Greens dig deep to lift support above threshold

The Green Party need not worry about recent poor polling but it should if the trend continues, says a political scientist.

The party's annual conference in Christchurch this weekend comes after a shock NBR-Phillips Fox poll published yesterday contained bad news for the centre-left.

It put National back in front of Labour by 1 point and the Greens down 2 to 5 per cent.

Last month's Herald DigiPoll survey showed the Greens' support down 2.5 points to 3.3 per cent.

Recent TVNZ and TV3 polls also show the Greens failing to make the all-important 5 per cent threshold - which, if translated into an election result, would see them out of Parliament.

Co-leaders Rod Donald and Jeanette Fitzsimons, in their 10th annual conference as party leaders, claim not to be worried yet but say it's a timely message against complacency.

Auckland University senior political science lecturer Raymond Miller also thinks it's not yet time to hit the panic button.

But he said that should the trend continue, the Greens should be worried.

The party has sat around 5 per cent for most of the time in the past few years and he believed they would get over that barrier again.

"It seems as if they have a reasonable base of support - but the problem, when you are sitting around 5 per cent, is that anything can happen."

Mr Donald believed the party would not in the end struggle to get over 5 per cent because of the experience of previous campaigns, which saw actual support higher than pre-election polling showed.

"But the polls will steel our resolve to do better. They serve a purpose.

"They are mainly a wake-up call for Labour but they will also focus the minds of Green candidates and supporters."

His speech to the conference today would call on supporters to put their "backs and brains" into the campaign.

Jeanette Fitzsimons said she was unworried by the polls. She was still picking a September election, so there was still some way to go.

She admitted the party did not have a "great button pusher" issue to make voters sit up and take notice such as genetic modification, but she pointed out that the party's best election performance came in 1990 when GM was not even heard of.

The political message in her speech tomorrow would be the danger in voting for the centrist NZ First and United Future parties, which wanted voters to support them without caring who would lead the next government.

Party members will be occupied this weekend with campaign planning and talk of post-election arrangements with Labour - should it lead the next government.

The Greens have put aside their bottom-line demands on the now-expired GM moratorium, leaving open the possibility of a support agreement or possibly coalition with Labour.