It\u2019s a hot spring day in the Auckland suburb of Onehunga, and the main strip is starting to hum with life. Builders slip into a bakery for a snack, retirees chat over coffee outside cafes and a shoeless man zips by on a scooter.<\/p>\n
There are few signs New Zealand\u2019s general election is looming along this shopping strip but Onehunga and neighbouring suburbs that make up the electorate Maungakiekie, will be closely watched when New Zealand<\/a> heads to the polls on 7 November.<\/p>\n Over the past two elections, the Maungakiekie electorate has proven to be an \u201cextraordinary\u201d bellwether seat, accurately reflecting the mood of the nation.<\/p>\n In 2020, when Labour won 50% of the national vote, a near-identical 50.3% of Maungakiekie\u2019s voters backed the party. Three years later, when Labour\u2019s vote plunged to 26.9%, so too did Maungakiekie\u2019s support for the party, falling to just 27.1%.<\/p>\n \u201c[Maungakiekie] tracked the national number with extraordinary precision both times,\u201d says Dr Michael Swanson, an honorary research fellow in politics at the University of Otago.<\/p>\n People stroll in Cornwall park in Auckland\u2019s Maungakiekie electorate. Photograph: Fiona Goodall\/The Guardian<\/p>\n This year\u2019s election is on a knife-edge. With voters frustrated by a sluggish economy and stubbornly high \u2060inflation, polls indicate neither the left nor right blocs will win an outright majority. Support for mainstream parties, National and Labour, is slipping in favour of minor parties \u2013 one of which, Opportunity<\/a>, could decide who will next govern New Zealand.<\/p>\n Maungakiekie defies easy categorisation. Some parts are affluent \u2013 home to leafy streets and multimillion dollar homes. Others, such as Onehunga, were working class, but have been gentrified. The seat is ethnically diverse and home to a younger demographic than the Auckland average.<\/p>\n Onehunga, in the bellweather Auckland electorate of Maungakiekie. Photograph: Fiona Goodall\/The Guardian<\/p>\n Maungakiekie is \u201ca really interesting and relatively accurate\u201d representation of modern New Zealand, Swanson says, and has been a consistently reliable barometer for which way support is leaning for parties.<\/p>\n When the Guardian visits the electorate in October, two key themes emerge: a grudging fealty to the National party \u2013 which has led the centre-right coalition government since 2023 \u2013 and growing support for minor parties.<\/p>\n Jemimah Fifita, who lives in Onehunga and works at a local cafe, is undecided but may vote for the Opportunity party. Photograph: Fiona Goodall\/The Guardian<\/p>\n Jemimah Fifita, a 25-year-old student who works at a local cafe, is about to ditch a family tradition of voting Labour.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m very mindful of who I think I should vote for,\u201d she says, \u201cespecially as a young person, because we are struggling\u201d \u2013 nodding to high rates of youth unemployment<\/a> and the rising costs of living.<\/p>\n Fifita is yet to decide who will get her vote, but the centrist Opportunity party has caught her attention. Opportunity has been consistently polling above the 5% threshold of seats<\/a> needed to enter parliament, but it remains to be seen if that support translates into votes next Saturday.<\/p>\n Onehunga local Nigel Higgins won\u2019t be voting because he believes all governments \u201care oppressive\u201d. Photograph: Fiona Goodall\/The Guardian<\/p>\n Across the road, sitting outside a bakery are longtime Onehunga residents, Nigel Higgins and Lance Polmear. Higgins has not voted since the 1980s because he believes \u201call governments are oppressive\u201d. But Polmear, who works in construction, says he will again vote for National, despite being unhappy with some of its policies, such as immigration.<\/p>\n Lance Polmear, who works in road construction, votes National and will again this election, because he believes Labour \u201csold [the] country to other countries\u201d. Photograph: Fiona Goodall\/The Guardian<\/p>\n At a cafe further up the street, retiree Marg\u00f4t Phillipps reckons the government has been \u201cshocking\u201d this term, so she will be voting for the Green party, for its environmental stance and its policy of redistributing wealth.<\/p>\n In Ellerslie, a more affluent and less diverse suburb than Onehunga, locals are largely sticking with the status quo: the National-led coalition with the right-wing Act party and populist New Zealand First.<\/p>\n Kerry McCullough, who has owned a florist in Ellerslie for nine years, will vote for National, becasue she\u2019s worried about welfare dependency and education. Photograph: Fiona Goodall\/The Guardian<\/p>\n Kerry McCullough, a florist on the main street, is \u201cvery much against Labour\u201d and will vote National even though she thinks party leader Christopher Luxon<\/a> is \u201cnot very appealing\u201d.<\/p>\n Across the road, butcher David Parsons is weighing cuts of meat for customers. He is switching his party vote from National to New Zealand First, led by Winston Peters, a politician who entered parliament in 1978 with National.<\/p>\n Ellerslie butcher David Parsons plans to switch from National to New Zealand First because Winston Peters \u2018speaks a lot of sense\u2019 to him, especially about immigration and mining. Photograph: Fiona Goodall\/The Guardian<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s not something I ever thought I would do \u2013 my family has a long history of voting National \u2013 but its come to the point where I see a bit more eye-to-eye with Winston Peters,\u201d Parsons says, adding he has become more concerned about immigration and believes the country should boost mining to grow the economy, issues that New Zealand First has campaigned on.<\/p>\n A mood of disillusionment could spell bad news for Luxon and National, who face the possibility of being the first one-term National-led government since the party was founded in 1936.<\/p>\n Polling in recent months has shown just a few points separating the winning and losing blocs. A RNZ-Reid Research poll<\/a> released on Thursday shows National slumping under 25%, and Labour in a position to form a government alongside the Greens and Opportunity. A 1News-Verian poll<\/a> released two days earlier had National slightly ahead and returning to power.<\/p>\n Support appears strong for the right-leaning coalition in Maungakiekie, but recent changes to the electorate\u2019s boundary lines could alter the political landscape.<\/p>\n Election signs in the bellweather electorate of Maungakiekie. Photograph: Fiona Goodall\/The Guardian<\/p>\n The new boundary lines add nearly 10,000 voters from a left-leaning suburb, but cut about 2,200 voters from a right-leaning suburb. The seat could inflate support for Labour compared with the national result and upset its bellwether status, Swanson says.<\/p>\n Regardless, Maungakiekie will remain one of the most closely watched seats when results roll in on election night, he says.<\/p>\n \u201cThey have earned, across several elections, the right to be taken seriously as a signal.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It\u2019s a hot spring day in the Auckland suburb of Onehunga, and the main strip is starting to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":646462,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[111,43,139,69],"class_list":["post-646461","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/646461","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=646461"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/646461\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/646462"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=646461"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=646461"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=646461"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}