Key's star shines on despite downturn

Times  may be tough - but that has not dampened National Party supporters' enthusiasm. They are shelling out $1000 a head to spend an evening with the man trumpeted as the next prime minister.

A planned fundraising dinner at an Auckland hotel, costing $10,000 a table, is said to be heavily subscribed.

The story behind the man they are paying to see is by now well known: John Key is the poster boy for National's self-help philosophy, the state-house boy made good.

His widowed mother, Ruth, brought up her three children in a state house in the Christchurch suburb of Bryndwr, working as a hotel porter and cleaner to make ends meet.

Mr Key and his wife, Bronagh, now live in a Parnell mansion valued at $6.8 million last year.

They returned to New Zealand with a fortune estimated at more than $50 million, made during Mr Key's former life as a high-flying foreign exchange dealer.

Less well known is the fact that Mr Key has two siblings from his father's first marriage whom he has never met.

One of them, half-brother Martin, aged 70 and living in Canada, made contact with Mr Key for the first time recently. They have no plans to meet, Mr Key says.

Since taking over the National Party leadership just four years into his parliamentary career, Mr Key has shot to near unprecedented approval ratings in the preferred prime minister stakes.

He has led Prime Minister Helen Clark in all but one Fairfax Media poll since September.

He remains comfortably ahead in today's poll, though the gap has narrowed significantly, from 13 points in June, to 7 points.

But 20 months into his National Party leadership, voters remain unsure about how John Key would react under pressure - and respondents continue to rate Helen Clark as a strong and capable leader, today's poll shows.

Many others appear to still be making up their mind: Of 999 voters who responded, a massive 28 per cent answered, "don't know" when asked which MP they preferred as prime minister. That is up by 2 points from the last poll in June.

The poll asked voters how they would rate John Key and Helen Clark in a crisis; on the world stage; on law and order issues and the economy.

Miss Clark came out well ahead of Mr Key on handling a crisis - 53 per cent said they would trust her most, compared with 34 per cent who preferred John Key.

Most also rated Miss Clark better on the world stage - unsurprisingly, since, as the incumbent, she has the advantage.

But Mr Key rated higher than Miss Clark on law and order issues, at 49 per cent, compared with her 37 per cent.

And in what could prove crucial in the current downturn, Mr Key was considered more capable when it came to managing the economy. Forty-nine per cent of voters trusted him, against 38 per cent who trusted Miss Clark.

Meanwhile, 70 per cent of respondents said they associated the word "strong" with Miss Clark, compared with 41 per cent for Mr Key. They rated about equal in honesty, at 40 per cent.