When good news was bad for Judith Collins
Debate gave her the chance to immediately show her strengths after tough poll
Last night’s debate was the most important 90 minutes of Judith Collins’ election campaign. Television leaders’ debates are always influential and the first debate is the most influential.
It gave her the chance to show whether she has what it takes to attract back legions of former National supporters who abandoned the party through Covid-19 and have stayed away through a litany of disasters that have plagued it.
National started the year on 46 per cent in the 1News Colmar Brunton poll. Last night’s poll shows that Labour is loosening its grip on those voters but with National on 31 per cent, those switching their support from Labour are not yet persuaded by Collins.
Even the good news is bad for Collins. Labour’s support is down by 5 points to 48 points but the parties with increases are Act and the Greens.
Act is up 2 percentage points to 7 per cent, the Greens are up 1 point to 6 per cent, and NZ First remains unchanged at 2 per cent.
Collins has to take responsibility. She has been in the job for 80 days now. Collins took control on Bastille Day. She has shaped the people around her, the policy priorities, and the party’s response to the second wave of Covid and the lockdown of Auckland.
The last Colmar Brunton poll of 32 per cent was taken straight after she took over the leadership from Todd Muller, who was not cut out for the pressures of leadership.
Collins could not be blamed for that result or the general mayhem that accompanied Muller’s coup against Simon Bridges, the resignations of two disgraced backbench MPs, and the exodus of seasoned liberal women MPs.
The poll suggests nothing has changed for National under Collins. It put her on the back foot going into the crucial debate. Some politicians relish being an underdog. Collins is not one of those politicians. Underdog is too much like second best.
For much of her leadership, she and her team have stepped up attacks on the Government’s Covid-19 management, concentrating most of their campaign efforts on testing failures, economic management and infrastructure.
She has sought to maximise the differences in what — until the promise of tax cuts last week — had been a largely similar and orthodox approach in terms of shut-downs, testing, and managed isolation.
The $4 billion accounting blunder in the party’s fiscal plan added pressure on Collins to put in a strong and competent performance.