KEY POINTS:
Rating at a consistent 47 to 50 per cent in the polls, National is acutely conscious of the thin line between confidence and arrogance.
Even so, the party should have nailed this campaign long ago - John Key should now be resonating with voters like some Caesar about
to enter Rome in glorious triumph.
National had a good week this week (largely because Labour had such an awful one).
The buzz might start to become apparent over the weekend. But there is no sense of anticipation as yet that New Zealand might be getting a change of Government in a week's time.
Put that partly down to MMP not necessarily determining the winner on the night. Put that down to the dichotomy in the polls with one set indicating a clear National victory and the other showing the gap closing fast between the centre-right and centre-left blocs.
But put a lot of it down to National's tepid, lifeless campaign.
National's stratospheric poll ratings have had the effect of imbuing it with an unnecessarily defensive mentality. Its strategy has been not to lose votes, rather than win even more of them.
The campaign launch set the tone. For around 40 minutes, a cabaret act karaoked its way through R&B and soul standards from the 1970s in the cavernous, soulless Sky City Convention Centre. The event died before it had even begun.
The party's slogan could hardly be more insipid: "Choose A Better Future" ... well, who wouldn't? The billboard advertising is too busy and too confusing, its low impact compensated only by the large number of billboards dotting the landscape.
Television advertising has been similarly colourless, picking up only this week with some mild attack ads using newspaper headlines to highlight Labour's record.
Then, there has been the drip-feeding of National's policy, particularly on law and order. National's research shows law and order is clearly worrying voters. But its attempt to get more bangs for its bucks by releasing the policy bit by bit has not worked. There is no coherence. The media is bored with it. National's core message has been lost.
The big positive of National's campaign has been Key. Having won the first leader's debate, his confidence has soared in what is an exhaustive four-week-long test of a leader's ability to make the step up to prime minister.
The other big tick for National's campaign is that the party has not allowed Labour to gain the advantage on what is now really the only issue being discussed: how to deal with the likely prolonged economic recession which will flow from the global credit crunch.
Without Treasury forecasts to shed light on how bad things might get, party insiders say drafting policy to respond quickly, effectively, convincingly but not overly expensively to the downturn has been challenging and time-consuming.
The crashing overseas financial markets have thus had one positive effect: increasingly forcing National out of its play-safe, non-engagement mindset.
Dire as National's campaign has been, it could have been worse.
