Things are so bad today that they’ve been likened to a Clown World, a twisted circus where everything is a sick joke. They’re getting worse by the month. How bad can things ultimately become? If we look at the trends that have led us to where we are now, we can extrapolate them out to make an educated guess at where we’re going.
Anyone reading this book from the beginning will be aware of Plato’s theory of political decay. The contention of this book is that political decay has advanced to critical status. The last time an aristocracy ruled was in the 1890s and early 1900s, a time of immense cultural advancement. Timocracy gave us the World Wars, then oligarchy gave us the postwar economic boom, then finally democracy gave us the nihilistic permissiveness of today.
The future of Clown World is further decay and suffering, until such a point where philosopher-kings institute a new aristocracy. The only question is whether we have a tyranny and an Age of Terror first, or whether the philosopher-kings beat the tyrants to the punch.
Some degree of further decay and suffering is, unfortunately, baked in to the system. Clown World is so utterly decadent that it can only be compared to an alcoholic who is dying of liver disease, but who continues to drink a bottle of bourbon a day. The average Clown World denizen doesn’t give a shit any more. He will stand up for nothing.
In the same way that the extreme permissiveness of the Weimar Republic led to a widespread disgust that fueled the rise of tyranny, the extreme permissiveness of Clown World has also led to widespread disgust. The sight of 10-year old drag queens has made many people yearn for a tyrant to clean up the mess. The danger today is, being 75 years since World War II ended, we’ve forgotten how bad tyranny can be.
At time of writing, there are a great number of people who would be willing to support a tyranny if they believed that this tyranny would deal to their enemies. The alt left would love to put wrongthinkers in gulags and the alt right would love to put degenerates in concentration camps. Neither are worried about any such tyranny turning on them. The stage is set for something historically terrible to happen.
It’s apparent that things are getting worse all over the West and that the ruling class is either unwilling or unable to change course (or both). From this we can predict that suffering will continue to increase, and that tensions will keep rising. Eventually the suffering will get to the point where it’s no longer possible to be complacent about it. That’s when people become desperate, and start taking desperate measures.
The way to avoid widespread chaos and misery is for a brotherhood of philosopher-kings to stand up and provide a new direction for the world.
For this to be possible, the philosopher-kings will have to have some way of recognising each other as such.
One such mark of recognition may be the denial that the brain generates consciousness. If there’s any single belief that characterises the midwit, it’s the belief that the brain generates consciousness and that the death of the physical body means the extinguishing of that consciousness. Anyone who can persuasively argue against this belief might be the kind of philosopher-king who will bring an end to Clown World.
When a critical mass of philosopher-kings form, they will start to change the nature of the lesser men around them. The first measure of a new aristocracy will be a rectification of names. People who are bright but not brilliant – those whose IQs are between one and two standard deviations above the mean – will sense the beneficent presence of this new aristocracy, and will follow their direction.
Choosing to follow the direction of the philosopher-kings, these men and women of silver will be the administrators of the new order. With correct administration, the masses will have faith in their rulers, and so the new world will avoid most of the suffering that exists in Clown World.
Post-Clown World, new philosophies will arise, and new twists will be placed on old philosophies. A new spiritual order will drive out the empty materialism and dead superstitions of the previous age. This will pave the way for a new intellectual order to follow, one based around an honest search for truth instead of the weaponisation of information to serve political ends.
Following this will be a true Golden Age, an age of joy and merriment. With our spirits and minds in correct working order, our emotions, bodies and behaviours will naturally follow. This will realign our actions with the divine will, leading to a minimum of suffering.
Before we get to the point of an aristocratic revolution, however, chances are that there will be bloodshed. If either the alt left or the alt right get their way – and both are much more numerous than the alt centre – a great number of people will face persecution. Many young people today would be happy to see the present system overturned. The more they endure, the less they care how this might be achieved.
Right know, we are at the ‘It was at this moment he knew: he fucked up‘ stage. We’ve just come off the skateboard, and we’re floundering in midair, about to faceplant into the asphalt. We know it’s going to be bad, we just don’t know how bad, or for how long we’ll be suffering.
The future of Clown World will involve a great fall, and then a great rise. It will be immensely challenging, but, if we can pull through, equally rewarding.
*
This article is an excerpt from Clown World Chronicles, a book about the insanity of life in the post-Industrial West. This is being compiled by Vince McLeod for an expected release in January 2021.
Nightmares are similar enough to normal life to trick you into thinking they are real, which is why they’re so horrifying. Clown World is also very similar to normal life, which is why it’s so horrifying. Unfortunately for us, Clown World is everyday life now.
In Clown World, everyday life revolves around work.
Even though it was easy for pre-Clown World adults to own a home and raise a family on their wages, it’s extremely difficult today. The price of housing has spiked in recent years, but wages have lagged far behind. Much of everyday life in Clown World is taken up with working extra hours to make up for the poverty that now exists.
In Clown World, working 40 hours a week is considered a part time job.
If you want a luxury such as owning a house, you’d better get used to working longer hours than that. Part of everyday life in Clown World is accepting that we don’t have the same standard of living that our parents had. Although trinkets and gadgets are cheaper than ever, the life essentials that take up most of one’s income – food and housing – are more expensive than ever.
Many are asking themselves how it’s possible that, if our parents could buy houses on their wages, and if we’ve had a few decades of relentless economic growth since then, it’s harder to buy a house on the average wage now? Shouldn’t it be easier than ever to buy a house, if we’re all much richer than 40 years ago?
The reality is that the masses have been conditioned into consenting to our production getting stolen from us by the ruling class. This happens in a number of ways.
The most obvious way is getting us to accept a smaller share of production. The wage share – the part of national income that is allocated to wage earners – has been steadily declining since the 1980s. Things are now so bad that workers see as little as ten cents of extra wages for every extra dollar their work produces.
It’s hard for an individual worker to notice this decline in the wage share, because they experience it as a balance of power that gradually shifts ever further towards the employer. What they would notice is employers bargaining from ever stronger positions, as the presence of gigantic pools of imported cheap labour give those employers highly profitable alternatives to hiring locals.
Everyday life in Clown World might revolve around working all the time for fuck all, but it’s not possible to win simply by avoiding work. The ruling class has a variety of methods to steal our saved wealth too.
There are more subtle ways to steal a person’s production than taking it all off them and giving them a fraction of it back. Some ways are so subtle that you can do it right in front of their face and they won’t even notice, much less complain.
Half a century later, the USD is trading at over 1,800 to an ounce of gold, while the average wage has only increased to $25 an hour. So now it takes roughly 72 hours of labour to buy what an ounce of gold would get you. Anyone holding dollars, or receiving a fixed income in dollars, has lost over 85% of their wealth over the last 50 years relative to someone holding gold.
Those who are holding the gold are the same ones printing the dollars, and they’re laughing their arses off. Everyday life, for the masses, involves running faster and faster on an employment treadmill to earn credits that the ruling class creates out of thin air.
A second subtle way to steal the wealth of the masses is through runaway house prices.
The ruling class already own most of the land. So every time house prices increase in value relative to wages, the ruling class gets wealthier and the masses get poorer. The problem is that house prices are dictated by actions of the ruling class. If they want house prices to go up, they simply import more immigrants and refuse to build new housing. Increasing demand while holding supply steady inevitably increases the price.
So the ruling class have got the workers leaping higher and higher to reach a benchmark that gets further and further away. What this had led to is an everyday life which isn’t much different to the everyday life of a medieval serf. You get worked to death and have bugger-all to show for it.
People are induced into accepting this by repeated, frequent humiliations. These humiliations sap the will of their victims and make them compliant to threats and mistreatment.
In Clown World, the plebs are humiliated everyday by a relentless mass media bombardment calling them racists. Anyone who turns on a television sees talking heads droning on about how racist white people are, or they see sportspeople kneeling to protest racism. The net result is a deep sense of shame and low self-esteem.
This shame and low self-esteem prevent the masses from asking for a fair wage, or for accessible housing, worthwhile healthcare or education etc. People will accept any shit deal if you can humiliate them into thinking they don’t deserve better.
Another major humiliation comes from laws such as those prohibiting cannabis or other spiritual sacraments. In most of the West, people get put in prison for producing or distributing cannabis, LSD, psilocybin, mescaline and DMT, even though there are stacks of evidence demonstrating that these substances can engender spiritual or mystic experiences.
In Clown World, you’re not allowed to seek out the divine. Our everyday lives are taken up with entirely material concerns, in particular accumulating resources (whether physical or social). If we express any yearning to reconnect with the divine, we are labelled mentally ill.
Such cruel and arbitrary laws serve a very deliberate and calculated purpose: to induce submission. Much like the hectoring about supposedly being racist, the enduring presence of injustice causes people to lose their will and become submissive. They feel so bad about themselves that they give up, and no longer feel that they deserve better.
In Clown World, drugs are limited to those that our corporate owners think make us more productive. Cannabis and the psychedelics are out, because they decondition people and serve to break down the effects of brainwashing. Caffeine and Adderall are in, because they induce people towards hyperfocus, which is the ideal mindstate for performing repetitive office tasks. If you’re lucky you can afford some tobacco or alcohol to numb the pain.
Everyday life in Clown World is marked by the fact that corporate interests can now lay claim to almost every waking moment of those they employ (and of many who they don’t). The presence of reliable Internet has made it standard for people to still work answering emails after they get home for the evening. You’re not even allowed to smoke weed on the weekends in case you fail a drug test.
For many in the Clown World of 2020, everyday life now resembles that of the humans who wake up in the pods in The Matrix. Our essential life energies are not put to use for our own betterment, but are instead drawn off by exploiters that most of us are barely aware of. The story of everyday life in Clown World is that we have gone from free people enjoying their lives to human livestock farmed by corporate interests for profit.
*
This article is an excerpt from Clown World Chronicles, a book about the insanity of life in the post-Industrial West. This is being compiled by Vince McLeod for an expected release in January 2021.
Clown World is full of contradictions. Often they manifest in the form of political alliances between people who hate each other. Often they manifest within the same individual. One apparently contradictory new subculture is that of the Nazihippie. But this new culture is not as inexplicable as it might seem.
It seems counter-intuitive for Nazis and hippies to come together in the form of Nazihippies. Nazism was a warmongering ideology that sought to subjugate foreign peoples and appropriate their territory. Hippie culture is all about being as peaceful as possible, even to the point of taking a beating rather than striking back. So what common ground could they possibly have?
History moves in cycles, each movement usually a reaction to the previous one. The original Nazism was a reaction to the conditions of the Weimar Republic, and the original hippie movement was a reaction to the conditions of the Great Depression. The first saw people lurch into authoritarianism in the hope of staving off degeneracy. The second saw people lurch into voluntary poverty in the hope of staving off environmental and social collapse.
Clown World, as mentioned elsewhere, is the result of excessive capitalism and excessive communism. These are the two forces that emerged victorious from World War II and which have determined the order of the world since then.
When the counter-reaction to Clown World arises, it will be in the form of those who both oppose capitalism and oppose communism. The point of common sentiment between Nazis and hippies is that both oppose capitalism and both oppose communism. Their reasons might be different, but their enemies are the same.
Capitalists are fervent anti-nationalists, believing that national borders are obstacles to free trade and the importation of cheap labour. Nazis hate them because it believes that capitalism preys on the Volk for the sake of profit. Hippies hate them because they are appalled by shallow materialism and by disregard for the natural environment.
Communists are also fervent anti-nationalists, believing that national consciousness is a distraction from class consciousness. Nazis hate them because national socialism competes with international socialism for the same supporters. Hippies hate them because communists are authoritarian materialists with no concern for the environment.
Putting all these facts together, we can predict that resistance to globohomo, when it begins in earnest, will be spearheaded by the Nazihippie.
A Nazihippie is someone who explicitly rejects the extraterritorial ambitions of Nazism, while at the same time being a nationalist who aspires to ending the suffering of their nation’s people. They are also someone who rejects the trend-obsessed, shallow and passive strains of hipster culture, while at the same time being interested in spirituality and psychedelic drugs.
Nazihippies don’t care about Jews beyond a general dislike of Abrahamism, and a general preference for non-Semitic spiritual traditions. Although they are nationalists, they are not xenophobic, at least not beyond the recognition that mass immigration of low-IQ people is an exceptionally destructive practice.
Neither are Nazihippies authoritarian (at least not collectively – individuals might be). The chaos of the hippie balances the order of the Nazi. Having said that, they aren’t virtue signallers. They don’t care about gay rights, women’s rights or minority rights beyond a general support for libertarianism. Drug rights they do care about however, cognitive liberty being the antidote to globohomo brainwashing.
If someone’s both redpilled on race and redpilled on psychedelics, chances are they’re a Nazihippie.
Newton realised that it was a law of physics that every action has its equal and opposite reaction. It’s also true of other sciences. Psychological actions also have equal and opposite reactions. The aggression shown by the capitalist-communist alliance has already begun to create a counterculture formed of an alliance between those who reject both capitalism and communism, and also the globalism that binds them.
This counterculture is that of the Nazihippie.
Today, the majority of Nazihippies can be found in the New World, especially on the North American West Coast, in the Anzac countries, in South Africa and in Southern South America. They tend to live rurally, because both capitalism and communism are primarily urban phenomena. They are often well-educated, even if that education tends to be informal.
Someone who takes psychedelic drugs and feels one with all, but can still hunt, shoot and clean a game animal is the typical example of this new kind of person. Smoking a joint and ranting about immigration is their archetypal expression. They can be of any age and gender, and in principle any race, although in practice most are white, young and male.
This rural, libertarian nationalism is a reaction to the primarily urban, authoritarian and globalist culture of Clown World. It’s a coming together both of Clown World’s rejects and of those who have rejected Clown World. It’s an alliance of those who want a new deal. As such, it combines the discontent that led to the rise of the Nazis and the discontent that led to the hippie movement.
Nazihippie culture is implicitly alt centrist, because it combines right-wing sentiments with left-wing sentiments in an alliance against the Establishment. This is why they are appearing on the planetary stage right now, as the Establishment is weakening and losing its legitimacy in the eyes of many people.
Nazihippies will continue to increase in number until Clown World ends, at which point the Nazihippie will serve as the vanguard of a new order. As of yet, however, there is no unifying Nazihippie ideology. Perhaps ecofascism will end up being some kind of antecedent.
*
This article is an excerpt from Clown World Chronicles, a book about the insanity of life in the post-Industrial West. This is being compiled by Vince McLeod for an expected release in January 2021.
Jacinda Ardern’s Labour Party comprehensively won the 2020 General Election, drawing 50.0% of the party votes (1,443,546), up from 36.9% (956,184) in 2017. This allowed the Sixth Labour Government to continue governing alone, and without needing help from either the Greens or New Zealand First. This shift towards Labour is the main story of the 2020 General Election.
The main reason for it was the large number of white New Zealanders who shifted loyalty from National to Labour between 2017 and 2020.
The fact is that New Zealand is a majority white country (around 70% of New Zealanders are white according to 2018 Census data). So there only have to be small changes in average sentiment among white people to have major electoral effects. Winning back a large number of white voters from National was chiefly how Labour won a Parliamentary majority.
Variable
Labour Vote 2020
Labour Vote 2017
European
0.11
-0.65
Maori
-0.33
0.58
Pacific Islander
0.23
0.61
Asian
-0.04
0.01
The numbers show a major change in sentiments towards Labour among white people. In 2017, the correlation between voting Labour that year and being of European descent was -0.65. By 2020, the correlation between voting Labour and being of European descent was 0.11. This is an enormous change, and it’s the primary reason for Labour’s comprehensive win at the 2020 General Election.
What it means is that the average white person, despite their relative wealth, supported the Labour Party in 2020. This wasn’t close to being true in 2017.
In fact, so many white people voted for Labour in 2020 that there was no longer any significant positive correlation between voting Labour that year and being either Maori or a Pacific Islander. Both of these correlations were very strong in 2017, but had faded away by 2020 owing to the fact that the Labour voting demographic was much whiter that year.
Variable
Labour Vote 2020
Labour Vote 2017
No qualifications
0.06
0.38
Level 1 certificate
-0.05
0.07
Level 2 certificate
-0.05
0.11
Level 3 certificate
-0.01
0.20*
Level 4 certificate
-0.02
0.20*
Level 5 diploma
-0.15
-0.75**
Level 6 diploma
0.06
-0.75**
Bachelor’s degree
-0.06
-0.24
Honours degree
0.04
-0.22
Master’s degree
0.01
-0.19
Doctorate
0.17
-0.17
The people who switched allegiance to Labour in 2020 were often the highly-educated ones who strongly supported National in 2017.
The correlations between voting Labour in 2017 and having any university degree were all negative and either significant or bordering on it. The correlation between voting Labour in 2017 and having a doctorate was -0.17, but by the time of the 2020 General Election, this had flipped to a positive correlation of 0.17. Holders of other degrees also became notably more Labour-friendly, although less drastically than those with doctorates.
Meanwhile, the correlation between voting Labour and having no qualifications weakened, from 0.38 in 2017 to an almost neutral 0.06 in 2020. This underlines the extent to which the new Labour supporters in 2020 were primarily from the middle class.
Variable
Labour Vote 2020
20-24 years old
-0.02
25-29 years old
-0.07
30-34 years old
-0.01
35-39 years old
0.03
40-44 years old
0.06
45-49 years old
0.04
50-54 years old
0.10
55-59 years old
0.18
60-64 years old
0.17
65-69 years old
0.17
70-74 years old
0.20
75-79 years old
0.21
80-84 years old
0.27
85+ years old
0.27
Those who shifted to Labour in 2020 weren’t just educated, they were also old.
In 2017, there was a correlation of -0.70 between being aged 50-64 and voting Labour, and a correlation of -0.61 between being aged 65+ and voting Labour. The reason for this was easy to explain at the time: old people overwhelmingly prefer conservative parties, a general rule across the entire democratic world.
They didn’t in 2020. Although the correlations between being old and voting National in 2020 are much stronger than the correlations between being old and voting Labour, the correlations between being aged 80-84 years old or 85+ years old and voting Labour in 2020 were both significantly positive, an enormous swing from 2017.
Expressed in rough terms, very few old people voted Labour in 2017, but in 2020 about half of them did. This may be because old people were particularly impressed by Jacinda Ardern’s handling of the Covid-19 pandemic, which threatened to kill many of them, or because they’re concerned about the kind of New Zealand that the National Party would create for their descendants.
Variable
Labour Vote 2020
Labour Vote 2017
Managers
-0.42
-0.69
Professionals
0.10
-0.14
Technicians and Trades Workers
0.22
-0.01
Community and Personal Service Workers
0.11
0.39
Clerical and Administrative Workers
0.25
0.05
Sales Workers
0.11
0.10
Machinery Operators and Drivers
0.06
0.54
Labourers
-0.06
0.24
Commensurate with increased support for Labour among highly-educated people was increased support among high-skill occupations. Although there was a negative correlation of -0.14 between voting Labour in 2017 and working as a professional, by 2020 this had flipped to 0.10. A thaw in sentiments was also observed among managers. The correlation between working as a manager in 2017 and voting Labour was -0.69, but by 2020 it was only -0.42.
Another notable change from 2017 is that there is no longer a significant positive correlation between voting for Labour and working as a machinery operator or driver. This correlation was 0.54 in 2017, but a mere 0.06 by 2020. A similar, but smaller, pattern is observable with labourers and with community and personal service workers.
This shows that Labour expanded from its base to the centre ground between 2017 and 2020. Over these three years, Labour reduced its reliance on traditional working-class occupations, and increased its appeal to high-skill ones.
Variable
Labour Vote 2020
Personal income < $5,000
-0.14
Personal income $5,000-$10,000
-0.06
Personal income $10,000-$20,000
0.12
Personal income $20,000-$30,000
0.21
Personal income $30,000-$50,000
0.14
Personal income $50,000-$70,000
0.02
Personal income > $70,000
-0.14
Labour also reduced its traditional reliance on poor voters.
In 2017, the correlation between voting Labour and having an income between $5,000 and $10,000 was 0.58. This is strong enough to show that Labour got many of their votes from there. By 2020, the correlation between being in this income bracket and voting Labour had become negative. This was because Labour shifted from the party of the poor to the party of the everyman.
In 2017, the correlation between voting Labour and being in any income bracket above $60,000 was significantly negative. However, in 2020, the correlation between earning over $70,000 and voting Labour was negative, but not significant. Much of this could be explained by wealthy people starting to feel that Labour had no real appetite for raising taxes.
Indeed, the correlation between voting Labour and median personal income became much less strongly negative between 2017, when it was -0.52, and 2020, when it was -0.27. So although wealthy people still avoid Labour, they do so much less eagerly than they did in 2017.
Variable
Labour Vote 2020
Labour Vote 2017
Agriculture, Forestry and Fishing
-0.23
-0.27
Mining
-0.03
-0.04
Manufacturing
-0.05
0.23
Electricity, Gas, Water and Waste Services
0.10
0.08
Construction
-0.03
-0.00
Wholesale Trade
-0.19
-0.15
Retail Trade
0.23
-0.03
Accommodation and Food Services/Hospitality
-0.10
0.08
Transport, Postal and Warehousing
-0.01
0.54
Information Media and Telecommunications
0.07
0.10
Financial and Insurance Services
-0.04
-0.08
Rental, Hiring and Real Estate Services
-0.36
-0.58
Professional, Scientific and Technical Services
-0.05
-0.20
Administrative and Support Services
0.01
0.37
Public Administration and Safety
0.36
0.20
Education and Training
0.12
0.15
Healthcare and Social Assistance
0.44
0.14
Arts and Recreation Services
-0.16
0.02
Labour’s resurgence might have been pronounced along lines of race, age, education, and occupational skill level, but it was not particularly pronounced along any industry lines.
Generally speaking, the demographic of Labour Party voters became a lot closer to the demographic of everyday New Zealanders between 2017 and 2020. This was apparent from the fact that most correlations between voting Labour and working in a particular industry became weaker as Labour expanded from its working-class base.
Most striking was the correlation between voting Labour and working in transport, postal and warehousing, which crashed from 0.54 in 2017 to -0.01 in 2020. Other industries went in the opposite direction. The correlation between voting Labour and working in rental, hiring and real estate services went from -0.58 in 2017 to -0.38 in 2020.
Wholesale trade, retail trade, manufacturing, public administration and safety, professional and technical services, and agriculture, forestry and fishing all moved towards no correlation with voting Labour from 2017 to 2020. This reflects the broad-based increase in appeal achieved by Labour over the past three years.
One notable exception was the correlation between working in healthcare and social assistance and voting Labour. In 2017 this was not significant, at 0.14. By 2020 it had leapt up to 0.44, and was the strongest correlation between working in any industry and voting Labour. It may be that this workers in this industry, more than any other, anticipate a lot of help from the Sixth Labour Government in its second term.
Variable
Labour Vote 2020
No Source of Income
-0.18
Wage or Salary
0.02
Self-employed or Own Own Business
-0.26
Interest, Dividends, Rent, Other Investments
0.03
ACC or Private Work Insurance
-0.09
NZ Super or Veteran’s Pension
0.22
Jobseeker Support
-0.09
Sole Parent Support
-0.16
Supported Living Payment
0.28
Student Allowance
0.08
Labour also drastically reduced their reliance on unemployment and invalid’s beneficiaries. In 2017, the correlation between being on the unemployment benefit and voting Labour was 0.73 – by 2020 it was -0.09. This is partly because a great many non-unemployment beneficiaries switched to Labour, but it’s also because of strong support among unemployment beneficiaries for the New Zealand First, Maori, Aotearoa Legalise Cannabis, ONE, Vision NZ and Advance NZ parties.
The correlation between being on the invalid’s benefit and voting Labour in 2020 was significantly positive, at 0.28. This was much weaker than in 2017, when it was 0.58. As with the unemployment benefit, this reflects how Labour broadened their appeal beyond beneficiaries.
Perhaps the most striking change involved pensioners. There was a correlation of -0.51 between being on a pension and voting Labour in 2017. By 2020, this had flipped to a positive correlation of 0.22. The fact that Labour did much better among old people in 2020 has been discussed above. Along with the coronavirus response, the introduction and then doubling of a winter energy payment to pensioners no doubt helped Labour here.
There was still a significant negative correlation between being self-employed or owning one’s own business and voting Labour, but at -0.26 this was much weaker than most people would have guessed. The correlation between being self-employed and voting Labour in 2017 was -0.77.
Variable
Labour Vote 2020
National Vote 2020
-0.16
Greens Vote 2020
0.29
ACT Vote 2020
-0.12
New Zealand First Vote 2020
0.06
New Conservative Vote 2020
0.13
The Opportunity Party Vote 2020
0.33
Maori Party Vote 2020
-0.37
Advance NZ Vote 2020
-0.19
Sustainable NZ Vote 2020
0.02
ALCP Vote 2020
-0.27
TEA Party Vote 2020
-0.21
Heartland NZ Vote 2020
-0.17
Social Credit Vote 2020
0.25
NZ Outdoors Party Vote 2020
0.01
ONE Party Vote 2020
0.25
Vision NZ Party Vote 2020
-0.23
That the average Labour voter is much whiter and better-educated in 2020 than in 2017 can be seen from the change in correlations between voting for Labour and voting for other parties.
For one thing, there were significant positive correlations between voting Labour in 2020 and either voting Greens in 2020 (0.29) or voting for The Opportunities Party in 2020 (0.33). These are much stronger than the correlations between voting Labour in 2017 and either voting Greens in 2017 (0.14) or voting for TOP in 2017 (0.00). Greens and TOP voters are disproportionately white and well-educated, two groups that heavily switched to Labour in 2020.
For another thing, there are now significant negative correlations between voting Labour in 2020 and voting for most of the Maori-heavy parties. Although Labour won a great number of votes from old white people, they lost a smaller number of Maori voters to fringe parties. Losing such marginal voters to fringe parties is the inevitable blowback from Ardern’s drive to the centre.
A further noticable change is the correlation between voting Labour in 2017 and voting National in 2017 (-0.94) and the correlation between voting Labour in 2020 and voting National in 2020 (-0.16).
This is a profound difference, and tells the story of a major shift in the demographics of the average Labour voter. In 2017, Labour and National were sharply opposed along lines of wealth, ethnicity, age and education. By 2020, most of those distinctions were eroded. National was still the party for rich old people, but Labour had transformed from the party of the disenfranchised, the brown and the working-class to the party of the average Kiwi.
Variable
Labour Vote 2020
Labour Vote 2017
Percentage of males
-0.15
-0.33
Urban electorate
0.17
0.11
Percentage NZ-born
-0.05
0.22
South Island electorate
0.23
-0.05
Turnout Rate 2020
0.28
n/a
Turnout Rate 2017
n/a
-0.72
The Labour Party won a lot of male voters from National over the three years before the 2020 General Election. The correlation between voting Labour in 2017 and being male was -0.33. By 2020, this had fallen to -0.15. This suggests that Labour did well in 2020 not only because they demonstrated compassion since 2017 but also because they demonstrated competency.
Labour voters also became much less New Zealand-born between 2017 and 2020. This is mostly because there was not a disproportionate number of Maori voters this time. Immigrants to New Zealand tend to be wealthier than the New Zealand-born, so if Labour wins more middle-class voters they will also win proportionately more immigrants.
Some conspiracy theorists suggested that the 2020 General Election may have been rigged by Labour, the proof being Labour dominance in the rural South Island electorates. But rural South Island voters overlap heavily with the elderly, middle-class voters who switched overwhelmingly to Labour in 2020. In 2020 Labour won a significantly greater proportion of votes from South Island voters than from North Island ones, unlike in 2017.
One of the most striking changes between the 2017 General Election and the 2020 edition were the correlations between voting Labour and turnout rate. In 2017, the correlation between turnout rate and voting Labour was -0.72, which is extremely strong and evidence that Labour voters that year were mostly heavily disenfranchised people. By 2020, the correlation between turnout rate and voting Labour was 0.28, showing that Labour had won the centre between 2017 and 2020.
In summary, Labour won the 2020 General Election by broadening their appeal to the average New Zealander. Increased support for Labour from 2017 was especially noticeable among rich people, white people, old people and the well-educated, all of who are traditionally antipathetic to social democratic parties.
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This article is an excerpt from the upcoming 3rd Edition of Understanding New Zealand, by Dan McGlashan and published by VJM Publishing. Understanding New Zealand is the comprehensive guide to the demographics and voting patterns of the New Zealand people.
