The latest Newshub/Reid Research poll is out and it runs red, blood red.
The headline numbers are:
Labour: 56.5% – 72 seats
National: 30.6% down 12.7% – 39 seats (down 16 seats)
NZ First: 2.7%
Greens: 5.5%
Act: 1.8%
Preferred PM
Ardern: 59.5%
Bridges: 4.5% down 6.1%
This is a very bad poll for National and precisely what I predicted in my second podcast on National’s polling.
This poll also is in line with the much scoffed at UMR polls which have been leaking. Perhaps people will now start to stop making excuses for Simon Bridges. The simple fact is that he is tits and needs to go.
Now the caucus knows why he cancelled their caucus meeting last week. They demanded polling. He said he would take it to the next caucus. He then cancelled the meeting. The next caucus should be his last as leader.
That is why this past week Todd Muller and Nikki Kaye have enlisted the help of Murray McCully and Michelle Boag in order to cajole back bench MPs into backing them. McCully is said to be promising money, and Boag is, well, Boag.
The grand selling point from the unknown Todd Muller is that they will bring back Amy Adams to number three and in on the list. The top four, usually called the kitchen cabinet, for them is Muller, Kaye, Adams and Chris Bishop.
If they were a band they’d struggle to get past copyright issues because Wet Wet Wet is already taken. If they do choose them then this will likely be their election song:
There is a couple of massive problems for that bunch of wets. Firstly, running a campaign with a slogan that National is just like Labour but less crap isn’t a winner. Secondly not one of the top four they are proposing is even on the charts for the job of preferred Prime Minister and thirdly, three of the four would lose their seats on those numbers.
That is a massive problem for National. On these numbers, they’d lose 16 MPs, and most of the list.
National currently has 41 electorate MPs and 15 List MPs for a total of 56 seats. With these results, they would only be entitled to 39 seats. Which means all the List MPs will likely disappear, plus a couple of electorates.
As I have said before, any MP with a majority of less than 6500 is at risk. The ones most at risk are Hutt South, Auckland Central, Whanganui, Maungakiekie, Northcote, Wairarapa, and Otaki electorates.
That’s the end of the pretenders right there. Both Kaye and Bishop would join the lengthening dole queues along with the thoroughly nasty Denise Lee.
Labour would also have a very good chance of taking, (or at least running them close), electorates like Tukituki, East Coast, Invercargill, Hamilton East and Rangitata.
Looking at those potential losses then I would expect just four List MPs, Paula Bennett, Paul Goldsmith Michael Woodhouse and Alfred Ngaro to survive. However, Muller is pushing for Adams to stay so one of those will go to keep Adams in a job.
In the current top four, Bishop and Kaye would be expecting high rankings mainly because they’d lose their seats.
Melissa Lee, Anne Tolley, Kanwaljit Singh Bakshi, Brett Hudson, Jian Yang, Parmjeet Parmar, Jo Hayes, Maureen Pugh, Nicola Willis, Agnes Loheni and Paolo Garcia would all be gone.
This is now worse than 2002, another prediction that I made.
National needs to do something drastic because to do nothing will see them slide further. We are now into the core and those voters have stark choices. They won’t vote Red, so they will either not vote, or vote for a mitigation strategy.
And yes that means Winston Peters.
National just fell off a cliff, exactly as I predicted would happen. Polls like this become self-fulfilling and National will slide further.
They now need strong leadership to challenge the excesses of this government properly. Now is the time for bravery not meek surrender.
No MMP government ever has delivered a single party majority, so expect Labour to slide back under 50%. But it won’t all go back to National. Unless they give voters something/someone new to get enthusiastic about.
It’s a bit chilly for a BBQ but perfect weather for a bonfire. Time to chuck all the dead wood on it.
