KEY POINTS:
There's only one solitary Labour voter left in the panelbeating workshop of Auckland Panel and Paint - and he's leaving the country because he can't afford a house in New Zealand.
This week's Herald-DigiPoll found John Key's National Party is scooping up male voters in unprecedented numbers since
the poll began in 1996 _ 61 per cent in both the last two polls.
Male support for Labour has collapsed to just 25 per cent, the lowest since the 1996 election.
In contrast, women are much more evenly divided, with only 50 per cent voting National against 38 per cent still loyal to Labour, creating an abnormally wide "gender gap".
Auckland Panel and Paint's seven workshop staff should be part of Labour's blue-collar heartland. They literally wear blue overalls.
But three of them are voting National this year, only one for Labour and one Green. One other has only been in the country two months and is not eligible to vote, and the seventh didn't want to be interviewed.
Oswald Petersen, 53, who came here from South Africa seven years ago with his wife and two sons, gave his first vote here to Labour when Don Brash led the National Party in 2005, but is switching to National.
"I'll just give them a chance," he said.
"I like Key better than Brash. Key I think is more straightforward, he gets to the point."
Shawn Vlotman, another South African who has been here six years with his wife and two children, voted National last time and said: "They have got to do something about taxes."
"Being a hard-working man with a family, you need to put in more hours but you get penalised for that," he said.
Lance Childs, 19, is giving his first vote to National. "I don't like Helen Clark because I was kind of brought up National, I guess," he said.
"I just don't like the way things are going."
Another first-time voter, Adam Harrison, 20, is voting Green and hopes for cheaper train fares from his home in Manurewa. But he also said: "I think it's time for a change."
He and his partner bought a house a year or two ago with a fixed mortgage rate of 7.5 per cent and he's worried about how they will cope if the rate goes up when the fixed term ends.
"We just don't have any extras," he said. "Things don't seem to be going that flash at the moment."
The solitary Labour voter, a 35-year-old Kiwi who declined to be named, said the Labour Government had not been good for him but he didn't think National would be any better. He and his partner are moving to Australia next year.
