{"id":49270,"date":"2022-10-12T12:41:52","date_gmt":"2022-10-12T03:41:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/commentisfree\/2022\/oct\/12\/new-zealands-local-elections-appear-to-show-a-backlash-against-ardern-the-reality-is-more-complex"},"modified":"2022-10-12T12:41:52","modified_gmt":"2022-10-12T03:41:52","slug":"new-zealands-local-elections-appear-to-show-a-backlash-against-ardern-the-reality-is-more-complex","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/?p=49270","title":{"rendered":"New Zealand\u2019s local elections appear to show a backlash against Ardern. The reality is more complex"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Many cities chose conservative candidates but the results were less about national trends than local conditions<\/p>\n<p>Every year between 2008 and 2016, political commentators would reliably announce that former prime minister John Key\u2019s \u201choneymoon\u201d was finally over.<\/p>\n<p>The<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nzherald.co.nz\/nz\/ieditoriali-loose-cannons-signal-an-end-to-the-honeymoon-period\/4CRW7RTNUJSOCBX3AIEDCTHI2A\/\"> Herald on Sunday<\/a> was perhaps the first outlet to call time \u2013 marking the second week of May 2009 as \u201cthe moment the honeymoon came to a crashing halt\u201d. New Zealanders disagreed, and Sir John\u2019s polling held. In the nine years that National were in government their immovable ratings became a running joke. \u201cThe year is 7059\u201d, wrote the essayist<a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/gtiso\/status\/590254477170479104\"> Giovanni Tiso<\/a>. \u201cSmall bands of humans roam the barren New Zealand landscape in search of food. National\u2019s polling is steady at 49%.\u201d It took Sir John\u2019s retirement, and Jacinda Ardern\u2019s Labour leadership, to register a meaningful change in their parties\u2019 popularity. <\/p>\n<p>Morgan Godfery (Te Pahipoto, S\u0101moa) is a senior lecturer at the University of Otago and a columnist at Metro<\/p>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/commentisfree\/2022\/oct\/12\/new-zealands-local-elections-appear-to-show-a-backlash-against-ardern-the-reality-is-more-complex\">Continue reading&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Many cities chose conservative candidates but the results were less about national trends than local conditionsEvery year between 2008 and 2016, political commentators would reliably announce that former prime minister John Key\u2019s \u201choneymoon\u201d was finall&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":655,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sns_share_botton_hide":"","vkExUnit_sns_title":"","_vk_print_noindex":"","sitemap_hide":"","_veu_custom_css":"","veu_display_promotion_alert":"","vkexunit_cta_each_option":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[41,268,1054,619,56,933,42],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-49270","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-asia-pacific","category-jacinda-ardern","category-labour-party","category-national-party","category-new-zealand","category-new-zealand-politics","category-world-news"],"veu_head_title_object":{"title":"","add_site_title":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49270","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/655"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=49270"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49270\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":49271,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49270\/revisions\/49271"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=49270"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=49270"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=49270"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}