Explaining The Red Tide: Kiwis hug Jacinda back as Labour breaks records

The crew open their envelopes and reveal their picks, as they make sense of Labour's govern-alone victory, National's much-needed rebuild, the return of te Pati Maori and the Greens' delight in the face of powerlessnessBy Tim WatkinWatch the video version of the episode hereThrough the past three years, as grief and crises have hit New Zealand, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has reached out and hugged those who were struggling. In Election 2020, New Zealand hugged her right back, delivering a victory on such a scale it puts her in the box seat for the 2023 election before all the 2020 special votes have even been counted.In this week's final Caucus podcast, the team agrees the red tide has flowed, in large part as a nationwide thank you to Ardern and the Labour-led government's handling of Covid-19. Labour and the Greens won 57 percent of the vote, the biggest vote for the Left in New Zealand since Norman Kirk's 1972 Labour win, and arguably the highest ever, trumping the first Labour government's 55.8 percent support in 1938.It's the first time a government gets to govern alone under MMP and gives Labour its most new MPs since 1935. National won the party vote in only four out 64 seats.Yet tides that flow can also ebb, and Lisa Owen and Scott Campbell warned of the potential for hard choices ahead trying to balance the beliefs of Labour voters, old and new.On election night Ardern spoke to the cheering party faithful, but directed her comments at swing voters who had switched over to Labour, telling them she would not take their support for granted and her second term administration would govern for all New Zealanders. "Why were they cheering for that," asks Espiner. While it's a great Obama-esque line, there's "something darker" in that for party stalwarts. As Owen says, "Hang on a minute, don't you realise what this means for you? This means she's going to be hugging the centre line arguably. She's not going to want to annoy those people she says she's bringing into the nest. What does this mean for the policies that are dear to the heart of the Labour movement and some of those policies that are going to send shivers down the spine of some of those people who voted for them?"The reason I said at the top that the vote for the Left was only "arguably" the highest ever is because it depends on your definition of Left. Is Ardern's Labour government really very left-wing, or is it mostly a continuation of the centrist governments run by John Key and Helen Clark…Go to this episode on rnz.co.nz for more details