwards, the European religions were in the descendancy.

The fourth stage was the destruction of the Eleusinian Mysteries and the murder of its priests in 396 CE, under the Christian and Gothic king Alaric. The mystery school at Eleusis was one of the major reasons for the greatness of Greco-Roman culture: it was famous for liberating its participants from fear of death, which allowed them to live heroic lives from then on. With these mysteries destroyed, Europeans entered an age of fear and superstition involving subjugation to the desert religions. Thus, we have been “in the desert” for over 1,600 years already.

The fifth stage was the progressive Christianisation of Northern Europe, with events such as the Massacre of Verden (in 782 CE) and the Northern Crusades. The Albigensian Crusade could perhaps be included here. These events saw the murder of great numbers of people for refusing to abandon the European religions.

After Christians had hunted down the last remaining followers of the European religions to the remotest islands and forests, Christianity reached the apogee of its power. But because Christianity was not natural to us, and was forced on us, as soon as it weakened it began to die. European culture returned with the Renaissance, and, although Christians killed as many as they could to keep it down, it flourished.

Some 800 years after the start of the Renaissance, few Westerners are still Christian. But many Christian habits still linger, and many Christian assumptions are still taken for granted, especially moral assumptions. These lingering artefacts continue to lower the quality of life all over the West.

The Long Walk out of the Desert refers to the replacement of all Abrahamic morality and thought with a morality and thought appropriate to Westerners today.

We must stop seeing Jews as people who brought us spiritual gifts, and start seeing them as spiritual enslavers. Abrahamism did not bring us liberation from spiritual ignorance: we already had Plato. Neither did it bring us sophisticated ethics or metaphysics: we already had Aristotle. What it did bring us was a replacement of our own native culture and moral philosophy with one that put Jews, and Jewish culture, front and centre.

We must also realise that Abrahamism was forced on our ancestors through violence. The narrative that our ancestors realised European religions were for savages, and switched them out for a Jewish religion based around a dead rabbi, is nonsense. Our ancestors were murdered by Christian invaders and forced to submit, in much the same way that people in Africa, the Middle East and Asia are forced by Islamic invaders to submit to the god of Abraham today.

Perhaps most importantly, we must stop seeing Christian morality as an advance over Greco-Roman morality, and see it for what it is: a massive retrograde step. It did not end human sacrifice. It did not end slavery. It did not unite us in a vision of something higher. What it did do was deliver us into mindless superstition and a thousand-year Dark Age. It switched the master morality that had brought us so much glory for a wretched slave morality that brought us a millennium of stagnation.

Part of this moral revaluation is to no longer view passivity, tolerance and weakness as virtues. This does not, in any sense, mean that we have to swing to the exact opposite of those supposed virtues like Muslims. The correct approach is as Aristotle recommended in The Nicomachean Ethics: to find the correct balance between too much and too little. The right amount of assertiveness, instead of all or nothing like a Semite.

This will require that we get over our squeamishness about e.g. the death penalty, drugs and border enforcement. Christian “sanctity of life” must be replaced with an understanding that life, although precious, is sometimes not worth living. Christian hysteria about pharmakeia must be abolished. National borders must be enforced again, no matter what the Catholic Pope says about Rabbi Yeshua having been a refugee. We have to do all of these things to save ourselves.

The Long Walk out of the Desert, and the desert religions, will be complete when we have constructed a theological, philosophical, moral and ethical system that can guide us through this century and beyond.

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The First Rejection Of Alternative Centrism

The First Rejection of alternative centrism is rejection of excessive order. The First Rejection is the contention that excessive order leads to stagnation.

Order may be the basis of civilisation, as per the First Acceptance. But an excess of it is suffocating. Too much order calcifies the institutions that make up society and petrifies the central bureaucracy. It makes people brittle. This brittleness, as Lao Tzu warned, leads one to break instead of bend. Thus, an excess of order will destroy a society unless pre-empted by the revolutionary action of those suffocated by it. As a result, it is rejected in the First Rejection.

In history, excessively rigid societies tend to get shattered by more fluid ones. The Greeks under Alexander and the British in India and China both defeated much larger empires which had succumbed to stagnation. The same order that makes a polity strong makes it weak when pushed to excess. The First Rejection of Alternative Centrism is a rejection of that stagnation that leads to weakness.

The Dark Ages is the best historical example of excessive order. The Christian authoritarians responsible for the Dark Ages took control at the end of the 4th Century, and imposed an entirely new order. Instead of religious and philosophical freedom, there would now only be dogma. Free-thinkers, like Hypatia, were murdered. Books were banned. All truths could be found in the Bible – if it wasn’t in the Bible, you didn’t need to know it.

After 1,200 or so years of this order, Europeans had forgotten that the Earth rotates around the Sun. Aristarchus of Samos, born in 310 BCE, was the first man to present a heliocentric model of the Solar System. Almost two millennia later, Giordano Bruno was burned at the stake for promulgating much the same truth. It’s hard to believe, but it’s true: Europeans actually went backwards in the 1,900 years between 300 BCE and 1600 CE.

Stagnating so hard that one comes to forget basic science is a typical example of what inspires the First Rejection. To stagnate that hard is to die in spirit. It’s to live only as a zombie, a mockery of life. This stagnation is what makes young people angry, and what makes them burn down things. To that extent, it’s usually old people supporting the Establishment Right, and the younger generations eventually get sick of them lingering.

Notably, many of those in the Establishment Right will see the Dark Ages as a high point in European history. They see the stagnation as a time of peace and stability. The Feudal Era is another time that the Establishment Right looks back to fondly, being a time of great order. Everyone knew their place – from the king right down to the lowliest peasant. Most pleasing of all, this order was hardly ever challenged. There was the odd peasant’s revolt but they were usually put down quickly by the armoured knights.

The two main powers of the Feudal Era – the monarchy and the clergy – comprise the two main factions of the Establishment Right today. The monarchy represents how order is established over people physically; the clergy represents how order is established over people non-physically. This is why wealthy families during the Feudal Era sent their spare offspring into the clergy and the military – those offspring would then uphold the order of things.

In the 21st Century, the monarchy and the clergy are still the main factions of the Establishment Right. The monarchy’s biggest supporters are the Army and the Police, which are well-known for being conservative institutions. Even in America, which has no monarchy, Army and Police personnel support the idea of one more than anyone else. The clergy still has power because they own enormous amounts of land, and because people still willingly take moral and spiritual guidance from them.

This feudal system worked reasonably well back in the day, but for one fatal flaw – it was prone to stagnation.

A capacity for merit in human beings is mostly inherited – but it’s not inherited directly from the parents. It’s actually inherited from the ancestors through the parents. This is why children are not just mere clones of their parents, but are throwbacks to older generations in many ways. This is also why there is so much variation in merit within families and groups of families. Meritorious men have ordinary sons, and vice-versa, all the time.

The main problem with the Establishment Right is that it will demand that a talented or meritorious man of low birth submit to a mediocre man of high birth for the sake of order. This is the main way that it generates resentment. Although this is the most orderly way to run things, it’s not easy to get the talented and meritorious men to accept it. Invariably those men realise they could do a better job of running things than those who inherited the positions. And then one finds the presence of revolutionary sentiments.

The Establishment Right has been aware, since the beginning of history, that their natural enemy is the high thumos man of low birth. Such men are represented by Lucifer in Jewish mythology. In this mythology, Lucifer was commanded by Yahweh to submit to Adam, because Yahweh’s whims at the time favoured his most recent creation. Lucifer was unwilling to do so, and was cast into disfavour. This story is a lesson to the Establishment Right: the plebs are supposed to obey even your most arbitrary commands. Those not willing to do so are the enemies of order.

“Chesterton’s Fence” is the archetypal example of reasoning that leads to excessive order. The logic of Chesterton’s Fence is that nothing should be changed unless one understands exactly why it is the way it is. But because nothing is ever fully understood – especially not matters of history – this is effectively an argument to change nothing ever.

G.K. Chesterton also gave us other ideas popular with the Establishment Right, such as the idea that “tradition is the democracy of the dead”. Every declining power makes this same argument in order to cling to the throne a bit longer. In making the First Rejection, the alternative centrist says: tradition for its own sake is the virtue of the stagnant.

The Establishment Right has a very particular view of history, in which the status quo is always right. They tend to blame the Wars of Reformation on the Protestants, for example. If only they had kept submitting to the established order, there would have been no problems. These unrelenting demands for submission only increase the frustration that younger generations feel at the stagnation of their societies. Asserting the moral primacy of order becomes ever-harder the more a society stagnates. The First Rejection, then, rises with revolutionary forces: with the young, the vital, the courageous, perhaps also the idealistic and naive.

For all the above reasons, anti-Establishment Right movements are generally also anti-stagnation movements, i.e. freedom movements. Perhaps the most effective one since World War II was the anti-landlord campaign carried out by Chairman Mao (landlording being a major cause of economic stagnation). The antipathy towards the Establishment Right in 2025 is mostly a result of several decades of net zero wage growth.

The fatal flaw in the attitude of the Establishment Right is that they have little interest in the concept of freedom, which presages the Second Acceptance.

This chapter is from The Alternative Centrist Manifesto, the book that offers the answers to the political problems of the West.

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The Harvester Judgement And How Much Has Been Stolen From Us

Mainstream media propaganda would have us all believe that the West has never been wealthier. Our glorious leaders have led us into an unparalleled age of prosperity. Never before have the lives of everyday Westerners overflowed with such abundance. Apparently, even the lowliest Westerner has easy access to luxuries that kings could not have dreamed of in ages past.

If you don’t agree, the media tells us, you’re a terrorist. A filthy, ungrateful reprobate whose resentment endangers the entire project of civilisation itself. How could a person not be grateful for the beneficence shown by our ruling classes? Just how?

As it turns out, anyone with a solid knowledge of history has reason to feel ripped off at their current treatment.

In 1907, the idea of a minimum wage was introduced in Australia. In a case relating to the Sunshine Harvester Company of Victoria, Justice Henry Higgins determined that a “fair and reasonable” wage for a manual labourer was that which could support a family of five. A skilled worker should receive even more. This was later known as the “Harvester Judgement“.

Because people higher up the social ladder would make more money than manual labourers, the Harvester Judgement created a floor underneath which no full-time worker could fall. It therefore ensured a decent quality of life for everyone in Australian society, not just the rich. This judgement became a core principle of Australian employment law and is one of the main reasons why the Australian worker’s standard of living has been so high until recently, and why Australia is known as “The Lucky Country”.

According to Grok, a family of five living in Auckland requires some $7,000 per month to meet housing, food, utilities, transportation and other costs. This means some $84,000 per year – after tax. Before tax, it’s $112,963 per year. Less than that means a family of five has to start going without some things.

This is the income necessary to have a similar quality of life to a labouring family in 1907. This means nothing extravagant – just basic housing, decent food, the lights on, the ability to get to work and visit some people etc. It doesn’t include luxury travel or building an investment portfolio.

Also according to Grok, fewer than 8% of New Zealand workers earn $112,000 or more. Because some 10% of the population has an honours degree or higher, this means the top 8% of the workforce will be mostly professionals and managers, i.e. highly qualified, highly experienced people. Those few in the top 8% without an honours degree or higher will mostly be top managers.

$112,000 is about 70% higher than the median New Zealand wage of $66,000. What’s more, that median wage figure itself includes those highly-paid professional and managerial jobs, which means that the median manual labourer’s wage is even lower still. The minimum wage in New Zealand is currently $23.15 per hour, which works out to $46,300 per annum if one works 50 weeks of 40 hours, and many manual labourers will be close to this.

In practice, therefore, almost none of the people working in manual labour positions in New Zealand are paid enough for their wage to be considered “fair and reasonable” under the Harvester Judgement. The entire idea that a wage ought to pay enough to raise a family has been abandoned, seemingly by the employees as well as the employers.

Our wages are now less than half of what is needed to support a family of five. But the quality of life promised by the Harvester Judgement has not simply been lost, it has been stolen from us.

It has been stolen from us in a number of ways, but the mass importation of cheap labour is the foremost of these. The explanation for how full-time manual labourer wages were decoupled from the requirement that they could support a family of five is simple: employers have undercut local workers by importing cheaper ones from overseas.

The Neoliberal Era normalised this practice, so that it become ideologically impossible to even object to the imports. Anyone who did so was smeared as a racist acting out of pure hate. Several decades of this allowed the employer class to drive wages down so far that they’re now about half of what they need to be, as per the Harvester Judgement.

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