We have not seen or heard as much from the National leader, and she has not been as prominent, as we might have expected during an election campaign. The problem I believe she poses for National is that it is uncertain as to how best to deploy her; when she is seen and heard, she turns the voters off, but if she keeps out of sight, National fails to get its message across.
It is a reasonable assumption that the public's failure to warm to Judith Collins as potential Prime Minister is at the same time a serious constraint on its readiness to vote National.
None of this should come as any surprise. It was always a mystery to me - and a measure of National's desperation, following its leadership travails - that Judith Collins should have been seen as the answer to its prayers.
In my view, it was always odds on that her obvious drawbacks - her links with controversial former blogger Cameron Slater in Nicky Hager's Dirty Politics, and her cultivation of the "crusher" image - would be a turn-off.
And so, in my view, it has proved. When she has been herself, that is, conforming to her image as a "tough" operator, the public have responded with a decisive thumbs-down.
But when she has tried to soften her image, I believe she has been seen as unauthentic and as merely pretending to be friendly and warm-hearted.
If this interpretation of events is accurate, the response of right-wing opinion to the dilemma will be of great interest. Keen-eyed students of the political debate will have noted some cooling recently towards Collins in her treatment by the right-wing media.
The corollary of that has been increased attention to and support for ACT and their leader, David Seymour. The ACT leader certainly deserves some credit for the work he has put in on euthanasia, and the polls suggest that he is garnering some reward for those efforts.
He might also reasonably expect to be the beneficiary, in the event that Judith Collins has lost the confidence of right-wing commentators who would normally support National. He will hope and expect that those commentators, despairing of Collins' ability to pull off an election victory, will decide that ACT is their best chance of getting a right-wing government.
They will calculate that if ACT can win even a few seats in parliament, those seats have nowhere to go but National; so, a better than expected performance from ACT, and the contribution of a handful of seats, would be the best chance of making up for the now expected shortfall in National seats.
An improved performance from ACT might offer, in other words, the best chance of National being able to form a government.
The interesting (and critical) question is whether the voters will be happy to go along with that scenario as it plays out. The central question certainly remains.
Why would disaffected National voters, unhappy with the prospect of a government headed by Collins, be prepared to switch their support to ACT, once they realise that a vote for ACT is in effect a vote for Collins as Prime Minister?
National must hope that the voters won't immediately see these implications of a vote for ACT. My guess is that the voters will not be so easily bamboozled.
We should not overlook the fact, either, that although we live in a parliamentary democracy, the general election is for many voters somewhat presidential in nature. People cast their votes increasingly for the person they want to lead them.
- Bryan Gould is an ex-British MP and former University of Waikato vice-chancellor.
