Guest Post: Winning Seats from Labour

A guest post by Simon Lusk:

Next year’s election has the potential to be extremely good for National electorate campaigns across the country. At the 2020 election Labour beat National in the Party Vote by nearly 25%. In 2023 the Party Vote gap will not be anywhere near 25%, and there is a reasonable chance National will lead Labour.

This means that there are many winnable Labour held seats. The historical precedent is that it is possible to overturn a majority of 6500 votes in a single election. On this number alone there are 17 seats that National can win off Labour, with 17 new National electorate MPs coming into parliament in a wave that is bigger than the National intake in 2005.

This theory needed supporting with some hard data.so I asked David Farrar to poll Napier. This kind of poll is extremely useful in deciding what seats to invest time & money in, and the results suggest a very high chance that National will win Napier.

The poll is published here in its entirety so others who are trying to win seats from Labour can see what they get when the pay for an electorate poll from Curia. If you are running or campaigning in any seat with a majority of less than 8000 you should fundraise to get a poll as soon as Curia can undertake it.

DPF: Simon lives in the Hawke’s Bay so he was interested in polling in his local area to see what the mood was like. He did this in his own right.

It is very kind of him to recommend electorates poll early, but I would stress always talk to the National central campaign team first, to make sure anything you want to do is consistent with their plans.