| Summary: | The 1990 election produced New Zealand's most dramatic parliamentary transformation for over fifty years. Labour plunged from 56 seats to 29, while National rose from 41 to 67. Rubbing salt into Labour's deep electoral wounds, Jim Anderton, who had left Labour to establish and lead the NewLabour Party, retained the ninety-seventh seat. It was Labour's worst result by far since 1931. Meanwhile a new party, the Greens, emerged as New Zealand's largest and most popular 'third' party.
Many people, disappointed and disillusioned with the Labour Government, justified their participation in its defeat as an act of revenge. Yet if Labour lost because voters abandoned it in large numbers, National did not win because it received massive support and its huge parliamentary majority was partly a quirk of New Zealand's first-past-the-post electoral system.
This book documents the election in a way that has never been done before in New Zealand. It recalls the major landmarks of the Fourth Labour Government's eventful term, but does so largely from the perspective of the voters themselves. It draws on the information contained in over 2000 replies to a national random survey of New Zealanders just after the election.
It maps the movement of voters since 1984 and it shows how different groups of people responded to the wide range of economic, social, environmental and gender issues that emerged during the often stormy years of the Lange-Palmer-Moore period. Many of the changes of this time were not unique, however, but were part of an international process: the authors have also linked the political responses of New Zealanders to international patterns and trends in voting behaviour.
An important and illuminating study.
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