Our why
We’re setting out to create a non-partisan community built and community owned pollster and think tank.
Powered by people. Enabled by technology.
We want to help Kiwis find solutions to the long term issues facing our country - and support efforts to bringing a more bi-partisan approach to our long term challenges.
From how we tackle climate change and respond to the increasing frequency of severe weather events,
To how we pay for pensions and healthcare as our population ages,
From what infrastructure it is most important for us to build,
To how we can create the sorts of jobs in our economy that attract more of our young people stay here rather than heading off to work overseas for long periods (like I did).
And how we create a cohesive community, where difference is harnessed for our mutual advantage, rather than used to drive us apart.
We want to do this by helping Kiwis see outside our own echo chambers, allowing all of us to:
Find out where you ‘fit’ in the spectrum of views on these tricky issues,
Find what we agree on,
Where we disagree,
Why others think differently
And where we might compromise to find solutions we can agree on
Join us
Where we’re at
We are just getting started building Our Tomorrow.
Our plans have been strongly shaped by the timeline of New Zealand's General Election due on 7 November. That’s because that’s the period every three years when Kiwis think the most about these issues.
March to August
We’ve partnered with Kantar to undertake our foundational research on a pro bono basis.
Together we designed and undertook a survey of 2,501 Kiwis on over 100 questions.
As well as the usual questions about peoples background (what we in the trade call demographics) or their opinions on specific issues - we also asked about people’s values and the things that sit behind how they view the world.
This approach is based on the work of More In Common in the UK, US and elsewhere, and they have supported us to bring that methodology here to New Zealand.
The strength of this approach is that it is often a better predictor of how groups of people will respond to a broad range of issues - than simple demographic or issue based questions alone.
This approach is also grounded in decades of research by Political Scientists globally, by drawing on established frameworks like Moral Foundation Theory, Insider/Outsider theory, Parenting/Authoritarianism, Agency and Populism amongst others.
September
That research was completed in August 2026, and we are now deep in analysing the results.
We’re also just staring to share some of the results on a theme by theme basis as we complete that analysis. See our research pages for more info.
Like More In Common, we’re looking to create some ‘Kiwi segments’ that between them represent the entire New Zealand population, and create a Kiwi Kwiz that anyone can take to find out who they fit with, and where they differ from other Kiwis. We hope to encourage Kiwis to sign up to an ongoing community as part of that.
November
After the election we plan to ask our members how they voted - and importantly why. That means asking which policies persuaded people to vote for which parties. Often people vote for specific parties because of specific policies - even if they don’t agree with all the rest of their policies. We want to make that visible to our members and the political parties as they enter coalition negotiations and start to make coalition agreements. So sign up to our mailing list to be part of that.
We hope that by making our political leaders more explicitly aware of the specific policies Kiwis most want their new government to deliver - that they will be more able to find the solutions that Kiwis agree on the most and help us move forward as a country.
2027
Who knows at this point? And I wouldn’t want to overpromise, but…
We want to do things like create a chat engine to help Kiwis ask personas of the other Kiwi groups ‘why’ they think differently about issues, so Kiwis can start talking to each other more easily about these often under-discussed topics…
…And to create a way to ask more Kiwis what they think are the best long term solutions to our trickiest challenges in detail, in a long term community, so we can find solutions to complex problems that carry the widest level of public support. And so might stick when governments change.
But let’s just get to Christmas first…
How we started
Our Tomorrow NZ was founded by Paul Comer in February 2026.
After 30 years working in the public sector and politics in both New Zealand and the United Kingdom, Paul wanted to create a forum where together we could find our common ground.
As a communications professional and election campaigner - Paul knows first hand how politics and the media operate.
Our competitive media and political ‘markets’ encourage us to find our differences.
Both are becoming increasingly fractured, with more of us turning away from them as a result. News avoidance is up and voting participation down.
That’s not good for our democracy.
Both systems often overlook what we have in common - because politicians and media need to compete for attention, or for votes.
This isn’t a bad thing in itself. Competition is necessary to keep politicians aligned to the changing aspirations of the population. And competition is necessary to keep media representing the widest points of view.
But collaboration is necessary in democracy too.
Politics at the end of the day is a collective endeavour to find our shared future. But too often those forces of competition can stop us finding areas where we actually agree and can collaborate together.
So Our Tomorrow NZ is trying to bring some balance back to that.
To put a little more collaboration back in to our competitive system.
Nowhere is this more obvious than those issues that need to be solved ‘beyond’ the political cycle. Those things that take longer to solve than any one government has in power.
So Our Tomorrow NZ is setting out to find out what real Kiwis think about these long term issues, where we agree, where we differ and where we can come together to plan for our shared tomorrow together.
And to share those views with each other, and our political leaders.
The premise is simple. That we have more in common than what divides us.
Join us
Contact us
Interested in working together? Fill out some info and we will be in touch shortly. We can’t wait to hear from you!