Campaign day 25: Poll addicts desperate for a fix to keep them going

By JOHN ARMSTRONG

Confession time. We are poll-driven. And we are poll-starved.

The oomph went out of the campaign yesterday for want of a nationwide poll to confirm whether the shock results in Monday's snap Herald-DigiPoll survey are a one-off or signal a trend.

Is Peter Dunne's United Future still on the rise? Has Labour halted its decline? Are the Greens in freefall from their pre-GM scare high?

The whispers from the two big parties' private tracking polls is maybe, maybe and maybe.

So all eyes will be focused on the TVNZ and TV3 polls out tonight and the final Herald-DigiPoll published tomorrow morning. The public gets a final glimpse of the main leaders in tonight's TV3 debate.

All this gives the parties little time to turn things around by Saturday.

In the hiatus, politicians have ruminated on Monday's snap poll, which gave the centre-right parties the sniff of power.

Just a sniff. The Grand Coalition of the Right is a mirage. But it is enticing enough to get its would-be components talking about talking of working together come Sunday.

There are still two days to go, but the campaign is effectively spent. And having spent the past three weeks attacking one another to maximise their vote, the politicians are now pulling their punches because they might need one another come Sunday.

Note the peace that has broken out between Labour and the Greens - an indication of a willingness to talk and a recognition of the damage they have done to each other

As Helen Clark said yesterday, the phones will be running hot on Sunday. How hot will depend on the size of Labour's vote on Saturday.

Depending on who you talk to, support for Labour is running somewhere between the high-30s and the mid-40s in percentage terms.

So the question is, how many partners will Labour need to govern? One - Jim Anderton's Progressive Coalition? Two - Mr Anderton plus the Greens or Mr Dunne's United Future? Or three - all the above?

If it's three, the big question is whether the Greens will be willing to cosy up to Mr Dunne with Labour.

The answer? At a price.

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