On the ground, the feel for ACT is quite strange at the moment... ACT clearly gave the impression they are bigger than they are and are polling reasonably (well, around 3% was the ball park figure often given). What's amazing is how many ACT billboards there are around Auckland, particularly in Epsom. What's mental is that outside of Epsom, I think ACT has replaced every single former billboard they had a few weeks ago with new ones focusing on crime, etc....They've also been HEAVILY direct mailing and leafletting Epsom. This will be costing them a lot of money!
I get the impression that organisationally they're fucked. Apart from the obvious loss of a lot of their people to National (I guess their MPs must've been the tip of the iceberg), erstwhile radicals within the organisation like Blair Mulholland (a sometime critic of ACT and Hide and oft-switcher between ACT and the Nats) who is running Kenneth Wang's campaign in Botany. Mulholland, while a nice guy, is a total political loose cannon. I'm also told by friends of mine that the much vaunted return of Roger Douglas hasn't seen the influx of activists ACT would have liked.
Wednesday, November 5, 2008
From the front line
An Auckland-based contact e-mailed me the following thoughts on ACT:
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4 comments:
"I get the impression that organisationally they're fucked."
With respect, you don't have a fucking clue as to what you are talking about.
I think they've got more billboards around the country fullstop, far more in Dunedin than any other year, even in South Dunedin, which I would suggest is a bastion of ACT hatred, and they don't seem to be getting too vandalised
"transforming new zealand": isn't it interesting that the harshest critics on this blog are usually the ones who hide behind anonymous usernames. What does ACT say about transparency again?
In any case, as you don't know the identity of the contact I quoted, you couldn't know whether s/he knows what s/he is talking about or not.
But I can assure you that the contact most certainly does.
And this contact most certainly knows more.......
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