The general election is eleven months away, and the conservative Newstalk ZB has ratcheted its on-air promotion of the current government. 'It's National's election to lose!' exclaimed right wing presenter Ryan Bridge this week, while breakfast host Mike Hosking has already taken the opportunity to attack the Labour Party on more than one occasion. We can expect more of this over the coming months. But will Newstalk ZB have any influence on the election result, or is it just preaching to the converted?
AS ELECTION YEAR heats up, Newstalk ZB’s breakfast host Mike Hosking is once again positioning himself as the country’s most enthusiastic champion of the National Party. This is hardly a revelation. For years, Hosking has made little effort to hide his ideological bearings. He is a small-government conservative who distrusts regulation, loathes what he sees as bureaucratic creep, and treats any redistributive policy as a personal affront. His morning monologues are a steady drumbeat of pro-market orthodoxy, delivered with the confidence of someone who believes he is stating obvious truths rather than contestable political positions.
But this year, the stakes feel different. With a tight election looming and a political landscape fractured by cost-of-living pressures, housing insecurity, and a pervading sense of national gloom, Hosking’s microphone becomes more than a platform for commentary. It becomes a campaign tool. He will, without question, spend the year hammering Labour, the Greens, and Te Pati Maori, while trying to boost National’s credibility and framing its policies as the only rational path forward. The question is whether it matters.
Hosking’s defenders argue that he is simply one voice in a crowded media environment. His critics counter that he is effectively a partisan actor masquerading as a broadcaster. But both sides often miss the more interesting dynamic: Hosking may not be shaping the electorate so much as reflecting the worldview of the audience he already has. In other words, he might be preaching almost exclusively to the converted.
Newstalk ZB’s morning audience is not a random cross-section of the country. It skews older, wealthier, and more conservative—precisely the demographic most aligned with National’s political project. Its audience is also predominantly male. These listeners tune in not to have their assumptions challenged but to have them affirmed. Hosking obliges, offering a daily dose of ideological reassurance. Inflation? Labour’s fault. Crime? Labour’s fault. Growing unenmployment? Labour’s fault. The country’s mood? 'We’re better than this,' he says, while insisting that only a National government can restore the nation’s lost confidence.
This is not analysis; it is narrative construction. And it works because it tells his audience what they already believe. The relationship is symbiotic. Hosking gives his listeners a sense of clarity and moral certainty; they give him ratings and the satisfaction of being the country’s most listened to conservative broadcaster. Meantime NZME, Newstalk ZB's owner, rakes in the advertising dollars.
The real question though is whether Hosking can meaningfully shift undecided voters or whether his impact is confined to energising a base that would vote National regardless. The evidence suggests the latter. Being the only talkback station in town means that Newstalk ZB’s reach is large, but its political influence is narrower than its ratings imply. Younger voters—who are more politically fluid—are not listening. Maori and Pasifika communities are not listening. Renters, students, and precarious workers are not listening. Even middle-aged suburban families, once National’s reliable backbone, are increasingly fragmented in their political loyalties.
Hosking’s audience is loyal but static. It is not expanding; it is consolidating. And consolidation is not the same as persuasion.
This is where the paradox of his political role becomes clear. Hosking is often treated as a kingmaker, a figure whose endorsement carries electoral weight. But his power may be overstated. He does not convert; he comforts. He does not broaden National’s coalition; he reinforces its existing one. His commentary may help keep National voters angry, motivated, and engaged, but it does little to reach the voters who actually decide elections: the disengaged, the uncertain, the frustrated middle.
In fact, his strident tone may even repel them. For many New Zealanders, the relentless certainty of talkback radio feels disconnected from their lived experience. The country’s problems are complex, structural, and deeply rooted. Hosking’s framing—blame Labour, trust markets, cut taxes, cheerlead for capitalism—can feel like a relic from a political era that no longer matches the scale of the challenges people face. When the cost of groceries is rising faster than wages, when housing feels unattainable, when public services are strained, the promise of 'getting back to basics' rings hollow.
To add insult to injury, Hosking is enormously wealthy, cocooned from the realities of a country buckling under the iron heel of austerity. On his breakfast show he pores over the stockmarket figures, but he has nothing to say about the rising cost of groceries.
Hosking is not shaping the national conversation so much as anchoring one side of it. He provides ideological coherence for the conservative bloc, ensuring that National’s messaging has a consistent, emotionally resonant amplifier. With the National Party led by the unpopular and charisma-free Christopher Luxon there's probably some political benefit for National in what Hosking does.
But it is also not transformative. His influence is real but bounded. He can rally the faithful, but he cannot expand the congregation.
As election year unfolds, Hosking will do what he always does: champion National, attack its opponents, and insist that the country’s salvation lies in the continuance of conservative governance. But its doubtful that anyone outside his loyal audience is listening to what he has to say.
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