Election Date announced

While I was out and about today, I noticed that the election placards that I blogged about yesterday were still up. My reaction was that the local branch of the Labour Party were taking advantage of the fact that the election date was due to be announced tomorrow.

I was wrong. Helen Clark has announced today that the election would be held on the 17th of September.

It's clear from the choice of the date that her government is determined to hang on to power for as long as possible and that they require a lot of time to discredit National. The Labour tactics at the moment (Two Minute Hates against Don Brash) are eerily reminiscent to me of 1990 where Labour went to the polls with a scare campaign about the prospect of Jim Bolger, Bill Birch, Ruth Richardson and others gaining power. They failed to understand then that the all-important swinging public hated the prospect of three more years of Labour even more.

So what would be the likely election result? If the current polling holds up however (and that's a big if), Winston Peters will probably have to go with National regardless of his own preferences simply because Labour cannot form a viable coalition necessary to command a majority in the house. If Labour does form a non-viable coalition (Greens, Jim Anderton's Personality Cult, United Future and Winston First), then it will probably end in tears within the year.