Barry Soper: Tight poll promises a lively election race

Winston Peters, Jacinda Ardern and Simon Bridges are jostling for votes.

COMMENT:

Jim Bolger said in the early 1990s "bugger the pollsters" when the man who's being buried today, Mike Moore, almost beat him after he'd been in office for just three years.

After that Herculean effort Moore was forever miffed at not being given another chance to have a crack at Bolger, despite the fact he'd fought and lost against him just three years earlier. But he'd only been elevated to the Labour leadership two months earlier so his effort was sterling.

Still he went on to bigger and better things.

It's rare that a party in New Zealand's turfed out of office after its first term; the last time that happened was the Labour Government in the 70s after Norman Kirk died in office.

That was First Past the Post of course, and this is MMP, which muddies the water.

The polls are telling us the upcoming election will be as tight as a drum.

Just a year ago few would have given Simon Bridges any chance of becoming Prime Minister this year but if he does pull it off he can thank the loyal National vote as opposed to his 11 per cent dynamism.

The latest One News Colmar Brunton poll will leave Labour feeling rather bilious and it doesn't have a lot to do with the party's 41 per cent rating. It has everything to do with the two parties that keep it in power, the Greens and New Zealand First.

Labour picked up the 2 per cent the Greens lost, they're now teetering on the 5 per cent threshold. Winston Peters' party slipped slightly to 3 per cent which, if played out on election night, would see him where he was the last time National said it wouldn't work with him, on the outside looking in.

This poll was held over the past week meaning Bridges doing the John Key on Peters may have worked for him.

National came home comfortably on 46 per cent with Act on 2, meaning if David Seymour wins Epsom as expected and his vote holds up, they could govern alone.

Jacinda Ardern remains Labour's trump card though, picking up a mean 6 per cent to give her a personal rating of 42 per cent, so maybe the newly built roads to the ballot booth are working for her but she needs passengers.

She's got to look after her mates and will certainly have to think about massaging the electorate vote, doing a few deals, to keep her buddies on board.

Ardern insists she won't be doing that, which is to ignore the realities of MMP.

Still there's a lot of water and pork barrels to flow under the bridge between now and September 19.