National up in the polls

Tonight’s One News poll has National up 2% to 46% and Labour down 3% to 36%. I don’t believe there is a 10% gap, and polls so soon after an election don’t mean much, but it is logical that Labour would be losing some ground with the last few weeks being full of negative stories on Peters and Benson-Pope.

Labour are lucky they have Xmas coming up as they will have a second chance next year to get the Government off to a positive start. But if they fail at that, they may find like National/NZ First did in 96/97 that if you don’t at least start strongly, you have little chance to make the finish line.

If the poll results tonight did reflect an election (and remember they tend to be overly optimistic for National) then the seats would be:

National 59 (+11)
Labour 47 (-3)
NZ First 0 (-7)
Greens 8 (+2)
Maori 4 (nc)
United 1 (-2)
ACT 1 (-1)
Prog 1 (nc)