[ad_1]
Tova O’Brien is Stuff’s Chief Political Correspondent.
ANALYSIS: Labour has been sent its most violent wake-up call yet in the latest 1News Verian poll with a four point tumble tipping them into the terrible 20s on 29%.
Anything with a two in front for major parties in a public poll this close to an election campaign will have apparatchiks freaking out that the rot has set in.
Labour was able to dismiss a recent Taxpayers’ Union Curia Poll which had them on 27% because their own internal polling around the same period had them five points higher on 32%.
There will be no brushing off the bad news for Labour this time though, no consoling themselves that everything will be fine on the campaign.
Stuff
Chris Hipkins and Christopher Luxon are now neck and neck in the preferred PM stakes
The backstop view that’s been helping Labourites sleep at night has always been that Hipkins will bring it on the campaign and have it all over Luxon; they’ve believed that as long as the polls remain close Hipkins has a chance.
The polls just aren’t that close any more. National and ACT have 65 seats between them – an embarrassment of MP riches in a 120 seat parliament.
And when you have Luxon and Hipkins neck and neck in the preferred Prime Minister stakes there will be no more campaign consolation for Labour – only crisis stations.
Remember former National Party leader Simon Bridges was rolled when he took the party to 30.6% in 2020.
Under Judith Collins, National went on to lose the election on 25.6%.
Like Collins, Hipkins now risks entering drubbing territory.
Labour’s thresholds might be lower, former leader Andrew Little didn’t budge for Jacinda Ardern until he hit the 23-24% mark but perhaps Ardern shifted the goal posts of expectation too far in the opposite direction by winning the last election hands down with an all out majority.
There’s no suggestion here that Hipkins is going to quit or that he’ll be rolled by his party as leader.
But what does that matter if you’re rolled as Prime Minister by the country.
[ad_2]