Clark is all smiles despite poll slump

Helen Clark at Lynfield College yesterday. Picture / Martin Sykes

Prime Minister Helen Clark, in her orange mandarin-necked jacket and tailored black pants, smiles her way through her electorate chores as relentlessly as a Cheshire cat.

She smiles as the littlies of Owairaka School do their action dance on the new stage in the new hall the Prime Minister is here to open, swinging their arms, bobbing up and down in time to the music.

She smiles when they present her with a vivid oval painting by one of the pupils.

Later, at Lynfield College, flanked by her local MPs Phil Goff (Mt Roskill) and David Cunliffe (New Lynn) and trailed by a TV One reporter with questions about Zimbabwe and yesterday's dismal Herald-DigiPoll survey, the smiles only get wider.

She smiles most of the way through a long thank-you speech in Maori before the unveiling of a series of plaques to mark the college's new technology block, technical skills area, newly astro-turfed playing courts and shade cloth.

She smiles and swings her leg (just a little) when the Lynfield College jazz group blasts into action. She smiles when the principal, Steve Bovaird, shows her into the automotive technology part of the school: "This must be a boys' paradise."

"And a girls'!" bats back the teacher.

She gulps, then smiles even harder when the Lynfield hospitality students present her with one of the largest bowls of latte ever seen. She asked for a large one with plenty of froth.

Now, despite the hovering teachers and dignitaries gathered to speak to her, she has to deal with it.

In short, you would never suspect that the night before Helen Clark had received the worst possible news for a Prime Minister in the run-up to an election.

For the third poll in a row Labour's popularity has dropped. And in the latest the drop is substantial. Labour is down 6.9 per cent to 36.2 per cent. She is down 3.4 per cent as preferred Prime Minister.

"So, Prime Minister, how do you feel after seeing today's poll results?"

She draws a long breath, lets the smile slip at last and moves in to the subject that must have been gnawing at her all morning. Her answer comes out fast and smooth, as though she's rehearsed it for hours.

"I never react to one poll," she says. "When you're the Government you get a lot of hard balls bowled at you. Some problems are of the Government's own making, some aren't."

But, says Helen Clark, her administration has a "tremendous" record of economic growth, wage growth and employment. There's definitely a buzz around."

And do you want to give me a scoop and tell me when the election will be? Always the sport, always supportive of women, she hoots. "No, I'm not telling you that."