POLITICS IN A PANDEMIC: Jacinda Ardern and New Zealand's 2020 Election.

• Author: Fadgen, Tim

POLITICS IN A PANDEMIC: Jacinda Ardern and New Zealand's 2020 Election

Editor: Stephen Levine

Published by: Victoria University Press, Wellington, 2021, 504pp, $50.

Those of us who lived through the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic years in New Zealand might experience mild post-traumatic stress upon reading Stephen Levine's introduction to his Politics in a Pandemic: Jacinda Ardern and New Zealand's 2020 Election. The many ups and downs experienced by so many of us not so long ago are recounted in the latest edition of this long-running series about New Zealand's triennial national elections. This volume, like its predecessors, provides important, in-depth consideration of the 'COVID election' from various perspectives, including those of party leaders, political scientists and others. The work is of tremendous value to observers and students of New Zealand politics.

The backdrop is the Labour Party's historic 2020 reelection --winning the party vote in 71 of the nation's 72 constituencies. Besides Labour's drubbing of its main opponent, the National Party, the election also saw the collapse of Winston Peters and New Zealand First, the resurrection of Te Pati Maori and the dual rise of David Seymour's ACT party and the Greens, led in-part by Chloe Swarbrick's unexpected, youth-driven victory in the Auckland Central electorate. The main takeaways: being an insider handbrake on Ardern was a liability (New Zealand First), riding shotgun (Greens) was not. There was still room for, if not an actual handbrake, then something more akin to a slight incline to offer some resistance to the Labour Party's roll (ACT). As Mike Grimshaw observes, ACT benefited not only from National's (along with New Zealand First's) decline as a viable opposition but by offering 'a genuine point of difference'. Further points of difference saw Te Pati Maori's return to Parliament. Lara Greaves and Ella Morgan demonstrate that unlike most other parties in this election, Te Pati Maori offered a range of policy positions as their point of distinction. After running a savvy campaign leveraging culture through traditional and social media sources to advance its message, and being an outlier in a campaign dominated by Labour, it succeeded in flipping Waiariki from Labour.

Two key themes emerge from the volume's many election perspectives. The first concerns the leadership style and characteristics of the Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern. Without question the central theme of this...