Chlöe Swarbrick’s Auckland Central Victory

Abstract

In the 2020 election, Chlöe Swarbrick won the Green party’s second-ever electorate seat, in Auckland Central. A high-profile candidate, an experienced campaign team, some favourable conditions, and mass engagement enabled Swarbrick to build a winning coalition. For socialists, who are returning to electoral politics throughout liberal democracies, the skills required to win electoral campaigns are key. With an emphasis on ‘building a community, not an army’, the Swarbrick campaign offers useful lessons in how to build and sustain political engagement. With a more explicitly socialist political agenda and a stronger organising theory of change, election campaigns could provide a spark for a left political movement in Aotearoa New Zealand.