When the election is over, and a government is formed, Christopher Luxon may finally admit the mistake he made when he single-handedly breathed life into Winston Peters’ campaign
Opinion: Two polls on Wednesday night have New Zealand First holding all the power with both the left and the right blocs well short of the 61 seats needed to form a government.
National’s camp will be hoping the 1News Verian poll that has them up one point to 37 percent is more accurate than Newshub-Reid Research’s, which has Christopher Luxon’s party plummeting almost five points to 34.5 percent.
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Either way, National and Act only made it to 58 seats in the 1News poll, three short of what’s needed to form a government, and in the case of Newshub the right bloc only mustered 54 seats – fewer than the left bloc on 57 seats.
Given Chris Hipkins and Winston Peters have ruled out working with each other, the only government in sight on either poll is a centre-right one with Peters calling the shots.
Ever since Luxon said he’d pick up the phone to Peters in a highly produced social media video late last month, the gap between Labour and National has continued to shrink and the votes have been sucked up by New Zealand First. Newsroom's poll of polls shows New Zealand First had an average of 5.2 percent before the video and 6.7 percent after it.
Where Peters is now climbing, it’s at the expense of National and Act, with the two parties' combined vote slipping in recent weeks.
On Wednesday night’s polls Peters’ party was safely on 6 percent and in the Guardian Essential poll earlier in the day New Zealand First hit 8.2 percent.
National’s strategy, up until that video, had been to ignore Peters, who was polling either just under or at 5 percent – the threshold for returning to Parliament.
Ever since Luxon formally ruled Peters in, National has been backpedalling, trying to reassure swing voters and those who are undecided that it would only be a last resort.
The party’s campaign chair, Chris Bishop, went even further on Sunday to try to claw back a National-Act government that doesn’t need Peters on election night.
He told the Herald it was a “very real and growing possibility” there would be a second election if National and Act found it impossible to do a deal with Peters.
All any of this has done is create an election campaign environment where the only person being talked about is Winston Peters.
National is spending every day saying it doesn’t want to work with him, and Hipkins uses his airtime warning of the perils of being in government with Peters.
Luxon might have got tired of saying day in day out that he wasn’t talking about Peters if he’d stuck to his original strategy of ignoring the rule in/rule out question, but now he’s talking about him daily anyway.
Peters is well versed in how to time an election surge and Luxon’s video has only had a supercharge effect.
National had started to register at or just below 40 percent in polls before the New Zealand First call was made.
Where Peters is now climbing, it’s at the expense of National and Act, with the two parties' combined vote slipping in recent weeks.
Hipkins is still looking up against it to be able to form a government, but the chances of Luxon and Seymour doing it without Peters are looking just as unlikely.
If Peters is sat at the negotiating table wielding all the power, Luxon will only have himself to blame.
