Poll should be death knell for Judith Collins but a Covid hangover is hitting for PM Jacinda Ardern

OPINION:

There are lessons for every political party in the latest poll – including for Labour, which is now being assailed with the first symptoms of the Covid-19 hangover.

The Newshub Reid Research Poll should have created more trouble for National leader Judith Collins than for Labour. In an ordinary world, she would be rolled tomorrow.

She has now been overtaken by Act leader David Seymour as preferred Prime Minister in two polls.

Her party remains under 30 per cent, while Act has reaped the benefit of Labour's drop more than National. The best that can be said is things have not got worse.

However, it also confirmed a downward move for Labour already seen in other polls.

Problems that were delayed or put on the backburner while the Government dealt with Covid-19 are now coming back to haunt it.

Labour has dropped to 43 per cent, almost 10 points down since the last Newshub Reid-Research poll in May.

It was not an aberration: it follows a similar slump in the Colmar Brunton poll. Both polls have now recorded their first results since the election in which Labour could not govern alone.

It is nowhere near a death knell for Labour, and Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern will not be worried just yet.

As she pointed out on the AM Show on Monday, the drop to 43 per cent was from a very high result of nearly 50, and Labour could still command a solid majority with the Green Party. National was still on sub-30 per cent.

As Ardern also alluded to, it is better for these things to happen in the first year of a term, rather than in the third year because there is still time to fix them.

However, it is a warning bell.

But once things start slipping it can also be hard to halt. Labour will not want those fluid voters to become too attached to another party.

For Ardern this could be remembering her promise to the National Party voters who voted for her in 2020 to govern for all of them.

Part of the malaise will be simply the seemingly never-ending hard grind of Covid-19, as the PM believed when she said: "We all thought 2020 was the really difficult year with the pandemic. This year is hard."

However, it also indicated voters were starting to question whether the Government's competence in dealing with Covid-19 is matched by competence in other areas of governing.

The backlash from the "Howl of a Protest" in the rural community was more than just a few trolls worried about paying a few more bucks for their utes. At the moment, the workforce issues are far more pressing.

Ardern has already acknowledged that, saying this morning that she was listening and the Government would make further moves to relieve those pressures as early as this week.

It is not the only area she needs to look.

Sometimes by necessity, the Government has eased back on the nuts and bolts of governing.

As a result, there are now festering problems bubbling in almost every area: from the backlog in health, to immigration, to housing.

There is a perception some ministers are simply not on top of their portfolios and that the Government is good at making funding promises but not seeing them through.

Too many times now, ministers have acknowledged things should be happening faster: in mental health, infrastructure building, on a backlog in immigration residency processing and on homelessness.

Ministers should not be moaning about why things are not happening more quickly, and waiting for advice from officials. They should be making them happen.

The more brutal lesson in the poll is for National.

It has failed to reap any benefit from Labour's drop – instead Act has. That is National's own fault. It should have been more than ready to take advantage when people started questioning the Government.

Collins has somehow got trapped into battling on Act Party turf, rather than National's. She has also increasingly taken to blaming the media for her woes. It ain't the media, Collins.

Judith Collins has pointed fingers at the media for her party's woes. Photo / Mark Mitchell

The biggest winner of the poll is not Act, although it looks like it. Its boost in support may prove to from be fair-weather friends, looking for a place to over-winter until summer returns to National.

The winner is the Green Party.

Other than on climate change, the Greens have been almost invisible since the 2020 election.

They are in that strange limbo of a cooperation agreement with Labour, which means they are neither fully government nor opposition. That limbo has strangled many a small party into non-existence before.

But thus far, the Green's support has held firm, and even nudged up a smidgen. It is in prime position.