Heather du Plessis-Allan: Labour might've lost its last best hope

I'm surprised that voters don’t really seem to like Chris Hipkins that much. 

We've spent quite a bit of time discussing Chris Luxon’s poor popularity, but take a look at last night’s poll: Hipkins’ is really poor as well.

His personal popularity in last night’s TVNZ poll: 25%.

Last week in the Newshub poll, only 23%.

That means three-quarters of us don’t want him as PM. 

That’s bad for an incumbent prime minister 

Generally a popular prime minister will sit in the thirties or early forties if we like them.

And I'm surprised people don’t seem to like him that much because he technically has everything a politician needs to be popular.

He's good with a one liner, good at batting down tough questions without sounding upset or nervous or angry. Really smiley demeanour, quick to laugh, and open to media, going on talkback, and taking questions.

He talks like a normal kiwi.

He is basically the opposite of what we had before.

So why don’t we like him? 

I suspect it’s because voters aren’t quite as dumb as politicians assume, when they think a quick switcharoo at the top changes a party’s fortunes.

I suspect it’s because voters haven’t forgotten the stuff that frustrated them about Labour.

They gave Chippy a chance, but they haven't seen him prove that his Labour is all that different. 

Tell you what, Labour should be worried about that.

This spells trouble for them because Chippy is the only asset they’ve got.

They've got rubbish policies, they’ve got a rubbish track record in the last 5.5 years, they've got rubbish ministers, and they’ve got rubbish coalition partners.

So the only thing they had going for them is a leader that was more popular than the leader of the National Party. 

Well, that’s not true anymore.

The gap between them about ten weeks ago was 16%, the gap now is 7%. 

Unless he can lift his popularity, Labour might’ve just lost its last best hope. 

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