Gordon Campbell on Scoop discusses what the public’s response will be to the new government.

Last October, people voted for an allegedly more competent, supposedly moderate government. How will voters react when it becomes crystal clear that National is complicit with the extremism of its support partners, who are dictating much of the tone and a lot of the policy content of the Luxon administration.

Well, I think they knew more then than you imply in this paragraph.  Like almost everyone else, you ignore the opportunity to find a deeper explanation that comes from the collective (collective subconscious).  People are terrified of the knowledge that only massive change in the way society is organized (‘the future is less’) will be sufficient to address the challenges of climate change.  As Naomi Klein says in her book Doppelganger, “… comes down to who and what we cannot bear to see, …”.        
You come closest in this paragraph:

There’s more to it, though, than spin, or bad journalism. At the national level, as Jonathan Haidt pointed out years ago, politics operates a lot like a religion. Meaning: Elections are decided less on policy detail and more on moral values. The right offers a comprehensive moral package of freedom, personal responsibility, strong families, national pride, and inner resilience.                      

But still that does not get it well enough.  It’s the terror at the knowledge.