Yardley on the election

Mike Yardley writes:

The maths would suggest Team Cunliffe needs to be hitting 30 per cent if there is to be any sniff of a sixth Labour-led government taking shape. Last week’s The Press Leaders Debate was a gripping spectacle to observe, once again delivering what could well be the killer campaign frisson, with David Cunliffe’s dismal inability to blow-torch John Key’s strategic query about whether family homes in trusts will attract capital gains tax.

Cunliffe was not only flummoxed, but woefully outfoxed. At the half-time break, his platoon of crest-fallen advisers hastily tromped off backstage, more ashen-faced than Mt Tavurvur.

And on the wider issues:

Among my broad church of mates are many disaffected voters, some who feel estranged from Labour. A party they no longer perceive as sufficiently centrist, moderate and broad-based, but one that prefers to pander to liberal nostrums, practises gender quotas and promulgates state dependency. Meanwhile, I have mates who are equally disenchanted with National, fed up with the worst excesses of Tory arrogance and born-to-rule hubris, all-too-often exhibited by Judith Collins and Steven Joyce.

They’re shopping around for a party that can put a leash on a third-term National-led government. Which is where New Zealand First and the Conservatives are sitting pretty, scooping up the votes of middle-of-the-road swingers, while Labour treads water. I’m picking we’ll see both NZ First and the Conservatives cross the 5 per cent threshold on September 20.

If they both make 5%, and National could govern with either, what would people’s preferences be? Conservatives? NZ First? Or do deals with both, even if you only need one of them?