Back when John Key confirmed there would be no East Coast Bays deal for Colin Craig, I happily wrote off the Conservative Party. With no hope of winning an electorate seat, they had no choice but to make 5% of the vote, which was one hell of a long shot.

However, if I cast my eye around the internet, I’ve apparently been far too early to write them off. In the NZ Herald this morning, there’s John Roughan talking up the Conservatives in his opinion piece “Craig’s day in the sun may dawn“. The latest Herald Digipoll says National voters would prefer a coalition with the Conservatives, rather than NZ First. And over at the Dim-Post, Danyl McLauchlan publishes his bias-adjusted tracking poll and predicts “The Conservatives will probably cross the 5% threshold.”

Personally, I stand by my prediction that the Conservatives won’t make it. One poll…

ACT’s campaign launch occurred yesterday. It’s slightly odd that the party would launch their campaign after people have already started voting, but there you go. Keeping their powder dry and all that…

Party leader Jamie Whyte’s keynote speech to the ACT faithful was everything his party would have hoped for – a mixture of hard-hitting attacks on just about every party around (I think the only party he didn’t bother to attack was United Future, which is a good measure of Peter Dunne’s continued irrelevance) and the release of some old-fashioned back-to-ACT’s-roots policy.

Policy-wise, ACT would abolish the Overseas Investment Office:

It has no proper job to do. When foreigners invest in New Zealand, we benefit. There is no injury for the OIO to protect us from.

Likewise, the Resource Management Act would go to:

The problem is not with the administration of the RMA. The problem is with the very…

EDIT: Further updated with the One News Colmar Brunton poll, which had overlooked my attention.

Another day, another three polls, with the Herald Digipoll, Fairfax Ipsos and One News Colmar Brunton polls being released today. All three results are good news for National, after some recent lacklustre polling, and bad news for Labour, with their lacklustre polling continuing.

In the Herald Digipoll, National fall slightly, down 0.6%, but they’re still above 50%, sitting on 50.1%. National may have fallen slightly, but so have Labour, who drop 0.3% to a terrible 23.8%. The Greens remain static on 11.4%.

For the remaining minor parties, NZ First rise 1% to 6%, while the Conservatives climb 0.5% to 3.%. ACT (on 0.4%), United Future (on 0.2%) and Internet Mana (on 3.5%) all rise 0.1%. The only minor party dropping is the Maori Party, down 0.6% to 0.4%.

In the Fairfax Ipsos poll, National rises sharply, up 3.4% to 54.2%…

National has announced that it will set up a $100 million fund to buy and retire farmland next to important waterways. The idea is that it will create an environmental buffer to improve water quality. Further, by July 2017 it will be illegal not to have waterways fenced off.

On the face of it, it’s a good policy. Why wouldn’t you want to improve water quality by setting up buffer zones to keep cattle out? What could be wrong with fencing off paddocks from the river?

Well, even Amy Adams, National’s Environment Minister admits that 90% of waterways next to farms are already fenced off, and as Andrew Hoggard, the Federated Farmers dairy chairman, says, a ban was effectively already in place:

“It’s in our conditions to supply to Fonterra. If you don’t meet the conditions of supply, they won’t pick your milk up, and you’ll be out of business…

Internet Mana had been the minor party with momentum. As the Party Party / Internet Mana Roadshow worked its way around the country, the coverage was positive – crowds of hundreds flocking at each venue to see Dotcom, Harre, Harawira and the local candidates; mixtures of young, middle-aged and old; the anti-authority message hitting the headlines on a regular basis. Since mid-July, Internet Mana was consistently hitting at least 2% in the polls, even hitting the heady heights of 3.9% in the mid-August 3News Reid Research poll.

And then the wheels seemed to fall off. The “Fuck John Key” saga may not have had an immediate effect, but it hinted at a nasty, darker side to the party’s leadership. And although the party may not have had anything to do with the effigy burning and Kill the PM song that followed, it seems that Internet Mana had become, in the public…

We’ve had two polls out today, the latest Roy Morgan poll and the 3News Reid Research poll.

In the Roy Morgan poll, there’s a slump for National, down 3% to 45%. Despite National’s fall, there’s no good news for the Labour Party, who drop 1.5% to 26%. Instead, the news is overwhelmingly good for the Greens, who rise a huge 4.5% to 16%, their best Roy Morgan result in over two years.

For the remaining minor parties, NZ First may be down 0.5%, but they’re still on 6%, which would see them returned to Parliament. The Conservatives climb 2.5% to 3.5% (their highest ever Roy Morgan result), while ACT is up 0.5% to 1%. There’s bad news for the Maori Party (who drop from 1% to 0.5%), United Future (who don’t even register, having dropped 0.5%), Internet Mana (who drop 1% to 1.5%).

In the Reid Research poll, National…

 

Bloggers in the thick of election campaign? Image Credit: Against the Current

PLEASE NOTE: Sitemeter is playing up again making it impossible to automatically get the stats using the normal process. I have done a manual work around but it was still impossible to get the stats for a number of blogs that I list below. Maybe more bloggers will shift to StatCounter or other counter.

No stats could be found for these blogs:

There are now over 300 blogs on the list, although I am weeding out those which are no longer active or…