ONE NEWS: It's first blood to National in the election campaign as John Key pulls out well ahead of Helen Clark in the latest ONE News Colmar Brunton poll.
It has been a momentous month in politics with the Prime Minister losing a close friend in a remote mountain hut and a billionaire donor, Owen Glenn, jetting in to spill the beans on Winston Peters and dump on the Labour Party.
"Well I'm not exactly cheering for Labour anymore - not if they abandon you and then turn the dogs on you," said Glenn.
As the Peters secret funding saga unravelled, the political landscape changed with National ruling out New Zealand First.
"Winston Peters would be unacceptable as a minister in a government led by me," said Key.
And Act Party leader Rodney Hide came in from the cold, shelving his Mr Nice Guy image to hound Peters.
So how has all this affected our appetite for the parties?
National is now on is on 53%, a commanding lead over Labour on 35%. The Greens are back over the 5% threshold and Act has creeped back into the picture with 2%. The Maori Party is not really featuring in the party vote on 1.8% and New Zealand First is crumbling away under 2% support.
National would have 66 seats on these numbers and Labour just 43. The Greens would have six MPs and, assuming electorate seats are held, the Maori Party gets four, Act three, United Future and the Progessives one seat each.
Clark never really stops campaigning but the official campaign has begun with November 8 named as election day.
Clark says this is an election about trust. Key takes a different tack.
"This is not about the past, it's not about the old political battles of 20 or 30 years ago, it's about the future," he says.
And Key is winning the preferred Prime Minister battle. Clark has slipped back and is now nearly 10 points behind. Peters still has a core of people who think the job should be his.
But that's little comfort for the man whose party seems in tatters, threatening to drag Labour down too, meaning right now Key is sitting pretty.
The poll sampled 1,000 voters and had a margin of error of 3.1%.
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