The polls this week

Three polls have been released in the latter half of this week. If you average them out (after adjusting for the sample size of each poll so a poll of 1000 counts for twice as much as a poll of 500), the projected seats on the Fairfax Research International, NZ Herald Digpoll and One News Colmar Brunton polls are:

• National 65 seats - 41 electorate, 24 list
• Labour 35 seats - 23 electorate, 12 list
• Green 14 seats - 14 list
• Maori 3 seats - 3 electorates
• ACT 2 seats - 1 electorate, 1 list
• United Future 1 seat - 1 electorate
• Mana 1 seat - 1 elctorate

The assumptions for the electorate seats are that all electorate seats will be retained by their parties, except where a public poll shows otherwise. The only seat in this category at this time is Te Tai Tonga going from Maori Party to Labour. Uncontroversially, it is also assumed Labour wins Wigram.

If National gains 65 seats, they will gain many new MPs. Highly placed candidates Jian Yang, Paul Goldsmith and Alfred Ngaro were always going to make it in, as were electorate candidates Simon O'Connor, Maggie Barry, Ian McKelvie, Mark Mitchell, Mark Sabin and Scott Simpson. Joining them would be candidates Paul Foster-Bell, Claudette Hauiti, Jo Hayes and Leonie Hapeta.

This would give National its most ethnically diverse caucus ever. They would have 11 Maori MPs, three Asian MPs and two Pacific MPs. They would also have a record 18 female MPs (but their proportion of the caucus would be unchanged).

Labour would have a mixture of gains and losses. Their new electorate MPs would be David Clark, Louisa Wall, Rino Tirikatene and Megan Woods. Their only new List MP would be Andrew Little. On the losses side, current MPs Steve Chadwick, Stuart Nash, Rick Barker, Carmel Sepuloni, Kelvin Davis and Damien O'Connor (if he does not win West Coast-Tasman) would be gone.

For the Greens, the news is only good. Seven MPs are standing again so they would get seven new MPs to join them - Eugenie Sage, Jan Logie, Steffan Browning, Denise Roche, Holly Walker, Julie Anne Genther and Mojo Mathers.

The Maori Party face losing Rahui Katene and look unlikely to pick any seats up.

ACT has no current MPs standing again on the list. At present their caucus looks to be John Banks and Don Brash.

United Future and Mana on the current polls will be one-MP parties.

In the Parliament projected above you need 61 seats to govern. Labour and Greens would have 49. Phil Goff has ruled Mana out and Winston has ruled Labour out, so that is a big gap to close in the last two weeks. However, if you assume Winston will break his word (which on past form seems a safe assumption) and that somehow Phil Goff could persuade the Maori and Mana parties to both support him in government, then a Labour-led coalition could be up to 56 seats, if NZ First made 5 per cent. That gets them closer to the line.

David Farrar is a centre-right blogger affiliated to the National Party. His disclosure statement is here.

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