Thomas Coughlan: National knows something needs to change - the question is what

ANALYSIS:

National MPs are nearly united that the dual polls published on Wednesday were bad news for the party, but they are still uncertain whether changes need to be made to boost poor polling.

The Herald spoke to a number of MPs about the poll result, none of whom would be named.

Some MPs are actively considering whether a change at the top is needed, probably swapping Collins for former leader Simon Bridges. However, it is not clear when that challenge will come, or if the latest poll has done anything to hasten the demise of leader Judith Collins.

The worst of the two polls was from National's own pollster, Curia. The poll, conducted for the Taxpayers' Union, saw National's party vote support fall to just 21.2 per cent, with Act not far behind on 14.9 per cent.

The poll had Labour on 45.9 per cent with the Greens on 9.6. The terrible performance - which put National marginally above its worst ever election result of 20.93 per cent in 2002.

But many MPs have written off the most recent poll as an aberration - a product of a difficult lockdown, when polling is always unkind to the Opposition.

The MPs say experience from last year shows the Government gets wall-to-wall coverage during a lockdown, while the opposition gets very little attention. Another take from MPs was to cast doubt on the poll itself.

National leader Judith Collins shortly after winning the leadership. Photo / Mark Mitchell

Curia historically polls for the National Party, but National's difficult financial situation means that the party is commissioning fewer polls. One person suggested that with Curia polling less, it was more difficult to rely on the accuracy of any single poll number.

While some wrote the poll off as an aberration, others felt that it was "obviously bad" and that something needed to change. But there's less unity about what needed to change.

There is some agitation for a change of leader - and many MPs acknowledge that this is a prospect.

One thinks the Curia poll will have focused MPs' minds around the need for change - but they concede the focusing may take a while as MPs slowly come to terms with the fact this may not be an isolated number.

It is looking likely that at least one of the two major public polls, 1 News-Colmar Brunton or Newshub-Reid Research will publish new numbers soon - this could cement the Curia poll as evidence of a trend, rather than an aberration.

But this means that MPs are not expecting fireworks from at the party's next caucus meeting, scheduled for next Tuesday morning. The focusing of minds could take some time; Parliamentary sitting resumes next week and will last until September 30, but with Auckland's Covid future uncertain, it might be mid-October before National's full caucus could properly meet.

There is a sense, even among those agitating for change, that the party has learned a lesson from the Bridges-Muller-Collins transition, which is not to move too quickly on the back of a few bad poll results, and that each leadership change has a transaction cost.

One thing the poll highlighted was how unpopular the party had become with women. Only 16.1 per cent of women backed National. The party knows this needs to be remedied but it isn't sure how.

One idea is to change the party's messaging so that it resonates more with what National thinks women voters care about.

Simon Bridges is emerging as the most likely challenger Photo / Jason Walls

If the big issue of the day is Covid, the party needs to talk about the effects of Covid on households, education, and the debt burden borne by future generations. The Covid story has mainly been around protecting people's lives and using the welfare system to protect their livelihoods - areas where Labour traditionally has the upper hand. The trick, according to some MPs, is to talk about the parts of the pandemic that relate to areas where National is stronger.

There is a tension between two different strategies. Some point to the British Labour leader Clement Attlee's famous defeat of Winston Churchill as World War II was coming to an end. Attlee was seen to campaign on a positive vision of the future, while Churchill was perceived to be campaigning on the victories of the past.

But the lesson is not quite that simple. Ardern's Labour is deliberately vague about the future, not wanting to discuss things like border reopening and expected fatalities. National, by contrast, remembers being burnt when Muller floated a more permissive border policy during his tenure as leader.