I find the detail of this Wikipedia page to be amazing. It was shared 2 months ago (thanks @SamC). The main things that have changed since then are a continued slight dip in Labour/National and a slight rise in Maori/ACT.
If you have the time and energy then remember to read the policy proposals by the parties that you don’t like as well as the parties that you do like.
Yes, this is referred to as the “bandwagon effect” and there is some evidence to suggest it does happen.
However, with a lot of these things, it’s probably only making a difference at the margins. It might influence someone who is completely on the fence, e.g. if they couldn’t decide between National and Labour, they saw National seemed to be winning, so went for them. But most people do tend to think carefully about who they vote for rather than be influenced by something “superficial”.
This is really interesting. Is it something to do with people wanting to feel as if they’re on the winning team, even though you can effectively declare you’re voting for someone and there’s still no way for anyone to prove it*?
* Although the recent trend from the past couple of elections of people photographing their completed ballot papers and posting to social media really needs to be clamped down upon, imho.
Yes, pretty much this. Deciding who to vote for can be a pretty difficult and complex decision. People end up relying on “short cuts”, so something like the bandwagon effect happens. There’s even evidence that shark attacks can influence how people vote.