National rides rollercoaster polls

National leader Don Brash said he would be "astonished and concerned" if his party was using an Exclusive Brethren school to do any kind of polling.

The Exclusive Brethren Church was last night accused of using young teenagers in a mucky election tactics - as a snap poll shows National and its leader Don Brash have been wounded over his dealings with the church.

Today's Herald on Sunday-DigiPoll shows Labour with 42.1 per cent party-vote support, ahead of National on 38.5 per cent, while respondents say they trust Helen Clark well ahead of Dr Brash. Only days ago, the parties were neck-and-neck. Two other polls expected out today give conflicting results, promising Saturday's election will be one of the closest in living memory.

The poll of 400 people was conducted on Friday and yesterday, after Dr Brash admitted he had known of a million-dollar Brethren leaflet plan to discredit the government.

Dr Brash said he did not believe the poll drop was directly related to the Exclusive Brethren fracas, which he called "simply a distraction".

But he conceded trust was an important factor for voters.

"I did not lie this week. I did cause some confusion and that's cost me some trust. I've got to work to re-earn that."

Labour and Green supporters in three marginal electorates yesterday accused the Exclusive Brethren of push-polling, in which loaded question are used to plant perceptions.

They say the church is using young people to push-poll, including, in one case, a 14-year-old. However, church leaders deny any formal involvement.

One phone call was received by a retired Hamilton woman connected to Labour. She said yesterday she quizzed the caller over his age. The pollster identified himself by name as a 14-year-old who went to the Brethren-run Westmount School in Auckland's Mangere Bridge.

The woman took the call at 6.30pm on September 2, and the caller said he was doing a survey on behalf of Don Brash of the National Party. She responded that she had not decided who to vote for. "Then I got suspicious, and said, 'Who am I speaking to?'"

She said the boy urged her to vote for Dr Brash because of "the moral decline of New Zealand under the Labour government". When she asked him to specify the decline, he said: "The gay marriage bill."

She asked the boy about the job he was doing, and he said he had a list of people to call and six questions to ask.

Dr Brash said yesterday he would be "astonished and concerned" if his party was using an Exclusive Brethren school to do any kind of polling.

Greg Mason, one of the seven Exclusive Brethren businessmen behind the pamphlets, said he had no knowledge of any polling.

"If anyone wanted to do that it would be totally their own idea," he said. "It sounds like a very unusual, isolated situation.

"We just want [the] right persons to get in and lead this country in the right direction, whether they are National or Labour or Act or Greens. As long as they are God-fearing ... "

National campaign director Steven Joyce said there was no formal relationship between the party and the Exclusive Brethrens, though there were members of the church who assisted the party in polling and other respects.

He alleged Labour was push-polling, but said he did not allow it: when he received a complaint about one "over-exuberant" party pollster, he had told the electorate to stand that person down from duties: "We've got all different religions, we don't check their religious affiliations when they come in the door."

He said the questions asked were not in National Party polling scripts, but nonetheless he would be asking questions of the electorate concerned.

Labour's Kaikoura candidate, Brendon Burns, said young callers had been push-polling his electorate, and he had parked his caravan outside the Exclusive Brethren church to protest. "They ring and ask leading questions such as whether you like Helen Clark as a leader. If you respond positively, they take on a puzzled tone - and suggest this is out of line with what everyone else is saying."

Labour's Invercargill candidate, Wayne Harpur, blamed the church for push-polling of his electorate, though the church had denied it.

"These kinds of underhand tactics really cut right to the core of democracy," he said.

Prime Minister Helen Clark said the election was about leadership, credibility and values: "They're not ready to govern, they're not fit to govern."

- HERALD ON SUNDAY