Perspective with Heather du Plessis-Allan: Harry Mowbray's not wrong about women voters

Jeez, Harry Mowbray's clearly not afraid of poking a bear, eh? Fresh from publicly arguing with the National Party over vote-splitting, he's now complaining publicly that elections are decided by women who vote emotionally and pull politics to the left.

Now, I'm 100 percent sure he's going to cop it for this, but I actually don't disagree with him. I think he's almost, almost entirely right.

So, his central argument here is basically that political parties target four-wheel-driving mums with two kids in Remuera because those are the swing voters, and he's not wrong. I mean, I myself have said this on the show to you: women decide elections, particularly mums, because mums are the key decision-makers in homes. I know dads aren't going to agree with this but all the women out there will be nodding their heads right now.

Now, Harry then goes on to complain that these women vote left and again, he's not wrong. I mean, just go and read one piece of Curia Research, the polling company. Go and have a look at a bit of their analysis. They've done pages of it. They have found that the centre-right parties, ACT, National and New Zealand First, lost women voters at the last election. Those women went to the Greens, the Opportunities Party and Labour.

The question is where Harry gets into a little bit of trouble. It's when he suggests it's because women vote emotionally. The truth of the matter is that we all vote emotionally, all of us, whether we're men or women. Political parties actively try to tap into this.

There are differing opinions on what that emotion is, but some people say women tend to vote predominantly with empathy because they are more empathetic. Men tend to vote predominantly with anger, which is why you're going to find a lot of men voting for populist parties that actively drive anger.

It's logical, then, to think that women would be more likely to support left-wing parties, right? Because these are parties that appeal to empathy by promising more welfare for those doing it tough and you can see how a woman would go for that.

Now, for the record, I think female empathy did play a part but as I've said before on this show, I think it's also partly because women and mums run the household budgets a lot of the time and they know how hard things have been in the cost-of-living crisis we're now coming out of.

So mums might have been more won over by the freebies, such as free doctors' visits. It was emotion, yes, but it was also the reality of what was going on with the household budget.

So, before you get too angry with him, just like with the vote-splitting campaign, Harry's not wrong. In fact, he's mostly bang on.

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