When the media moves in unity, even a 1% party can be framed as a rising force. The Opportunity Party’s surge says less about voters — and more about who the media chooses to elevate.
by Ani O’Brien
Political momentum is one of the most powerful forces in an election. As the original piece notes, “people want to support parties that appear viable and relevant.” Media repetition creates legitimacy: interviews, profiles, speculation, and commentary all signal to voters that a party matters. Once that perception takes hold, support grows—not necessarily because people agree with the ideas, but because they believe the party is going somewhere.
That’s why the saturation coverage of the Opportunity Party (TOP) this year has raised eyebrows. Minor parties sometimes enjoy brief surges, but the enthusiasm with which journalists have embraced TOP is unusual. Until recently, TOP was polling barely above 1%, a level that normally earns a party little more than a polite shrug. Yet the media treated it as a rising force long before the polls reflected any such rise.
Compare this with the New Conservatives, who have spent years in the same 1–3% range without receiving anything like the same sustained attention. They are treated as fringe, while TOP is treated as fresh, intriguing, and full of potential. The difference isn’t performance — it’s demographics. TOP’s base is urban, university‑educated, and culturally aligned with the professional class that dominates newsrooms. The New Conservatives draw from religious, socially conservative, and provincial communities — groups now almost absent from media institutions.
This isn’t conspiracy; it’s familiarity bias. Journalists naturally gravitate toward movements that feel socially comfortable and ideologically respectable within their circles. But the result is a wildly uneven playing field. TOP is framed through possibility and promise; conservative minor parties are framed through controversy and culture war.
Narrative plays a huge role too. TOP offers a compelling storyline: the plucky technocratic party that “deserves” success but has never quite broken through. After three failed attempts, the idea of a fourth‑time‑lucky breakthrough is irresistible to political commentators. And so the coverage becomes breathless: is TOP the “dark horse”? The “kingmaker”? Has Qiulae Wong “found the formula”? The repetition creates its own momentum.
Meanwhile, critical scrutiny is almost entirely absent. TOP is routinely described as “centrist,” a label repeated so often it has become accepted fact. Yet many of its flagship policies — universal basic income, a Land Value Tax, free public transport — sit far to the left of the political centre. Its candidate list includes Green‑aligned activists and even one of the authors of He Puapua. But journalists rarely interrogate these contradictions. TOP says it is centrist; therefore, it is centrist.
The media also entertain the fantasy that TOP could work with anyone — National, Labour, ACT, NZ First — as though it were the Switzerland of New Zealand politics. But the party’s policy platform is fundamentally incompatible with the centre‑right. National and ACT campaign on lower taxes and smaller government; TOP campaigns on new taxes, redistribution, and a more activist state. Coalition negotiations are about policy, not vibes. When the chips fall, TOP will align with Labour, the Greens, and Te Pāti Māori. Everyone knows this — including the media — yet the illusion of cross‑bloc flexibility persists because it helps build the momentum narrative.
The lack of scrutiny is most glaring around TOP’s Land Value Tax, a proposal that would reshape New Zealand’s tax system and affect homeowners, retirees, investors, and businesses. Normally, such a policy would be dissected from every angle. Instead, voters get glossy profiles of Wong that read more like lifestyle features than political journalism.
None of this means TOP shouldn’t succeed. But serious parties should withstand serious questioning. Instead, the media have skipped the hard part — interrogating whether TOP’s ideas deserve success — and jumped straight to imagining its triumph. If TOP enters Parliament this year, it will be because the media helped build the runway.
This story was first published by Ani O’Brien on her Substack account Thought Crimes
