New Zealand First is, well, struggling for significance and depending totally on Shane Jones taking the Northland seat off the incumbent National MP, Matt King, an unlikely scenario with a strong Labour candidate Willow Jean Prime in the mix as well.
There are a few minor parties, of course, there always is, and they will fight for the crumbs after the big movers have consolidated their votes.
The Māori Party could be interesting if Debbie Ngarewa-Packer takes the Te Tai Hauāuru seat from Labour's Adrian Rurawhe.
Both politicians are well-known and highly-respected in their electorate. It all depends if the party has been forgiven and can be trusted again by many Māori for going with National back in the day.
Act is the outstanding performer in all the polls.
Leader David Seymour has an electorate seat and is guaranteed to retain it with National not contesting the blue-riband Epsom electorate.
If the numbers hold up even close to the current figures being polled he will have several colleagues to manage.
Winston Peters is using all the old tricks we would expect from a nationalist MP. Even to the extent of demanding tobacco tax be lowered as it is unfair to tax the poor and working classes on the one item that they allegedly use to remove the drudgery of everyday life.
This view has facets. Firstly, it is okay to make a harmful substance easier to purchase, then it is all right to assume working and poor people need to be rescued from the drudgery of "blighted" lives by substance abuse, the arrogance is, in my opinion, simply overwhelming.
Then he has sneaky fag in a non-smoking area and gets caught on camera, in my opinion showing the poor, the old conservatives and the working classes that he is really just like them, a rule-breaker and a devil-may-care chap.
Where does all this take us? There will be polls out again soon which could look very different, but they are only polls.
Polls are snapshots of a selected audience with plus and minus error rates to protect the polling company. They can also be very misleading as all the above politicians will know.
They overestimate the voting of the left and totally underestimate the voting of the right.
Look at Donald Trump, Boris Johnson and Scott Morrison, all right-leaning, conservative politicians not given much chance by their respective polling before election. Yet there they are, running their countries and likely to continue to do so for a long time.
Well Trump and Johnson maybe, who knows with Australia, they change PMs as the weather changes.
Many New Zealand left-wing voters, while sincere and vocal in their beliefs, fail to turn up on the day.
As young voters tend to be more in this category than on the conservative side of the coin, this is also a factor that stymies the poll predictions as too many young people cannot be bothered voting or forget to vote.
Early voting may help this but I doubt it.
Many right-of-centre voters keep their own counsel or simply do not feel the need to share their political views with pollsters for some reason, an international trend in polling.
So we are in the world of promises and put-downs for a while yet. This is an important election but, with all that is happening in 2020, it has tended to sneak up on the electorate. We have had bigger things to think about.
Whoever gains those Treasury benches has a huge job on their hands.
The major parties will manage the huge debt we now have, in different ways, but responsibly. Whoever wins needs to strongly control any needed support party. Latest polls continue to show Labour well in front.
Minor parties are needed in the MMP environment but I can safely predict that the Greens and Act are not going away any time soon. Both are interesting for different reasons.
