Photo: RNZ
Trailing in the polls with only hours left to campaign, Labour leader Chris Hipkins still had plenty of fight in him during Thursday night's final debate with National's Christopher Luxon.
Hipkins had multiple new lines of attack and he made sure they were heard in an aggressive performance.
He labelled National's plan for income tax cuts a "tax swindle" and reminded viewers of Luxon's past "bottom feeders" and "wet whiny and miserable" comments.
Luxon accused Hipkins of running a "very negative, very personal, very attacking campaign" and commentator and former National MP Paula Bennett said we saw "lippy and snippy" but not much "Chippy" from Hipkins during the evening.
RNZ's analysis of the debate, however, suggests the two leaders used roughly the same proportion of negative words.
Read more analysis from the previous debates:
- How two men hogged the mic in minor party leaders' debate
- Christopher Luxon's very talkative debate debut
- The one word National's leader used 76 times in last night's debate
- The long and the short of it as Peters, Seymour clash again
Who talked the most?
For the third debate in a row, Luxon spoke the most words of the evening, with 38 percent. This was down on his first debate on TVNZ where he spoke 43 percent of the words and slightly up on the Newshub debate, where he spoke 36 percent.
Hipkins spoke 30 percent of the words, as did debate moderator Jessica Mutch McKay.
There was plenty of interruption and not a lot of long answers. But of the 10 longest, Hipkins had six of them, up from three in the first debate, and similar to his seven in the second debate.
Luxon gave the single longest answer, responding to a question about water and sewerage infrastructure with 163 words.
What was said
Once again, Luxon said "actually" incredibly frequently. Like the first and second debate, it was by far his most used word, said 52 times. At one point, he even said it three times in a single sentence: "We're going to make sure that we actually get a deal in India that actually starts trade and actually gets moving of capital and people and innovation."
But it was, actually, used fewer times than in the last two debates - 69 times in the first debate and 76 in the second.
It seemed to catch on as "actually" was Hipkins' fifth most-mentioned word. He said it only 13 times, behind "New Zealanders" and "think", among others. In previous debates his top words were "think" and "people".
Luxon said "Chris" 21 times, while Hipkins referred to the National leader 16 times, using "Chris' and "Christopher" eight times each.
A feature of the debate was Hipkins repeating a series of attack lines against Luxon.
In a section on welfare, he said Luxon has described beneficiaries as "bottom-feeders". He repeated the phrase three times. Another past Luxon utterance - that New Zealand is "wet, whiny and miserable" - was raised by Hipkins four times.
Hipkins also got out "tax swindle" twice.
Luxon, in response, told Hipkins to "calm down" six times. He also twice chided Hipkins for being "disrespectful".
"I think you're being really disrespectful. We're trying to have a conversation here," Luxon said.
And while Hipkins was eager to mention Winston Peters three times, Luxon didn't let the NZ First leader's name pass his lips a single time.
The catchphrases used heavily in the months leading up to the campaign have largely been retired. "Coalition of chaos," used by both leaders, was absent again last night. "Wasteful spending," a past favourite of Luxon's, was only used once. Hipkins' "bread and butter," did not make a showing.
RNZ also counted how many times each leader used certain words which relate to key topics. The most mentioned keyword was "economy" which was mentioned 18 times, followed by "tax" which was said 16 times.
Dodging the hard questions
A common tactic to avoid answering a question is to use what's referred to as a 'block and bridge'. The politician acknowledges the question using a 'block' and then uses a 'bridge' phrase to move the topic to something they are more comfortable with.
Luxon continued to use variations of "what I say" heavily, using it 12 times. This was the same number of times he used it during the longer format Newshub debate with Paddy Gower and up from eight times in the first TVNZ debate.
What was the vibe?
According to a language sentiment data dictionary, which rates words as either positive, neutral or negative, Luxon used the highest percentage of positive words and the highest percentage of negative words.
In previous debates Luxon has also used a bigger percentage of positive words, however this was the first debate where he used a bigger percentage of negative words than Hipkins.
How we analysed the data: The debate was transcribed by Otter.ai and then manually cleaned to improve accuracy. Cross talk - where debate participants spoke over each other was removed where words were unintelligible. Interjections when intelligible were included. Text was analysed using R and the Quanteda package.
Stay up to date with Checkpoint's live election night special with Lisa Owen, Corin Dann, Jane Patterson and reporters around the country from 7pm to midnight on Saturday, running alongside live data and blogging with electorate and party vote results on RNZ's website. RNZ Asia will also be running its own live blog in Chinese.
实时更新报道， 尽在RNZ中文！ 本周六下午5点起，以中文实时追踪2023年新西兰大选。各党票数、全国选情 、计票进展与最终结果，第一手资讯尽在 www.rnz.co.nz/chinese，本周六，我们与您一同关注大选。
Then on Sunday, stay tuned for the Morning Report special from 8am to 10am, examining the results, the drama, and the changes from the night before: with polls this close, exactly who's in government will likely come down to negotiations.