 You're listening to The Crunch with Cam Slater, right here on RCR, Reality Check Radio. Now we have Shane Jones waiting to discuss the poll results. Welcome Shane to The Crunch. Hey man, greetings. So I haven't shared with you these numbers yet, so it's going to be a bit of a surprise for you, but we are... It's politics, mate. So we engaged Curie Apolling to do a poll in Northland electorate. A lot of people have been saying that it's make or break for two parties in particular for New Zealand first and for democracy in New Zealand. We had a number of different questions, but the key question that I want to get your response for today is that if a general election had been held yesterday, which political parties candidate are you most likely to vote for with your electorate vote? And the results are the National Candidate Grant McCallum scoring 38%, the Labour candidate Willow-Jean Prime scoring 18%, and then Shane Jones, New Zealand First, which is you, scoring 6%, and Democracy New Zealand's Mac King scoring 2%. So a bit of work to do there Shane. Without a doubt, and the next 10 odd weeks, the most important thing really is to... Well it's a two-chick campaign. It's both to promote my track record, but more importantly promote the relevance and the track record of New Zealand First has been the vehicle that has consistently developed a good record of delivery on the ground. The work that we've been doing I think is certainly resonating the public meetings and getting amongst the people, but obviously historically this has been a national seat. But hey, so the voters are going to have a strategic choice to make. If they want a third party called New Zealand First to hold the seat of Northland, thus guaranteeing the delivery of other MPs, then they're going to have a clear choice. It's obvious from the voting patterns that we've picked up that a lot of people are returning to their former vote. One thing about this poll though Shane, that I should share is that there's 30% of respondents said they were unsure which candidate they would vote for. But you would need to pick up all of that 30%, but you still wouldn't beat National on that current poll. The National candidate on that current poll. Are you expecting to see these numbers jump around a little bit? Yeah, I mean all of these polls, they take a shot at the move. And each week represents a further opportunity to get out there and tell the guard that's what we've got to do. I do think if you look back at the history, for example, of other candidates like Gary Knapp and the social credit, which I've made the effort to do, they always polled until the very end as third. And then people started to genuinely focus their attention on how do I get the best bang for my buck? How do I make one vote, deliver five candidates? Yeah, and that's the key isn't it for New Zealand first, is that if they vote for the Jones Boy in Northland, then there's a good chance there could be seven or eight other MPs that go in with you. Yeah, I think it's important that the listeners bear in mind that all along we've had a two tick strategy. We wanted to put our best foot forward and get out there and hustle for votes in a seat that's traditionally been National. Although there's been a lot of volatility up with Willow, surprising everyone and winning the seat with 17,000 votes. And Winston himself winning it in the buy election. Look, it's a good, it's a good wake up call. There's lots more work to be done and we've got the time to do the work, Mike. Well, there is some good news in the poll. We also asked if people could name the electorate MP for Northland, the National Act, New Zealand First and Democracy New Zealand candidates. And this is where it gets quite amusing. The Labour MP, Willow Jean Prime, only 39% of respondents could name her. 54% had no idea and 7% got it wrong completely. Okay. Grant McCullum's got a real problem here. So he scored top in this poll. But when pressed to name the National candidate, only 29% of respondents could name him, which is lower than the score he actually got. 69% said no idea. For you, you actually scored the second highest. You got 34% of respondents knew who Shane Jones was. And that was only marginally behind Willow Jean Prime's name recognition. So in terms of name recognition, you're in second place there, which is, I think that's a good indicator for you, Shane. Yeah. Look, I don't want to get too shillish, but if you break down the phraseology and curious question, they're really asking what party are you going to vote for? Yeah. And fortunately, they're saying 6% at this stage will vote for New Zealand first candidate. And that's really what that question was about, party identification. So if you look at, say, I think the last turnout, Cam, was 45,000 votes. So do the math yourself. A third of 45 is 15,000 votes. And I think you said 38% was the case with Grant. So that's kind of their long-term average, 16 to 17,000. That's what national consistently get, although Willow leapt from 8,000 up to 17,000 the last time. Yeah, but that was an aberration, and everybody knows that. So I mean, 18% pretty much is what the candidate consistently gets, and the party has been getting in Northland. If you divide, say, 9,000 into 45, you're getting close to the figure where historically Labour has achieved that. But no, I think the personal brand is well known, and it's really just breaking down some of the anxieties about their view about maybe decisions that were made in installing Jacinda and all stuff like that. But I've got to say, the voters are always right, although they do confound me because in Northland, no one claims to have voted for Willow, yet she wiped the field. Well, you know, we did ask a party vote question as well. What's interesting is that New Zealand First party vote indicator from the same people we polled was 5%, but when it came down to choosing the New Zealand First candidate, you were at 6%. So you're actually doing better than the party. Yeah, no, well, we've historically attracted a high percentage of the New Zealand party vote out of Whangarei and Northland. Are the ACT party standing a candidate in Northland this time round? Yes, they've got Mark Cameron. OK, so is he actually going to stand as a candidate for the seats or is he just a party list? He's standing for the candidate for the seat. Oh, really? OK. But I mean, let's have a look at his numbers there. He's just 3%. So he's slightly more than Matt King, but half of what you what you're getting. So, you know, it's not really a factor. It's more a factor on the party vote for the ACT candidate in Northland. They're getting 16% on the party vote, but only only 3% for the candidate. So a big marked difference there. And the party vote turned out for the Labour Party. It's down to 19%. Wow. Yeah. OK, so that's 9,000. Yeah, that's right. And if the 18% was Willows, then that's pretty much down to 8,500, which is the long term average. And then the people and then the 15,000 people, I think you said 30 odd percent. That's a third or 45. Whoever attracts them or wherever they go with a term in the uptown, mate. Well, that's always been the way those undecided voters and it'll be in. We're going to try and do another poll before the election and hope that we should see an indicator that that 30% number drops. But if we end up in the last couple of weeks of the election with still a large number of undecided, then that's going to become very interesting. And if it is the same across every electorate, then the result will be harder to pick than a broken nose. Yeah, tell me, Ken, what is your personal sense as to how many people will remain undecided until the last two weeks of the election? That's always confounded me because I've always been myself fairly certain about who I was going to vote for come the election. Although the last two or last three elections for myself, I've always sort of wavered until the last minute. But yeah, I think there's a large sector of society and I think that number 30% might be a little bit high, but it's somewhere between 20 and 30%. I genuinely undecided and sitting there going, well, we don't really much like the crowd that we've got in now, but we kind of don't like the National Party either. So when those people break and how they break is going to be really interesting. And I don't think we're going to see too much movement in that until the last couple of weeks. And then it could be a helter-skelter rushed towards the poll. And what are you put back down to, Ken? I think a lot of people are realising that changing the red team for the blue team is a case of diminishing returns. And they're just so similar in all of their policy settings. It's just the manner in which they want to deliver the result of what they want to do. You could put a tissue paper or a cigarette paper between the two policy platforms that National and Labour have. And I think that this election really should be the election of the third parties. But there's this disparate, a lot of disparate voices that are out there calling for this and calling for that. And there needs to be some sort of coalescence around a party that's likely to make it into Parliament. That's my personal view. What that party looks like, who that is? I don't know. Is it ACT? Is it New Zealand First? Is it Democracy New Zealand? The voters will choose and ultimately we'll get the results of that. But I'm not sure that David Seymour has earned the right to get more than 10%. Well, it's going to be hot. You're right, mate. It's going to be a wild ride. And I'm finding in the North a lot of people are quite cheery about telling you how they really feel. Yeah. Whether or not they're not fully engaged or they just feel anxious that if they give you the wrong answer, they're going to be pulverised. Isn't that just the tragedy of where New Zealand has landed right now? That people seem to be afraid to have an opinion. I can remember back in Muldoon's days, there'd be hundreds of protesters outside political meetings. And the National Party people welcomed the protesters. It was a bit of fun. And nowadays you can't seem to have an opinion that varies from what the mainstream media or the woke tell us we should be doing. And they try and shut you down and cancel you. And it just appalls me that we've landed in the society where we've got people that are too afraid to tell a pollster or even a politician on the street that they suck or they're great. It's crazy. I'm on my way to actually meet up with some of the railway people, but I was horrified when I was told by some locals that the reason the $96 million which was allocated to reopen the rail to Aotea and the Bay of Islands to get the trucks and the freight off the bloody road because our roads are in a dire state. The reason they've been unable to do it was because a Hapu held a meeting and ordered them to cease and desist or they threatened violence. Now, obviously they ceased and desisted. That is absolutely unimaginably intolerable. What about the rest of the north? Why on earth should we be held ransom to by the timidity of Kiwi rail staff, but more importantly, about a couple of dozen hobbits threatening to do that. This is what's wrong with New Zealand. If I was still being the minister, mate, that bloody thing would have been built really just gone straight over the top of them. You stand to the side. These are legal rights. We're doing this for the entire region and for New Zealand. There's been a rail here for decades. Decades and decades. In fact, that's how the original tow hen had got to Wellington on rail. And I think that that tiny example speaks to how we've allowed a very dangerous culture to take root that it's easy to hijack the agenda of a democratically elected government and reward the all chosen words of dangerous behavior of minorities. And quite frankly, this is what's driven me to be probably more adamant than Winston sounds on getting rid of the Waiitangi Tribunal's current rich, getting rid of co-governance and going line by line through a lot of our legislation and ensuring that we haven't institutionalized the ability for hijacked politics. But I think that's, you know, certainly a message that a large number of people are listening, you know, looking out for. I've just shortly before this spoken to Casey Costello and she was saying exactly the same sort of thing. That's what's motivated her to get into politics. You know, and I said to her during the during the chat. I didn't even know that she was married because the media have maligned her and Don Brash so appallingly over the years, labelling them as racists. And I fear that you and Winston are also going to get called racist spy. You know, these near do wells that my grandmother used to call them near do wells. And I've always thought that was a cute phrase, but I really understand it now. They don't have any interest in what's good for the country. They're only interested in themselves. Yeah, yeah. My grandmother used the word lay about. And there's a multi term for it. It's called model or I learnt that in our new age when we were at school, people who wouldn't pick up after themselves. And I look, mate, we're going to continue to bloody champion, well, so much champion, but promote and propound that message. But in relation to more work to be done. Well, there's boats to be harvested. We're certainly going to shrink the size of grants current boats, wouldn't some of them from labor and win over those 30%. So it's good to talk to you, mate. Yeah, well, I wish you all the best, Shane. Thank you very much. Hopefully we'll talk again now before the election. Okay, bye bye. This is The Crunch with Cam Slater. Conversations with a side of controversy right here on RCR.