Election 2023: Mike Munro - with Labour and National neck and neck in the polls leaders must beware a Brethren-sized blunder

Prime Minister Chris Hipkins and National leader Christopher Luxon are neck and neck as the election nears. Montage / NZME

OPINION

It’s hard to escape the feeling that this year’s ding-dong election scrap could well end up turning on a single incident.

With the contest so tight — the left and right camps are virtually level-pegging — you begin to wonder how one side will gain an advantage over the other.

Assuming for a moment that the impact on voting intentions of issues like the cost of living and crime is already baked in, what might a game-changer look like?

An act of campaigning genius? A monumental blunder? A ripsnorter scandal?

After Monday’s 1 News-Verian poll, The Spinoff did the arithmetic on the five most recent polls and calculated the left-right gap to be a slender 0.8 per cent: the Labour/Greens/Te Pāti Māori bloc was on 45.7; National/Act on 46.5.

The pattern is that when one side looks like it might be getting ahead, along comes another poll to force a rethink.

Labour, despite a string of ministerial misdeeds and performing poorly in the right track/wrong track soundings, is continuing to defy gravity and stay in the race. Only two percentage points separated it and National in Monday’s poll. And the centre-left closed the gap on the centre-right by 1 per cent.

All of which points to campaign performance being the determining factor in this election.

That might sound like stating the obvious, but it hasn’t always been the case. Sometimes campaigns have seemingly made not a blind bit of difference.

There have been elections in recent times when the feeling of inevitability about the outcome has been so strong that the official campaign period has seemed like a mere formality, during which nothing occurs that materially influences the result.

After leading National into Government in 2008, John Key’s victories in 2011 and 2014 were never seriously in doubt. Such was his ascendancy in those years that his opponents spent much of their time grasping at thin air. Events on the campaign trail counted for zilch.

Likewise Jacinda Ardern in 2020.

With her Government enjoying massive trust because of the way it had managed the pandemic response, and with the National Party in disarray, Labour was an unassailable fortress and Ardern’s re-election a certainty. Again, the ebb and flow of campaigning had no real bearing on the outcome, which saw Labour charge to a landslide victory.

In 2023, however, the campaign will matter. Probably a lot.

That’s not to say it won’t be a policy masterstroke that moves the dial.

But what will really count is control and discipline. Staying on-message, avoiding gaffes, no uppity behaviour, holding your nerve when things don’t go to plan — those are the requirements that party leaders and their lieutenants will be drumming into their teams.

For in a race as evenly matched as this one, any serious lapses could be costly. Labour has already learned that lesson, its errant ministers almost certainly the reason for its support having softened in the past month.

The run-up to the 2005 election was similarly close, but a fortnight before electors cast their votes, National opened a handy lead over Labour. A 1 News-Colmar Brunton poll had National forging ahead, 46-38.

Then the contest turned on the Exclusive Brethren incident. The Christian sect had circulated a pamphlet nationwide, in which Labour’s record in office was denounced and National was endorsed.

This year’s ding-dong election scrap could well end up turning on a single incident, writes Mike Munro. Cartoon / Rod Emmerson

National’s then-leader Don Brash initially denied knowing anything about the Brethren’s foray into the campaign.

Except that he did know. Brash had met the Brethren and was aware of their planned attack on Labour.

When this became known, Brash was forced to fess up and apologise, triggering a barrage of criticism from opponents and media. Questions about his fitness for the prime ministership were raised, so derailing National’s campaign as election day loomed.

National’s support slumped in the final days of the campaign and Labour snuck home with enough seats to be able to continue to govern with the help of support partners.

Blunders like Brash’s assume a much greater importance when they happen in the shadow of election day, especially if the casualty is a would-be prime minister and there’s a block of undecided votes still up for grabs – as there is at present.

That will no doubt be playing on the minds of Chris Luxon’s handlers as we head towards the campaign proper. Luxon has a propensity for making gaffes and he lacks Chris Hipkins’ fleet-footedness, which will be jangling nerves in the National leader’s camp.

There is considerable pressure on leaders at election time. They are front and centre of their parties’ campaigns and can ill-afford mistakes. This is particularly so in the leaders’ television debates, where the political skills of the contenders are in the spotlight. They are showdowns that will generally be remembered for any fumbles.

The debates are a make-or-break feature of the election season that haven’t changed much over time as campaigns have evolved into tightly controlled, risk-averse exercises, with precious little room for spontaneity.

Of course, the parties’ laser focus on campaign discipline doesn’t guarantee that someone won’t go rogue, veer off script or score an own goal. And when they do, the media pack will be waiting to pounce.

So in the coming weeks, both Labour and National, and the minor parties too, will be striving to ensure that they keep their houses tidy, and that their candidates toe the line.

In this high-pressure contest, nobody wants to be the bungler who sparks a moment that potentially allows their opponents to pull away.

But don’t bet on it not happening.

- Mike Munro is a former chief of staff for Jacinda Ardern and was chief press secretary for Helen Clark.