The most recent and historically the most accurate poll is that of the Labour Party’s own pollsters, now called Talbot Mills.
For the record, I was a founding director of this company 30-odd years ago. It was then known as Insight Market Research, then UMR and is now Talbot Mills. I haven’t been involved for a long time.
This has the left and right political blocs polling about equal with the pivotal role occupied by Te Pati Māori.
It looks like we will return to what have been, except for the 2020 contest, normal MMP elections, - very closely fought contests.
Labour and National, as the only parties that could lead a government after the 2023 election, will be looking hard at what they have to do to win.
National has the more difficult task.
National will need to make much more of an effort to sell its leader Christopher Luxon.
Polls tell us that he is no John Key or Jacinda Ardern, but he can still be a Jim Bolger who, it’s often forgotten, won three consecutive elections in the 1990s.
Many voters are more strongly influenced by a party’s leaders than its policies or local candidates.
After the honeymoon granted to new leaders, Luxon’s poll support is falling.
National must develop more “on the ground” support. In a close election it is this activity - door knocking, delivering pamphlets, mounting cottage meetings etc - which can tip the balance in a close contest.
National’s party membership is visibly aging and, in my experience, living in a sometimes-marginal electorate for many years, cannot deploy local support in any significant way.
As a campaign manager with 30 years’ experience, if I was to choose between a million-dollar donation and a couple of hundred workers on the ground, I would take the workers every time.
National will also need to develop and sell sensible new policies it would implement if elected next year.
So far, the only significant policy announced and repeated by National is that of cutting taxes for the already well off.
I very much doubt that this has appeal to any but a small sliver of the electorate who are rusted-on National voters anyhow, and it leads to questions about which spending National intends to cut.
The PM’s speech at the Labour Party conference made the point that the previous National Government, despite promising it wouldn’t, proceeded to cut the day-care subsidies to pay for tax cuts for the already well off.
The National Party must also resist the temptation to recycle old “populist” policies which failed, and which don’t bear examination.
As I write Luxon has announced that National’s youth offending policy will be to develop “Young Offender Military Academies”. These boot camps make youth offending worse not better.
This was a National Party policy for the 2008 general election but was a failure and quickly abandoned.
Sir Kim Workman, deeply experienced in youth offending, branded boot camps as “correctional quackery”.
Phil Goff said he scrapped them when he was justice minister in 2000 because they produced a more than 90 per cent recidivism rate. “The main problem with boot camps is you tend to turn out faster, fitter young criminals with the same bad attitudes.”
Boot camps, like jails, are universities of crime.
I felt sorry for Paul Goldsmith, National’s Justice spokesman, who had to defend boot camps on radio. Goldsmith is an intelligent man who obviously didn’t believe in what he’d been asked to stand up for.
National should revive policies like Sir Bill English’s plan to shorten jail sentences for offenders who undertake self-improvement.
This has been proven to dramatically reduce jail populations and re-offending.
Though this may lack the headline potential of boot camps it has a proven track record of success. A Bill English is sadly absent from today’s National Party.
Mike Williams grew up in Hawke’s Bay and is a Director of The NZ Howard League.
