48% of voters expect Labour win

Whatever the swinging polls say, far more voters think Helen Clark will be Prime Minister than Don Brash after Saturday.

Overall, 48 per cent of 706 people interviewed between Friday and yesterday for the Herald-DigiPoll survey to be published tomorrow said they expected Labour to win on Saturday and only 27 per cent expected a National win. The rest had no opinion.

Far fewer National supporters expected National to win (40 per cent) than Labour supporters expected Labour to win (57 per cent).

And, as always in this election campaign, there was a gender gap: women went 49 per cent for Labour and 23 per cent for National and men 45 per cent Labour to 31 per cent National. The margin of error was 3.7 per cent.

The firm expectation that Labour will lead the next government - which is what "win" means in an MMP context - comes despite wild swings in the polls since May and even during the past 10 days which have puzzled some pollsters, party managers and observers.

Even during this past week's polling, DigiPoll has found high numbers of those polled changing their minds in each direction between Labour and National.

The 48 per cent expectation of a third term for Clark will both boost and worry Labour.

In May, when Labour's support began its steep fall towards the June trough, Labour strategists worried that the very high margins of up to 80 per cent expecting a Labour victory might lead Labour supporters not to bother to vote and hand National the Treasury benches by default.

While a Labour win is not such an automatic assumption as in May, the no-show factor will still be a worry.

Moreover, it might give some Labour sympathisers the belief they can vote with impunity for tax cuts to send a message to Finance Minister Michael Cullen, confident their preferred party will win anyway. National supporters, less confident of their preferred party's ascendancy, might be thereby more encouraged to vote.

An indication of just how hard tax cuts are biting into Labour will come in three polls to be published in the next 24 hours - on TV1 and TV3 tonight besides the Herald DigiPoll tomorrow morning.

* Tomorrow: Trends in the Herald poll of polls and where they point for Saturday.