The more things don't change, the more they stay the same (Patreon)

Last night's poll on TV1 was both boring and fascinating. It was boring because fuck all had really changed since the last poll, but that was what made it so fascinating.

Everyone admits it's been a messy few weeks for the Government. Confusion over covid status, Auckland's malaise of this lockdown going on forever, the anxiety of watching covid numbers climb...these things all should have hurt. And yet Labour dropped 2%, what gets called "noise" by statisticians. 

People inside Labour are relieved. They feared it would have been much worse. 

Meanwhile, folks inside National are confused by it. On the one hand they're pleased they didn't go down (which they never should have), but also a drop would have given them cause to do the leadership coup that everyone knows is coming. And yet they find themself in this weird stasis* of being incompetently miles back, but not so uncomfortable that they want to do anything about it.

This is so baffling to me. The dominant state of NZ politics is Labour and National battling it out, both around the 42%, and then the minors all between 5% and 10%. But the situation now is that Labour has the 42%ish, and is sitting pretty, miles clear of anyone else. The fact that Labour can be holding onto its vote at the same time that the Greens are at 9% is remarkable. Between the two of them they'd mop up 56% of parliamentary seats on those votes. That's a huge gulf between Government and opposition.

Then there's ACT, who seem to have hit a ceiling of 14%. They didn't move up, suggesting that this is as high as people are prepared to let them go. It's frankly too high anyway (you can read about my ACT outrage here). Even Collins is now having a crack at ACT which is not surprising given that I got told that if ACT closed the gap any further on National then the coup-that-shall-be would have to become imminent. 

As I write this, both major parties are in their caucus meetings. I'm sure the National one is tense. I'm also sure the Labour one is tense as there are a lot of MPs who came in on Labour's majority election night vote who would lose their jobs if last night's numbers were repeated. So the whips will be in overtime, hoping to calm and soothe their respective caucuses.

Maybe the one person feeling the heat more than any from last night's poll is Simon Bridges. Everyone (except himself)(and Judith Collins) has been talking him up as the heir apparent to the coup-that-shall-be. Problem for Simon is that Christopher Luxon is now showing up in those preferred PM polls. In fact last night he was just 1 point behind Judith. Bridges, meanwhile, was nowhere to be seen. 

Simon will need to move quickly while he still has the support of caucus; otherwise Luxon will start looking more appealing and caucus might drift to him.

Either way, I've managed to eke out a lot of words from a poll with little movement. But sometimes the most exciting thing is when there is no change.



*I wanted to include an anecdote. For a long time I thought stasis was a word rooted in French etymology and so the final S was silent. One time in a meeting I loudly proclaimed that the Government was in a state of Sta-zee.

There was an awkward silence, before the very German client said to me "I think you mean stay-sis".