Mike Grimshaw (Sociology) has published a chapter WAITING FOR WINSTON: THE 2023 ELECTION CARTOONS AS THEATRE OF THE ABSURD in the 2023 election book “Back on Track? The NZ General Election of 2023 edited by Stephen Levine (VUW)
I discuss 84 cartoons, chosen form the hundreds I collected from 19 January 2023, when Arden stood down and announced the 2023 election date. My year-long engagement with editorial cartoons this election leads me to suggest that they may be a better measure of public mood than polls, provided that a range of cartoonists, across all outlets, are consulted. Editorial cartoons are opinions that both reflect and transmit the public mood – or, we should say, public moods… it was clear across 2023 from the Herald’s cartoonists that Labour was in trouble in Auckland from the moment Hipkins took over.
Here I am reminded by a comment made by British MP Michael Foot (1986, p. 4), that ‘the great cartoonists understand the politicians better than the politicians themselves’. While he was writing of the great New Zealand-born cartoonist David Low –the Herald’s cartoonists are very good, but I assume they would never put themselves in the same category as Low – it is true, I believe, that good cartoonists know and understand their readership and their moods better than the readers themselves. If they did not, they couldn’t cartoon for a wide, collective audience. My advice for the next election’s spin doctors is to take careful note of the political cartoons – and especially those in the Herald, given the political and social dominance of Auckland. Where the Herald’s cartoons go, there goes the country
