National's campaign chairperson says Christopher Luxon's fall in the polls has partially been down to the party's "totally unwinnable situation" with Cyclone Gabrielle and Chris Hipkins' elevation to prime minister in January.
The latest 1News Kantar Public Poll showed a trend of a resurgent Labour Party under Chris Hipkins, with National and ACT one seat short of forming a coalition government even with unlikely support from Te Pāti Māori.
According to the poll, which surveyed 1002 eligible voters from March 4 to 8, Labour would be likely to attract 36% of the party vote, and National 34%.
Those translated to 46 seats for Labour and 43 for National, presuming Rawiri Waititi retained his seat. That meant neither party had the numbers to govern alone.
The latest 1News Kantar Public Poll places Te Pāti Māori in the kingmaker role again, with the numbers to secure a coalition with Labour and the Greens.
Chris Bishop told Q+A that the party had made a decision to be less political amid the cyclone, which had likely delayed policy announcements from the party.
"You change the prime minister, change the leader of a major political party, there's automatically a kind of people say: 'Well, rightio, let's have a look at this. This is quite interesting.' The media attention goes onto that - that's what happened. You'd expect nothing less from the move from Jacinda Ardern to Chris Hipkins," he said.
"And then with the floods in Auckland, and then, of course, we had Cyclone Gabrielle as well - quite rightly, we decided to pull back and not be too political for that period.
"It was a totally unwinnable situation for us. If we'd come out with a whole bunch of policy announcements, people would say, why are you not focusing on the cyclone? You know, how tone-deaf are you?"
"No point in announcing that stuff while people are quite rightly dealing with, you know, deaths and destruction.
National's campaign chairperson drills into the details of the party's election-year policy on renewable energy and housing intensification.
"On the flip side, people also said: 'We're haven't heard from you guys for a while. Where are you?' So very difficult situation for oppositions."
In the latest results, preferred prime minister rankings were disappointing for Christopher Luxon, who plunged to 17% - a 5% drop on the last 1News Kantar Public poll.
To add insult to injury, Labour leader Chris Hipkins picked up almost all of those points, rising to 27%, a 4% jump on his previous result.
When asked about Luxon's poor showing, Bishop said it was "early days" and that there were "many, many, many months" to go before the election in October.
"I think we're early days in the election campaign. You know, we've got six months to go. There's many, many, many months to go, and people will start to think about politics much more as we get closer to the time."
"Opposition leader is a tough job - there's no doubt about it. And we've got a lot of work to do both in a party sense, and I know Christopher's up for the fight as well - he's working really hard."
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