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 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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The Deep Implications Of The Recent Thuringen Election

The Free State of Thuringia is one of the sixteen states in the German federal republic, with a population just over 2.1 million. Normally, little of importance would come from Thuringen – but the state elections earlier this month have upset that. The much-feared Alternative fuer Deutschland party – regularly dismissed as neo-Nazis by the opinion-shapers in the mainstream media – won 33% of the total vote, taking first place.

Mainstream commentators were aghast at the AfD’s success, labelling it a return of Nazism. But in the hysteria over the AfD result, other results with deep implications have been missed.

One of the most striking of these was the Buendnis Sahra Wagenknecht winning 15.7%.

The BSW is also nationalist and also opposes Germany getting sucked into the war in Ukraine. Hence, they are as anti-Establishment as the AfD. But, unlike the AfD, they are a leftist movement that wants to empower the negotiating position of workers, and which has no interest in the Christian dogma so common to alternative right movements (the BSW also lists ‘reason’ as one of its two core values).

Sahra Wagenknecht is a former top-ranking Die Linke (The Left) candidate, which means that she’s coming from a very leftist perspective. If the AfD had done well and the BSW not, it might be possible to blame everything on TikTok. But because the BSW also did so well, it’s impossible to speak of a “right-wing wave”. The BSW winning over 15% shows that support for nationalism, not just support for the AfD, is what’s rising.

Perhaps the most striking change from the previous election was the collapse of Die Linke. They were the biggest party in 2019, with 31% of the total vote. Their 2024 vote was a much humbler 13%. The vast bulk of this fall can be attributed to the rise of the BSW, which didn’t exist in 2019.

In total, the nationalist bloc of AfD and BSW won 48.7% of the Thuringen vote, more than the 47% for the globalist bloc of CDU (23.6%), Die Linke (13%), SPD (6.1%), Gruene (3.2%) and FDP (1.1%). Nationalists outpolling globalists in a Western European region the size of Thuringen is something unprecedented since World War II. Since that war, nationalists have been reduced to small minorities. For them to become the majority again, anywhere, came as a shock to many.

Even more shocking was the voting breakdown.

The first result of note here was that some 49% of working-class voters in Thuringen voted AfD, and a further 16% voted BSW. This means that 65% of working-class voters went for a nationalist party, as opposed to a mere 30% for the five major globalists.

This is a remarkable result because it speaks to the extent to which working-class people feel themselves betrayed by the globalist establishment, in particular the leftist globalist establishment.

One of the issues that forced Sahra Wagenknecht out of Die Linke (along with COVID-19 measures and Ukraine/Russia policy) was German refugee policy. Die Linke supported the globalist approach of constantly and permanently increasing the refugee quota. Wagenknecht abandoned Die Linke in the belief that many left-wing voters would prefer a nationalist option to a globalist one, and she has been vindicated by this month’s polling.

Of even more import is the fact that this process has just begun. The AfD has been around for a while but the BSW is new. If they can already poll this high in a regional election, they can dream of doing so at a federal level. Then the possibility arises of an AfD-BSW coalition ruling Germany.

The second result of note here relates to age. If one looks only at voters aged 18-24, who are traditionally globalist left voters, we can see a radical seachange towards nationalism. 55% of men and 46% of women in this age group voted for one of the two nationalist parties.

The only real supporters of the establishment now are the Boomers whose rental property portfolios and stock portfolios are the prime beneficiaries of mass immigration. The Western ruling classes have denied for 80 years that mass immigration leads to higher rents and lower wages, but the people of West widely understand now, and the working-class understands well. Many of those people are now desperate for an anti-establishment alternative.

As the Boomers continue to die off over the next decade, globalist sentiments in the West will continue to weaken further. Those who believe that nationalists are only rising because of social media may succeed in banning that social media to a major extent. But they won’t stop what’s coming, because it’s not a social media phenomenon. It’s the inevitable end consequence of many tens of millions of unpleasant encounters with the diversity that the globalists have imported.

These results of note, taken together, suggest that the vast majority of young, working-class men in Thuringen are now nationalist. Perhaps then, a smaller majority of young, working-class men in the West in general might be nationalist. This means that the nationalist forces now control the loyalties of the precise demographics needed to control the streets – or overthrow the government.

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The Maths On The UBI Argument

This week’s release of the Sora text-to-video engine has reignited a recent debate. It seems to most well-informed observers that artifical intelligence is going to make a large number of occupations obsolete in a short number of years. This has got people talking about a universal basic income again. So VJM Publishing does the maths.

Let’s say our putative UBI is $385 per week, across 52 weeks, making it just over $20,000 per year. $20,000 times 4 million eligible Kiwis equals $80 billion per year. Where to find that?

There’s one really obvious source of finding half of that money: the existing benefit system. According to budget.govt.nz, existing benefit expenses are some $40 billion per year. A UBI would mean that there was no longer any need to maintain the existing welfare system.

This would also mean that WINZ itself could be completely scrapped. The welfare bureaucracy would no longer have any reason to exist once a UBI was in place. That would save another $3 billion (also as per budget.govt.nz above).

Many will be astonished to hear that WINZ spends about three billion a year just administering benefits. But that is the price of not having a universal income. With no universal income, welfare benefits have to be gatekept to the “truly worthy”. This means at least one WINZ office, usually with dozens of staff, in every major built-up area in the country, to deter the supposed hordes of bludgers.

That’s $43 billion of the $80 billion.

A second area of savings comes from church tax. Although figures for New Zealand are unclear, it’s estimated that Australia is missing out on some AUD10,000,000,000 per annum from not having church taxes. Given that Australia is over five times larger than New Zealand, that suggests that we could bring in at least $2 billion from a church tax.

The only reason why churches are already untaxed in Australia and New Zealand is thanks to an antiquated pre-colonial British law written under the then-common delusion that the Christian religion adds value to society. Now that Christians are a minority in New Zealand, and in the wake of mass Christian opposition to the cannabis referendum, it’s neither necessary nor possible to continue with this delusion.

A $2 billion annual church tax would bring us to $45 billion.

A third area of savings comes from a Georgist-style tax on ground rents. The New Zealand Property Investor’s Federation believes that the total size of the “rental economy” is about $15 billion. That’s fifteen billion dollars earned through sheer extortion, a parasitic form of income-gathering that causes innumerable harms to wider society – and which is otherwise untaxed.

A Georgist-style 80% tax on ground rents would therefore bring in some $12 billion. Perhaps this can be adjusted down to $10 billion on the basis that some of the rental economy consists not only of simple ground rents, but also rent on improvements, which remains untouched by a land tax under Georgist philosophy.

That brings us to $55 billion.

Empty or otherwise landbanked properties comprise a fourth area of savings. According to the Empty Houses Report, there are some 95,000 empty homes in New Zealand. Some of these are being kept empty because of landbanking, some as holiday homes, some as second homes, some as vacant rentals. In any case, if the ground rents of these empty homes were, on average, $500 per week, and if these ground rents were taxed at 80% as per the Georgist principles above, that would bring in another $2 billion, taking our total to $57 billion.

Note that these land taxes entirely avoid taxes on family homes.

New Zealand is one of the only countries in the OECD to not have a capital gains tax, which is a fifth area of savings. The overall effect of this is to stratify society, keeping the poor poor and the rich rich. The reasons for New Zealand not already having a capital gains tax are complicated, but they can be summarised as greed making the country a worse place to live.

According to the Tax Working Group, a capital gains tax in New Zealand would bring in some $6 billion per annum ten years after introduction. The vast majority of this money would otherwise be getting hoarded by the people who need it the least. Thus, with a capital gains tax we have accounted for $63 billion of the necessary $80 billion.

Then the rest of the cost of an UBI will be naturally clawed back by the tax system. If the median wage in New Zealand is $31.61 an hour, and if the average worker works 1,369 hours per annum, then the average already-employed person is bringing in some $43,274 per annum already.

Someone receiving $43,274 will pay $6,073 in PAYE, but someone receiving $63,274 will pay $12,002, almost $6,000 per annum more. So if a $20,000 UBI would raise the average worker’s income to $63,274, roughly $6,000 of that would immediately be taxed back. Multiply this by four million workers and you have an extra $24 billion in PAYE.

That would actually take us over the $80 billion by some margin, to $87 billion or so. For maximum efficiency, we might like to introduce a $20,000 tax-free threshold at this point – the logic being that if it costs $20,000 per annum to survive, taxing anyone making less than this is pointless, because it will have to come back to them in the form of government services anyway.

This would cost slightly over $10 billion, i.e. roughly $2,500 in foregone PAYE for each of the four million employed people.

The remaining shortfall can be accounted for by GST intake on increased spending. If the average person spends $5,000 extra per annum on account of their UBI, then some $750 of that will be recouped by the Government in the form of GST. Multiplied by four million workers makes for an extra $3 billion.

In summary, a $90 billion demand for a UBI plus a $20,000 tax-free threshold can be met by scrapping WINZ and the entire welfare system ($43 billion), a church tax ($2 billion), a land tax on the ground rents of rental property ($10 billion), a land tax on empty homes ($2 billion), a capital gains tax ($6 billion), naturally increased PAYE ($24 billion) and naturally increased GST ($3 billion). The numbers for a UBI in New Zealand add up.

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