Geoffrey Miller

New Zealand geopolitical analyst & Arabic/Russian learner

Tagged: Kenneth Wang

Politics

That’s it – for now

Unless there is an earth-shattering piece of news before midnight tonight, that concludes Douglas to Dancing‘s election campaign coverage. Of course I’ll be back after election night to analyse and interpret ACT’s fate. My thanks to everyone who has offered constructive criticism and feedback on my posts. LATEST – FINAL WORD ON THE POLLS: the Roy Morgan poll just out also puts ACT at 4% support of the party vote. ACT should be very disappointed if it gets anything less than 3%. Because newspaper polls today showed National at close to 50%, ACT could well prosper further, as National supporters...

Politics

From the front line

An Auckland-based contact e-mailed me the following thoughts on ACT: On the ground, the feel for ACT is quite strange at the moment… ACT clearly gave the impression they are bigger than they are and are polling reasonably (well, around 3% was the ball park figure often given). What’s amazing is how many ACT billboards there are around Auckland, particularly in Epsom. What’s mental is that outside of Epsom, I think ACT has replaced every single former billboard they had a few weeks ago with new ones focusing on crime, etc….They’ve also been HEAVILY direct mailing and leafletting Epsom. This...

Politics

Botany campaign

Dene Mackenzie has a background piece for the ODT online on the Botany electorate, in which ACT candidate Kenneth Wang is hoping to win the seat. This follows an earlier piece in the New Zealand Herald. Both articles highlight some apparently racist traits of non-Asian voters in the electorate. From the Herald: [A voter], who wanted to be known only as Sandy, 24, said: “It’s ridiculous that I receive flyers in my mailbox from the candidates in Chinese or whatever, and I am made to feel like I’m a foreigner in my homeland’s election.” She said she was “really sick”...

Politics

Herald’s “street poll” in Botany

In 2005, ACT felt aggrieved by a One News poll which appeared to give Richard Worth a substantial lead over Rodney Hide. ACT’s claim was that respondents were confused by the wording of the question on the electorate vote, which asked for the preferred party of the candidate, rather than the candidate’s name. This gave the misleading impression that Worth was well in the lead. Today the New Zealand Herald has published a street poll in Botany which seems questionable to me. For those of you who don’t know, ACT is standing its candidate Kenneth Wang in the new electorate....

Politics

Wong way to do things

National MP Pansy Wong’s attack on Kenneth Wang, the ACT candidate in Botany, should backfire. Wong has lodged an EFA complaint against Wang on the basis that his billboards, which claim voting for Wang will net voters both Wang and Wong (because of the latter’s high list position), amounts to an unauthorised and untrue endorsement of Kenneth Wang by Pansy Wong, who has done no such thing. If mainstream-niche party competition theory, as set out by Bonnie Meguid and discussed by me earlier this year, holds, this attack should have only upside for ACT. Voters feel sympathetic to a small...

Politics

Kenneth Wang – a dream candidate?

The results of the Douglas to Dancing online poll are in. Of course, I don’t claim that the poll results are in any way scientific. The fact is that 13 people responded. While this is by no means a high number, this is a niche blog! So let’s look at the results as an indication of the people most interested in ACT – they might not be ACT voters (although I’m sure many will have been), but they’re keen enough to vote in an online poll. It seems that Kenneth Wang is the preferred dream candidate of respondents. Wang is...

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