Originally Posted by
BlackPeter
Not sure this is a fair comment. Sure - you are right, it was less than 50,000 voting for TOP. However - this does not mean that everybody else thought that they were lacking good ideas.
Some people told me, that they would have voted for TOP if there wouldn't have been the 5% threshold (the fairytale of the wasted vote turning into a self fullfilling prophecy). They clearly thought that TOP has good ideas without voting for them.
And obviously - not everybody voting for a different party thought that TOP's ideas are bad ...it is just- you can only pick one party to go with:)
Many people did not know about TOP's policies (or even where they are in the political spectrum). Obviously - in this case they couldn't assess them either - i.e. their lack of voting for TOP shows either a lack of political interest and / or insufficient marketing from the party (and yes, this is something TOP needs to work on).
Just as example - (and without wanting to point fingers) - even iceman didn't recognise that they are basically a blue-green party. Iceman is clearly politically interested, so what about the 90% of the population who are not?
From my personal point of view TOP's biggest problem is lack of visibility, and there are a number of institutional hurdles they have to overcome:
TOP has at this stage to rely just on volunteers, while their competitors in parliament have access to all the resources parliament offers: Better access to information, easy access to the media, paid staff and offices.
Even for the leadership debates was it quite funny to notice that the media always invited one of the 2% parties (Te Pati Maori) and gave them plenty of airtime, while always ignoring TOP. I am wondering how the elections would have gone, if they would have provided a level playing field?
TOP had to my knowledge something like a 50k budget for the elections. That's only $1 per vote! Compare this with the many millions of dollars parties like ACT or National had at their avail to buy voters attention :)
So, yes - plenty to do to improve TOP's visibility.
In this context I am not even too worried about some of the troll attacks we had on this thread. Remember - there is not such a thing as bad publicity. While the intent was clearly to annoy other posters and to damage the party, I think, they did help as well to make them more visible.
But - we can't just rely on trolls. Plenty of work to do to further develop TOP's policies and make them better visible.
Only if everybody knows about TOP and their policies, only then can we judge how many voters find them a good idea :);