It's funny how a lot of people seem to assume that it's more or less a forgone conclusion!

It's interesting, because I've read several times over the years that one of the strongest predictors for an election isn't just counting up who people say they'll vote for but rather who they think will win.

Everyone I talk to seems to think a National coalition will win, regardless of their political leanings. I certainly do because of this, even though though polling suggests it's far from a forgone conclusion. Elections can be so much about a general mood of the country on the day.

This is not scientific and is going purely by my memory but I don't recall any small party getting the numbers the polls predicted. It's always lower. People say they are going to vote for smaller parties but when it comes to voting they go for labour or national.

My takeaway is that people of NZ are sick and tired of falling house prices, low unemployment, competent management of the economy, stronger unions, competent management of unexpected natural disasters and terrorist attacks etc. They are sick and tired of signing free trade deals with the largest economies in the world.

They are just done with all that want to get rid of anybody who had any part in that.

Its going to be interesting to see how elections play out over the next 20 years or so as more and more people raised on FPP age out of our voting pool. In another 5 years people who first voted since 1998 will be between 18-60 years old and may be the majority of the voting populace by then (depending on how turnout rates change).

I suspect that those voters are more inclined to see coalitions as a normal and good thing for representation so we might see the two broad parties split a little bit and become more focussed. Labour are a centre-left and centrist party slapped together. National has elements of being centre-right, far-right and religious fundamentalist.

If those two parties split and really adopted those identities proper I think it would give voters more choices to find parties that really represent them. What could happen in a scenario like that is more coalitions forming around the centrist parties - rather than what can happen at the moment where an ostensibly centrist voter's party choice is dragged far further left or right than the voter intended due to the outsized influence small parties can have if its the only way to form a government.

ie in some ways 20+20+20 is better than 55+5.

Kiwis like charismatic leaders. I'm not saying Hipkins has an awful lot of charisma, but Luxton appears to have a negative amount.

It's quite common for the incumbent PM to be most preferred PM until they lose!

People only see two potential governments, and are sick of the one we have, so a National led government seems like the only option.

But even the staunchest National supporters wish there was someone other than Luxon to lead the party.

National have also had a lot of oxygen in the first half of this year with the various missteps from Labour. They've also got a crap ton of money that they're throwing in blanketing the country in their billboards. They've probably only been up a week or so and im already sick of them all.

What will be interesting is seeing how Luxon/Willis perform in any face to face debates with their counterparts. I suspect Hipkins may thrash Luxon on likeability and actual ideas/communicating them. When Luxon's being challenged on something he quite literally starts to turn red and can get noticeably short tempered.

Willis I think is debsoc trained so would probably fare better, but since becoming deputy a lot of the policy ideas she's promoted seem a bit factually / implementably dubious so whether she actually has a deep understanding of things is probably in question and may not do so well if a debate was on issues/facts.

Probably a bad sign for Labour that I can't off the top of my head think of who their deputy is at the moment - although that's also a bad sign for National because the reason they are so heavy into Luxon/Willis is because of how unlikeable the former is!