Hadyn Jones: Nats win - the only result from the start

Photo / Martin Sykes

Opinion

After two weeks travelling around the country in a campervan that looks and drives like a pregnant fridge, I can report with certainty that National won.

I'm writing this just before the polling booths close, so if I'm wrong, it means I have totally misjudged the mood of a nation. I do have a history of reading people the wrong way. I believe my wife when she says "that's fine". Often it is not and apparently I should have noticed. Tone is everything.

I've been interviewing voters for the telly in all sorts of spots. I consider myself the only election researcher polling voters face to face. My sample has been low - around 10 people per day. The people with the calculators and furrowed brows at Colmar Brunton would probably have my margin of error at around 80 per cent.

I found Emma in the politics section at Unity Books in Wellington. She'd been listening to talkback radio and lamented how uninformed people are. One caller said Phil Goff had never had a job; she told me with pride he was once at the meatworks. Only in New Zealand could a career at the meatworks be a political badge of honour.

In Opotiki they were not so much undecided as can't-be-bothered: turnout in East Coast was 65 per cent last time. That's low.

Cain, who I found culling runt kiwifruit, said he'd vote Mana but couldn't tell me why. He also thought it was a postal vote. Since he is bigger than me, I wasn't brave enough to tell him about polling booths. It seems I am not a good agent for democracy.

Anton, who could be a member of 80s band ZZ Top, made a lot of sense for a man with so much facial hair. He reckoned Phil Goff's ambitious colleagues have set him up to fail. He may be right. I haven't seen a single Phil Goff billboard.

National's campaign was all about their leader; Labour's tactic was to pretend they didn't have one. If I was a political junkie, I'd be putting a Phil Goff billboard on my Trade Me watch list. It could be the souvenir of the 2011 election.

Three years ago those fancy political commentators said this would be a two-term Government. I think they're right. They are pretty smart those people. They can probably read people's moods. I could use their help at home.