Barry Soper: Can Labour turn its polling slide around?

This has been touted as one of the most important elections in recent history, and it's hard to argue against that.  

We have Labour – who have had two terms in office, which isn’t a long time in politics. The last government that was voted out after six years was ironically David Lange’s Labour government.  

This iteration is going to find it very difficult to survive, given the opinion polls.

 

They're now down in the 20s and that's a psychological kick in the arse, if you'd like to say, for the Labour Party.  

Nevertheless, I think both parties are confident that they're going to win, even though the last opinion poll put National 10 percent ahead of the Labour lot. So it's going to be a fascinating campaign.

Let's hope they can keep it clean and let's hope that we don't have more of those Vision New Zealand nutters out on the campaign trail. 

They're annoying, but they get the publicity and that's the problem.  

They know if they turn up to annoy a politician, either at a stand up, press conference or certainly, as we saw last weekend, at the Labour Party launch, then they'll get the publicity almost as much as the two major parties.  

So, the next four weeks are going to be extraordinarily interesting, and I'll be along for the ride. I hope you will be too. 

For more of Barry Soper's Election 2023 analysis, follow Behind the List with Barry Soper on I-Heart Radio. 

Barry Soper is a New Zealand political journalist, and has been featured regularly on radio and television since the 1970s. Currently, Soper's main role is political editor at Newstalk ZB, a radio network in New Zealand.