Audrey Young: First poll since the election gives Ardern a leadership bounce

It is a bit like the Christmas Colmar Brunton poll. There is a little cheer for almost everyone.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern can take heart that after just over six weeks as Prime Minister, she is the preferred Prime Minister poll by 37 per cent, compared with Bill English on 28 per cent.

She can also take heart from the fact that 51 per cent believe the Government is heading in the right direction and only 26 per cent in the wrong direction.

Bill English can take heart that National on 46 per cent is higher now than it was on at the election, 44.4 per cent.

At 39 per cent Labour is also higher than its 36.9 per cent at the election and the Greens on 7 per cent are marginally up from their 6.3 per cent.

Even New Zealand First, which is sitting right on the 5 per cent threshold (from 7.2 per cent at the election), can tell itself that the poll did not take in the full impact of Shane Jones' populist pledge to get young unemployed "off the couch" and planting trees.

There is no comfort for Act's David Seymour except perhaps the knowledge that the poll can't go into negative territory.

But essentially, there is no significant change in any of the parties' fortunes.

The beauty of this poll is that because the methodology has changed, there is strictly no proper point of comparison.

The comparison with the election result is one of statistical curiosity rather than validity.

A comparison with the last Colmar Brunton poll would be to compare a poll conducted 100 per cent through landline telephone contact with the current one in which 50 per cent of respondents were contacted by randomly generated cellphone numbers.

The disappointment for the Government is that it has not received a bounce in support which Labour did after the 1999 election and which National did after the 2008 election.

The poll, translated to seats in the House, gives the three parties of Government the same 63 seats it actually holds in the Parliament.

But in both 1999 and 2008, the previous incumbent Government had been well behind in the polls at election time and it had received a drubbing.

National did not in 2017 and as a large and strong opposition is no frame of mind to consider it has been rejected in the same way. Although it accepts the legitimacy of the Government, English continues to point out that National has more seats than Labour and New Zealand First combined, the coalition Government.