The Jacinda Effect: What’s really changed?

It's all about Jacinda. Labour's late leadership change has turned Election 17 on its head. But can Labour seize the moment and how will other parties respond?

By Tim Watkin

What had been looking like a campaign that was being driven by the minor parties, has now pivoted back to focus on the two majors. Jacinda Ardern has created a spurt of - to use her words - "relentless positivity" that has put the phone back on the hook for Labour. Or as Guyon Espiner puts it, has brought them back into coverage.

Voters who had given up on Labour, because they didn't have the look of government and success about them, will give them another look. While the fundamental policy platform won't change - and Labour's weaknesses aren't suddenly magicked away - they will be seeing the party through a new lens.

As Lisa Owen points out, Andrew Little had kept Labour's poll numbers around 30 percent until quite recently, but the party's dive in fortunes since the interns fiasco and Metiria Turei's confession that she lied to Work & Income looked impossible to turn around without a radical change. And so Little fell on his sword.

Guyon says this could be "a moment" for Labour and expects an immediate and significant bump in the polls. It was a moment in part created by her exchange with Mark Richardson on the AM Show, where she showed courage under fire and a certainty that has been lacking from Labour for some years.

As a woman who has herself been asked if she's "forgotten to have children", Lisa says the question about whether Ardern is planning a family was completely out of line. But it shows National how NOT to approach Ardern. While I argue the fact she would be New Zealand's youngest ever Prime Minister (and the country's youngest leader since Edward Stafford in 1855) means questions about her age are acceptable, Guyon reckons that could be a positive, not a weakness. National have lost control of the ball for now and will have to get smarter.

Ardern's "relentless positivity" is in stark contrast to solid and sensible Bill English and it's hard to imagine the relentlessly positive response to her leadership in the first 48 hours won't help Labour regain some ground. …

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