About Last Night's Political Poll

You know things aren't exactly excellent for the government when Mike Hosking, Newstalk ZB's sentry of the centre-right, concedes that the National Party is in "some level of trouble". With 1 News' Colmar Brunton poll showing Labour ascending to a level not seen since the party was last led by a female—37 percent in the poll released last night—an election that a month ago looked almost exactly like the last three we've had has veered, once again, further towards the extraordinary.

Not since Don Brash stole the political limelight in the lead up to the 2005 election with his Orewa speech has New Zealand seen such a dramatic political about face. But, unlike Brash, Ardern has done it without appealing to the country's worst instincts. Political fate, it seems, continues to conspire in her favour, and now it will forever be impossible to unpick whether the way to look at Labour's rise is that it has come at the expense of the Greens, or whether the implosion of the Greens—who are now below the threshold for returning to Parliament, according to this poll—has fed Labour support.

Even the recent salvo that sailed across the Tasman looked like it strengthened, rather than pierced, Ardern's armour: the Labour leader called out the Australian foreign minister Julie Bishop, who had essentially attempted to interfere in our domestic politics by accusing Ardern's party of interfering in Australia's. Here was the leader of the opposition, entirely uncowed, speaking through the media to a senior member of the Australian government. And she looked, to my mind, distinctly prime ministerial.

It puts more pressure on National than the party has felt in a very long time. And even before the release of this poll, the ruling party had seemingly begun to waver. The party's widely criticised "boot camp" announcement was a cynical ploy for votes, an ineffective, if not destructive, retrograde policy plucked from a previous era (even the Conservative Party said the policy wouldn't work, although that party's "boot farms" don't sound like much of an improvement). But that hasn't stopped Bill English from accusing Labour of recycling policy—a somewhat weak attack, under the circumstances. Might it be that National, for so long invincible behind John Key's popularity, are at long last losing their grip on Parliament?

If that were to happen, and Labour's support continued to swell, it would of course mean the strengthening of New Zealand First's position in any post-election negotiations—if these numbers held, the country would, not for the first time, be dependent on Winston Peters to decide on which side the scales came down. The left-of-Labour vote, split by the Greens and The Opportunities Party, would disappear into the MMP ether, and Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters could well become a phrase the nation will have to get its mouth around.

It is, of course, only one poll—and, of late, globally, polls haven't exactly been the most accurate arbiters of our democratic impulses. Ardern and Labour, of course, will be ecstatic with the result, but one wonders how much happier they would be if the Greens had managed to keep their heads above the five-percent threshold, and the spectre of an empowered Winston didn't loom on the horizon.

Follow James on Twitter.