United Future leader Peter Dunne came to power with the support of the public, and now the public has turned on Mr Dunne.
Mr Dunne announced on Monday morning that he's leaving politics after 33 years in the job. He will step down at the election, saying that he's sensed a strong mood for change in his Ōhāriu electorate.
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On Tuesday, he told the AM Show he wished he had quit his job as MP earlier.
"It's tough after 33 years," he says. "The only niggling regret is perhaps I didn't do it earlier."
Mr Dunne says he'd been thinking about leaving for a while, but only decided to leave last week.
"Probably finally about Thursday of last week. It'd been brewing up for a while, I'd been thinking about this all year on and off. All of the polling and all of the data I was seeing from my electorate - and I'm only talking about my electorate only at this point - up until about three weeks ago was extraordinarily positive and all in my favour, so I saw no reason," he says.
"When the mood started to shift and I thought this was odd and I started to do some soundings I found that what was going on was people were saying 'Yeah, maybe it is time Peter, maybe it's time you moved on.'"
He's the third leader to go in three weeks, and Mr Dunne says this may not be the end of the chaos.
"This is an extraordinary unusual and volatile election, and I suspect there a few more twists and turns to come yet."
Newshub.
