The Opposition is in dire straits (Patreon)

Not the banal 80s soft rock band, but man, is the opposition in a terrible position.
Last night's poll wasn't the insanity of TV3's 60 pointer for Labour, but this poll was still horrific for the opposition.
When I say opposition, I mean those parties not part of the Government: National and ACT. At the moment the opposition is on 37%. Just seven weeks out from the election the opposition is at 37%. 
For context, the poll that saw Andrew Little admit that maybe he wasn't the right person to lead Labour had the opposition of Labour, Greens, and NZFirst actually collectively at 50%. Interestingly it wasn't until the final poll before election day that the opposition dipped under 50%.
So for the opposition to be this far back is calamitious. For them.
It's also bad for NZFirst, it really does seem like they will struggle to get back in as National's crappy polling now seems to benefitting ACT rather than Winston and his mob.
The Greens are white knuckling it at this stage, and Labour is sitting pretty.
But if you see any commentary saying that this is a bounce-back for National from TV3's poll, then call shenanigans. You have to judge each poll against itself. So in the last Colmar Brunton, which was taken when Todd Muller was leader, National was on 38% and ACT on 3%. So 41% for the opposition. Even that is bad, but now it's worse with National shedding 6% and ACT gaining 2%.
If you compare TV3's  Reid Research Polls, the opposition went from 32% to 28%, so a slip of 4%. While National went down 5% and ACT went up 2%. 
The trends are pretty much the same.
Each polling company does its representative sampling differently, and historically Colmar Brunton has been bullish on National, so that might explain the variance between the two but we can extrapolate that National is going backwards, and that the opposition is proper fucked.