Greens will wait for Clark to call

10.00pm

Green Party co-leader Rod Donald was confident today his party would crack 10 per cent in tomorrow's election, and he said he was expecting a call from Prime Minister Helen Clark on Sunday.

The polls are showing Labour is going to need a supporting party to run a minority coalition government with Jim Anderton's Progressive Coalition party, and the Greens appear likely to be her first choice.

Mr Donald told NZPA that despite the recent bad blood between his party and Labour, he saw no problem in again working with Miss Clark.

"We're expecting her to call. We kept them in power for 2-1/2 years, and no other party matches our record in supporting Labour," he said.

NZPA understands tentative reconciliation moves began three days ago, after Labour dropped its attack adverts.

Today Mr Donald said there was no doubt Labour's attempts to damage his party had backfired.

"It sure cost us, but it cost them even more," he said.

"They shot themselves in the foot."

The Greens were running close to 12 per cent when Labour began attacking its stance on genetic engineering, and the party saw its support driven below 10 per cent.

But at the same time Labour's own support was dropping, which ironically has now put it in a position where it needs the Greens more than it did before.

When the campaign began, the Greens were aiming for 10 per cent of the party vote which would increase its current number of seven MPs to 11 or 12.

When it quickly moved towards 10 per cent, it set a new target of 12 per cent and 14 MPs.

Now it is running at around 9 per cent and Mr Donald said he was sure the party would get a bit higher by tomorrow.

He said members had been campaigning hard in the last week and would keep it up until tonight.

In the last two days it had mailed out more than 100,000 letters to voters, and the impact of that would not have shown up in polls taken earlier in the week, he said.

- NZPA

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