PM announces election date

The Prime Minister has announced the general election will be held on Saturday 26 November 2011.

I must point out that last March I blogged on the election date and said that 26 November was the most likely date. I was never one who thought the PM would go early for a possible tactical advantage.

In fact Key has again shown how different he is to his predecessors. Previous PMs have treated the election date as being more precious, than – well the Ring to Gollum. They’ve kept it secret for as long as possible, to gain maximum tactical advantage from it.

Hopefully this move by Key, may be a first step towards having a fixed election date. Unless the Government has collapsed or lost confidence, Parliament should continue full-term. Previous PMs Muldoon and Clark called snap election on flimsy excuses (Clark’s was there were too many points of order during question time).

Under the new electoral legislation s3B(2)((a)(ii) the regulated period starts three months before the election day, on the 26th of August 2011.