5+8x10 = NZ?

On tribes, politics and NZ society

What are ya? Or rather, what tribe are ya? Not in an iwi or whakapapa sense but in a voter or societal cohort sense? That’s the challenge thrown down recently by Danyl McLauchlan in a cover story for the Listener magazine.

There are, apparently, 5 voter tribes drawn from analysing the 2023 New Zealand Election Study (NZES), a research study of voters that stretches back to 1987, undertaken by Jack Vowles of Victoria University and Peter Aimer of the University of Auckland.

The result is the identification of 5 tribes comprising Educated Progressives, the Precarious Left, Middle New Zealand, the Establishment Right, and Alienated Conservatives who then occupy different sectors of a quadrant comprised of institutional trust (cynical or trusting) and left and right politics. There is a further identification of median age ranging from 42 to 56 years and of % male or % female composition and then of % of the electorate.

Given the Listener piece is behind a paywall, probably the best way to engage with it is via Bryce Edwards’ nuanced assessment and discussion: (https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/five-voter-tribes-decide-who-governs-new-zealand-bryce-edwards-ypdre/)

But thinking sociologically, I think there is more nuance that can and should be added.

Looking at our society I wonder if a reduction of the electorate into 5 tribes is just a bit too tight and a little too easy? For a start I wonder how it fits within the reality of an MMP environment where we see varied vote splitting, often between seemingly opposing parties.

I’d suggest quite a number of voters are in fact split within themselves between tribes; rather like the statement widely attributed to Mick Jagger that ‘my head is Liberal, my heart is Labour but my money is Conservative’. Whether Jagger actually said it or not is beside the point; such a statement circulates because many people will identify with it, or with a local NZ variant. So we could say, even in a NZ context, especially with MMP, we could have a couple of the 5 tribes represented within a significant number of individual voters. This explains the number of votes spilt between party and candidate across a large number of electorates.

But then I also wonder if that reduction down to 5 tribes in the New Zealand context is too small, too reductive, too simplistic?

In the UK some years back a similar framework was developed in detail by BMG Research to make sense of what they termed “fractured politics” which saw them identify 10 clans of values and identities which they believed represented the UK in 2018 and then again in 2024: https://bmgresearch.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/bmg-the-broken-coalition-the-2024-election-report.pdf

These 10 clans represent different groups within the UK and were each given a percentage of the UK voters they align with. But even more interestingly, they were also aligned in political groups; so what we see here is what we can term socio-cultural AND political clans of a more nuanced understanding and assessment than the 5 NZ tribes.

The Clans (with predicted 2024 voter %) are:

Leave Coalition Clans: Sovereign Tradition 7% and Proud and Patriotic State 13%

The Swing Clans: The Measured Middle 5%; Modern Working Life 4% and

Strength and Respect 5%

Liberal and One Nation Clans: One Nation Modernisers 8% and Liberal Progress 9%

Left and Social Democracy Clans: Common Sense Solidarity 14% and Green Global Community 11%

And also; an Apathy Clan 24%

Could any of these be either mapped, or aligned onto or alongside the NZ 5 tribes?

My sense is that there are alignments between the NZ Precarious and Alienated Conservatives tribes with the Sovereign Tradition and Patriotic State clans. Likewise, the New Zealand Educated Progressives tribe align with the Common Sense Solidarity and Green Global Community clans. New Zealand’s Establishment Tribe linger and loiter near the UK Sovereign Tradition and One Nation modernisers; while our Middle New Zealand tribe could be seen to link with the three Swing clans of Measured Middle, Modern Working Life, and Strength and Respect. This leaves the Liberal Progress clan (the core voters for the UK Liberal Democrats) without a clear NZ tribe to align with …and we could say, without a clear NZ party…unless the Opportunity party can remake itself in such a fashion?

What is missing in the New Zealand analysis is the recognition of that sizable Apathy Clan which I’d suggest is present and growing in New Zealand but not captured or recognized in the 5 Tribe reductive analysis.

So already it is clear that some inter-mapping could add depth and breadth to our tribes by recognizing, as in anthropology, that tribes are composed of clans within them. While traditional clans are usually more closely related through blood and marriage; here we could say (as BMG do) that political clans are more closely related through values and identities.

But I’d also suggest that we need to remember social class and geographical location also have an on-going impact upon voting, political identification (or apathy) and on our values and identities. To properly recognize this in the New Zealand context we need to add in another 8 tribes that perhaps make this analysis (potentially) three dimensional.

Twenty years ago creative content agency Sputnik put out a list of 8 tribes of what they termed the hidden classes of New Zealand.

This combined attitudes and values, and what we could term an ethos, of what were identified as 8 new tribes (more than a class) of 21^st century New Zealand. For each tribe there was a town or suburb that operated as the collective spiritual ‘homeland’ and an attitude/ethos/ value that summarized each of them. While the 8 tribes book expanded on all of these in detail, in essence what was identified were what can be termed socio-cultural tribes.

These are (with primary ethos): North Shore: Achieving; Grey Lynn: Intellectual; Balclutha: Staunch; Remuera: Entitled; Otara: Community; Raglan: Free Spirited; Cuba Street: Avant Garde; Papatoetoe: Unpretentious.

It’s important to note that each location is not a singular literal one; but rather a collective representative one; all of these tribes are found across New Zealand, in both islands and also within our cities and major towns.

When I have discussed these with my students I have emphasized that many of us might have come from one tribe and, via education, work and/or relationships, remade ourselves into another; or we might be a mix of various tribes through family and whanau, but also in outlook and actions and ethos depending on the context. These 8 tribes are both tribe and clan and symbolize an emerging new New Zealand that is more multi-faceted than many might think (and some might wish) exists.

The challenge for our political and societal analysis is how to map all these tribes and clans onto our political landscape. But I’d suggest that National has North Shore, Balclutha and Remuera sewn up; Labour has Grey Lynn and Otara with a declining claim on Papatoetoe and wins power when it can gain enough North Shore votes; Act is bits of North Shore and Remuera with inroads into Balclutha (which is an ongoing internal tension); New Zealand First is Balclutha and Papatoetoe; the Greens are Cuba Street and Raglan and those who wish to be; while TPM potentially covers smatterings of Grey Lynn, Otara, Raglan, Cuba Street and Papatoetoe and perhaps Balclutha.

Where does this leave us? I’d say that on top of this 8-tribe delineation we need to map the 5 more recent, reductive tribes and then multiply all of this via the notion of clans. Only then may we start to begin to approach the political and social-cultural reality of 21^st century New Zealand.