The ‘Collins threshold’ has now been reached. The ‘Collins threshold’ is the number to trigger a leadership spill if National dropped below 40% in the polls. UMR’s latest polling has National slipping two percentage points from June’s 40% to 38%.
Worse still is the left-right gap, which is now yawning. That is the gap between Labour/Greens and National. On current polling, even if National had NZ First as a coalition partner they could not become the government.
And even worse than that is Bridges’ damning net favourables situation. His unfavourables are over 60% and his favourables of under 25% have given him a net negative.
It is now as plain as the nose on your face that Bridges’ leadership is no longer viable.
Todd McClay can run around all he likes telling nervous backbenchers and pundits alike that it is the headline National numbers that should be looked at. Steve Joyce’s refrain when discussing polls was the exact opposite. He would tell people that it was the policy areas that showed where things were truly at.
In that regard, National is failing just as badly. Despite failures in key policy areas like housing and the economy, UMR’s polling shows that voters trust Jacinda Ardern, and they don’t trust Simon Bridges at all.
The unfortunate experiment has come to its natural conclusion. National’s caucus must act, otherwise good people are going to lose their seats.
The cancer in National must be chopped out otherwise the patient will perish. They need to axe Bridges, cut the corrosive Paula Bennett loose and remove the withering dead wood taking up good seats. Then they might have a chance.
One last thing. Bridges’ unfavourables really skyrocketed after he decided to do over Jami-lee Ross and have not recovered since. Perhaps he should have listened to wiser heads at the time instead of heading down the path of destruction plotted by both himself and Paula Bennett.
Then again they say hindsight is always 20/20, and yet again this has proven to be the case
