Election 2020: Poll shows Judith Collins' biggest risk is apathy, but could it save Winston Peters?

NZ First leader Winston Peters. Photo / Peter de Graaf

The latest poll showing National has failed to make any traction over the past fortnight followed a week in which Judith Collins courted controversy with comments about obesity.

Collins is prone to using some old-fashioned words, and a relevant saying comes to mind: it ain't over until the fat lady sings.

The poll indicates the lady's pipes are well and truly warmed up, despite Collins' claim to be "relentlessly positive" that National can still get there.

National Party leader Judith Collins in Hamilton. Photo / Aaron Dahmen

She has one day for that to happen – and it takes a lot more than a day to close a 15-point gap in the polls that has barely budged since the campaign began.

Collins' biggest challenge now is not to win over undecided voters – but to make those voters who are still with National actually vote.

If those supporters think the election is a mere formality, the risk is they will not bother voting at all.

With the polls showing Labour so far ahead, apathy may well be a bigger challenge for Collins than Ardern is.

It explains Collins' focus on her party base over the last week: speaking to meetings made up predominantly of National Party supporters, and urging them over and over again to vote.

She has also taken to telling them not to try to vote strategically, an obvious effort to stop the votes she has left floating off to Act or NZ First.

It is little wonder she is concerned about that.

On the campaign trail with National candidates, it is common for people to say they had voted Act this time round – because of National's woes.

The best thing National could say about the poll was that there was still a 3 in front of its number: but barely. National was on 31 per cent.

Collins has thrown everything at that mission in the past week, criticising Ardern and her record and repeatedly hammering at the Greens' wealth tax and warning of the perils of a Labour-Green government.

Those are messages for National's faithful: not for swing voters.

On this poll, the Labour-Green option is incredibly likely. The Greens supporters have gone back to shore it up.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern at Mary Poppins, the Broadway Musical. Photo / Michael Craig

That in turn has made Ardern's dream of governing alone less likely.

It is there that Winston Peters' hopes also rest. Like Collins, he has been talking about what a Labour–Green government might mean, especially for the farming sector and economy.

Any wavering National supporters who are unconvinced a vote for National will achieve anything may well be looking at NZ First to continue the handbrake role.

Peters' has predicted a big last-minute "surge" for his party. It remains unclear whether that surge will be on an outgoing tide rather than incoming.

However, the party's small bump up to three per cent may also be enough to convince some that it will not be a wasted vote. Three per cent sounds a lot closer to five percent than two per cent did.