All right, it was either a rogue poll, or it was the moment National started to win this election. I think there's a good chance it's the latter.

If National is now winning the election, it will be because they have finally started talking about the things they're good at: education and crime. Thank you very much to the Mongrel Mob for the latter. Not that annoying "nine new taxes" nonsense that wasn't working.

Now, I don't want to say "I told them so" but you heard me tell them so, right?

They've gone from being neck and neck with Labour for weeks to suddenly pulling ahead, 32% to 27%. They were never going to win on the "nine new taxes" stuff. It was too boring and was repeated too often. More importantly, they were never going to win on the broader topic of the economy because that is no longer their strength.

Apart from farmers and people in rural areas, no one in the cities feels better off under National than they did under Labour. Their finance spokesperson does not have a track record worth campaigning on.

The other notable thing in the poll is that Opportunity has slipped slightly, from 8% in last week's One News Verian poll to 7% this week. That's not a big deal on its own but it is becoming a pattern. They fell in the Post-Freshwater Strategy poll from 6% to 5.4%. They are now under 5% in the Taxpayers' Union-Curia poll and that should worry Opportunity because they are now the difference between the centre-right winning outright and not winning.

If Opportunity crashes out and takes a large wasted vote with it, Luxon is home safe on election night.

For that reason, I'm preparing to eat my words on the claim that Luxon made a misjudgment by consistently ruling Opportunity out. He may well have been right. If they don't make it in, then he was right all along to try to push them below 5% and he was right to hold his nerve every single time he was asked to repeat that position.

It's a big call, though, because they are still mostly polling above 5% but they are now getting dangerously close to that threshold.

Either way, this may be the start of Luxon winning. If National keeps trending up and Opportunity keeps hovering around 5%, the path to victory becomes much clearer.

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