John MacDonald: The campaign's nearly over. How was it for you?

With election day tomorrow, how would you rate the campaign?

It feels to me like we’ve been in campaign mode for the whole year. I couldn’t even bring myself to watch TV1's People’s Debate last night all the way through to the end.

Elections are never an overly positive affair, but this campaign has been pretty awful.

So much so, that I reckon a lot of people will have forgotten a lot of the policies that have been trotted out.

And I’m not the only one thinking it’s been a bit of a cluster.

Some of the political leaders don’t think it’s been all that great, either.

Labour leader Chris Hipkins says National has run the most negative campaign of any first-term Government. And the results of a new study would suggest he’s right on that.

The Internet, Social Media and Politics Research Lab at Victoria University has done some analysis and has found that 65 percent of National’s Facebook posts have been negative.

A lot of that will have come from the relentless online attacks the party has made on Greens co-leader Chlöe Swarbrick.

It’s been so relentless, that Swarbrick herself has said that she’s effectively being cyber-bullied by National.

I agree with her. Bearing in mind too that it was only a few weeks ago when National’s Selwyn MP Nicola Grigg went public with some of the online bullying she’s been dealing with.

Since then, National has continued having a go at Chlöe online. Using unflattering photos, all of that. Just really nasty stuff.

Not that Labour has been squeaky clean, either.

Because the study which has found that 65 percent of National’s Facebook posts have been negative also found that just over 50 percent of Labour’s posts have been negative too.

So Chris Hipkins may be right when he says it’s been the most negative campaign ever by a first-term Government. But there’s a bit of the old pot calling the kettle going on.

Then we get to how Winston Peters feels the campaign has gone.

The NZ First leader thinks it’s the worst one he’s ever seen. He’s seen a few and is describing this one as a circus. Criticising the party leaders who have been clamouring to the gelato shop in Christchurch to try the gelato flavour named after them.

He’s been saying: “It's just astonishing what's happened here. It's turned into, sadly, a circus. This idea of having an ice cream poll and every leader dutifully turning up, subservient as it is, to such an unscientific, unprofessional thing is beyond me.”

He goes on: “And then you've got people petting dogs. I love dogs, but you know, going around petting dogs can be very dangerous sometimes, you pat the wrong dog.

“They’re talking about a cost of living crisis, and they’re flipping hamburgers.”

He’s talking there about Christopher Luxon and David Seymour who have both been filmed in the past week making burgers.

I don’t get too upset about that kind of thing. It’s just politicians being politicians.

But I do think that it’s a campaign we’ll all be pleased to see the end of. For me, it’s been too long and too negative, with too many debates.

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