WHY THE WORM GETS THE BIGGEST VOTE

Elections are funny things. People make promises, facts get lost in the friction of left vs right and slogans line the streets in primary colours. It’s a carnival of chaos.

And then we vote. And we count. And the sun comes up. 

But if you dig through the noise to find the news of an election, it’s hard look past the right track/wrong track worm. It’s a graph that shows how people feel about how things are going in general.

By September 2023, three in five Kiwis felt like the country was heading in the wrong direction. Most were looking for change. And they voted for it. Just over 25% felt things were going okay – and they voted to keep going. The others didn’t vote, they rarely do.

Why the worm holds the power

There are only two election campaigns: Momentum or Change.

If you’re in Government, your campaign will talk momentum. “Look at what we’ve done and what we’re doing next, don’t put it all at risk.” It’s a story of empathy, evidence and hope. If people believe you, they’ll vote for you and with that you can keep going.

If you’re in Opposition, it’s a simple message. “Vote for Change”. Some motivate voters with hope, others use fear. But the message is the same. “If you don’t like what’s happening, vote for us and we’ll change it.” And if people want change, the Government changes.

Either way, the worm leads the pack. That’s because humans are human and it’s almost impossible to change the way someone thinks. So the smartest campaigns are the ones that read the room and say “Vote for us, we think like you do”. 

Most voters choose, then justify.

There’s a whole lot more to campaigning than chasing a worm. And that’s where the jostling and messaging and stone throwing comes in. But most humans make decisions emotionally and the justify them rationally. That’s why feels matter more than facts.

We choose someone we like, cherry pick the stuff we want to hear and vote according to what feels right for us. It’s the fact that we vote on feels that means the worm usually wins.

Democracy is self-healing.

The other great thing about the worm is that it wiggles. Every Government has great ideas about making things better. Some of them work and others don’t. So every three years we get back in the room to make a call on progress. 

And that’s when things change. If people think we’ve gone too far (one way or the other) the pendulum swings at election time. This graph maps the Popular Vote over 30 years of MMP. It’s easy to see the trends and imagine the worm at work. 

Party vote for bigger parties over time. Smaller party vote in grey.

What drives the worm?

The right-track, wrong track survey is a measure of how people feel. So lots of things play into their gut reaction. Some of it is how easy things feel in the day-to-day (like the state of the economy or their take on poverty or crime). And some is about how the Government responds big stuff. (Like earthquakes, pandemics and floods.)

But behind it all is the question of trust. Do I have hope that tomorrow will get better? Do I have confidence that these leaders will get us there? Every Government chips confidence and trust over time. That’s why we vote to switch them out.

NEW BROOM. NEW WORM.

The best thing about a new Government is hope. It’s a circuit breaker that resets the worm and gives new people new opportunities. And every new Government will make some things better and other things worse. But that’s any Government - in any democracy.

That’s why they say democracy is self-healing. We swing left, we swing right and mostly we hover in the middle. And even when people vote for change, they don’t like too much of it. So if we feel stuff sliding, we’ll make it known - and the worm will help us ‘back on track’. 

That's what I reckon, what do you think?