February 22, 2016 9:00am by David Farrar

Dim-Post on the Opposition

Danyl McL writes:

Two new polls in the last few days. Roy Morgan here, Colmar Brunton (I’ll link to it when its up). There are interesting discrepancies at the margins: Roy Morgan has the Greens up and New Zealand First way down, Colmar Brunton the opposite and it’d be nice to know which – if either – was right. But the general trend is no change. National still close to 50% entering the second year of its third term.

Labour were polling 39% at the same stage in their third term – 6% behind the major opposition party.

Which is amazing but also not even slightly surprising. The first six weeks of the year has seen the left-wing parties talking about subjects of great interest to left-wing voters – the TPPA, free tertiary education, should John Key go to Waitangi? But, as with the last seven years, they’ve said and done nothing to cause soft National voters to question the competence or credibility of the government to run the country, and consider an alternative.

May their stupidity long continue.

That’s really the game, now. Opposition MPs talking about values and visionary aspirations and compromised sovereignty and the future of work and what a jerk they all think John Key is is all very well, but if Key’s government is seen to be doing a good job in delivering the core government services that voters value, they’re not going to change their votes.

Jobs, wages, low inflation, low interest rates, more hospital operations, better schools etc etc – that is what matters to people.