Nats ahead by 5%

Well it is halfway through the 4 week Labour fight back campaign and the effect has been a net 7% swing to National.

The Fairfax/ACNeilsen poll has National 5% ahead of Labour, a 7% change from the 2% lead Labour had a month ago.

Also of interest is the Preferred PM gap has closed to only 10%. Now personally I don’t regard that indicator as at all meaningful, but what I do find interesting is that Brash has been the subject on non stop abuse from Labour, and the result is he shoots up the Preferred PM ratings.

I also note that 52% of NZ First supporters favour a deal with Labour. I still believe he is most likely to go with Labour, but will not go with a party if they can not form a majority along with NZ First. Winston does not like the idea of someone being able to do to him, what he likes to do to others.

Now the full results are:

National 42% (+4)
Labour 37% (-3)
NZ First 8% (-1)
Green 6% (+1)
United 2% (nc)
ACT 2% (nc)
Maori 2% (nc)
Progressive 0% (nc)

In terms of seats in Parliament this would be:

National 52 (+25)
Labour 46 (-5)
NZ First 10 (-3)
Green 8 (-1)
United 2 (-6)
ACT 0 (-9)
Maori 2 (+1)
Progressive 1 (-1)

Total 121 (+1)

The only two party combination would be Nat/NZF with 62 seats. Labour/Green/Maori/Prog gets to 57 seats and even with United is 59 seats so Labour would also need NZ First to rule. The key thing may be that Labour/NZF would be 56 seats only so would need either the Greens or all of Maori, Progressive and United.

People should remember the campaign has yet officially to start, and I think it would be a brave person to start making predictions. However Labour will be somewhat dismayed that their attacks on National have not worked. The problem for Labour, being the incumbent, is that they can not credibly announce much new policy, so the only way for them to regain the lead is to attack National. I suspect they will soon roll out Mallard to say something outrageous under parliamentary privilege.

Oh and a final thing worth noting is that on this poll, if Labour retained all its current electorates, they would have only two List MPs – Cullen and Wilson. So how is that for a motivational challenge – 2% less and they both go 🙂