This columnist will notch up Monday's poll as a draw (with National and Act in a slightly better position - winning on penalties, you might say).
There's very little chance the current iteration of Te Pāti Māori would prop up a National-Act Government (Act told TVNZ after the last poll it would work with Te Pāti Māori if "absolutely necessary", but this too is unlikely). On those numbers, if Te Pāti Māori did not go with National, one of the minor parties would have to abstain to let a National-Act or Labour-Green Government govern - or we'd go to the polls again.
Back-to-back elections is all very Greek, which isn't the worst comparison to draw as the days grow ever colder and shorter, but it's not clear electoral chaos - or khaos - would be that appealing to the public.
The poll had good and bad news for both parties. Labour will be pleased that it seems to have firmly arrested National's post-Luxon bump. Since Christopher Luxon was elected leader, Labour has been back on campaign footing, publishing semi-regular attack ads on Luxon personally in a way the party never really did with other National leaders. Labour has run two this week alone.
They may be disappointed this year's Budget didn't give them more of a bump.
If you're a cynic and think Budgets are about polling as much as policy (which is not an unfair position to hold), you'd think Labour certainly didn't get much of a bump out of a $5.9 billion operating allowance and $1b cost-of-living package.
The cost-of-living payment will go to 2.1 million people. Based on this poll and turnout at the last election, just 1.2 million people will vote Labour (350,000 will vote for its likely support party, the Greens) - that would be 200,000 down on the 1.4 million people who voted for Labour in 2020.
That said, the Budget, including the size of the spending allowances, was announced last December and put together in the months before then. In the months since, the focus of the Budget has shifted from praising increased funding for the health sector to questioning whether the level of spending was prudent in a time of high inflation.
Labour might be gutted it hasn't enjoyed a bump, but it may be equally pleased the Budget's spending levels haven't hurt it too much either.
National won't be upset by the numbers. Though the post-Luxon bump, which had already begun to level out and even reverse in previous polls, has well and truly halted, the party is clearly polling high enough for voters to consider it a viable alternative government.
The two major parties (and we poor voters) probably need to settle in for a long slog to the election, when each percentage point of poll is scrapped over with more than usual ferocity.
… or we might not.
Although the 2005 election is often remembered as being particularly close, and certainly National Party leader Don Brash's Orewa Speech shot his party's polling well ahead of Labour's in 2004, the polls ahead of the election jumped around considerably, with Labour closing the gap, then widening a lead over National before the parties' polling converged close to the election.
There's a warning in that for National: Labour controls the Government purse strings, and its leadership, many of whom staffed ministerial offices in the Clark Government, well remember how those purse strings can be loosened to entice voters their way.
There's a key difference now, however. Then, despite the OCR increasing fairly consistently between the 2002 and 2005 elections, inflation was broadly stable. There was no broad economic gripe for the Government to contend with. According to the TPU-Curia Poll, inflation is becoming a key issue for voters, with roughly a quarter of respondents in the May poll saying it was the "most important" issue.
Inflation is something the Government can't really control - not immediately, anyway, but it is something voters could hold it accountable for. Elections are lost, not won, as the old cliche goes.
It's not true that polls don't matter. They do. It's how parties check in with voters between elections to make sure they know what excites and worries voters.
But it could also be true that they matter too much.
Journalist and essayist Joan Didion, who died just before Christmas, once decried the "continuing storyline of the 'horse race', the reliable daily drama of one candidate falling behind as another pulls ahead".
That's true too.
This poll shows the election could be anyone's. It could be the promiscuous "median voter", swinging this way and that according to their unpredictable whim, or it could even belong to the rare "missing million", the large repository of votes which is always meant to break right's siege on election day - but never really does.
There's nothing in it - but everything to play for.
