26% in 96 days

In my “By the numbers” blog at Stuff I ask:

The One News and 3 News polls out last night both showed National with around a 26 per cent lead over Labour. The election is only 96 days away, so the question is, can such a gap be closed in a short period of time?

I point out, that the gap is in fact less than that:

If they can persuade the Maori Party to support them, then they have 52 seats to 71 for National, ACT and United Future. They need to pick up 10 seats or around 8 points to be able to govern 62 seats to 61.

But their problem is:

But with Phil Goff, only 26 per cent say he is performing well and 53 per cent say he is performing poorly. These results are bad enough by themselves, but equally of concern is they they are getting worse, not better. In December 2010 only 39 per cent of New Zealanders said Goff was doing a bad job, and he has managed to increase that to 53 per cent of New Zealanders. And if you go back to February 2009, he was regarded poorly by only 27 per cent of New Zealanders. A cruel observation would be that two years of campaigning has managed to double the number of people who think he is doing a poor job.

You can comment over at Stuff.