A new Newshub-Reid Research poll that had National more than 20 percentage points behind Labour shows the party has "started to come back into line", Judith Collins says - and she's promising to bring more "steel" in the lead-up to the election.
The National Party leader appeared to be in good spirits on Monday morning, a day after a poll showed the party had increased its support by 4.5 percentage points to 29.6 percent overall, while Labour's had dropped 10.8 points to 50.1 percent.
While that poll still had Labour able to govern alone and National languishing, Collins believes it's proof her party is coming back - and she says internal polling paints an even rosier picture.
"Our [internal] polling is really way ahead of that, so I just think that first poll [in July, which had National on 25.1 percent] was way off, as I said at the time - it was a rogue poll. Last night we started to come back into line," she told Magic Talk.
"We know there are a lot of undecided voters out there, and they're not showing up obviously. What we saw last night was the centre-left or the left coming down by well over 10 points, and the centre-right going up by eight points in total, which is great."
The traditional left - Labour and the Greens - dropped a combined 10 percentage points in the Newshub-Reid Research poll (the Greens lifted 0.8 percentage points), while the traditional right - National and ACT - lifted 7.5 points.
Questioned by Magic Talk's Peter Williams on why she had shown only glimpses of her 'attack dog characteristic'" during this election campaign, Collins said that may just have been her getting used to the role, or announcing soft policies.
But she's vowing to bring more aggression in the lead-up to the election.
"I'm in my stride now," she said. "I do think yeah, we need a bit of steel - a bit of steel in the spine. We're going into the last few weeks of the campaign, and you're going to see more and more of that."
She'll need more than just steel to overcome her rival Jacinda Ardern, though - the Labour leader is sitting pretty at 53.2 percent in the preferred Prime Minister stakes, while Collins is on just 17.7 percent.
However Collins says as Kiwis feel the financial pinch of COVID-19 more, they will turn away from Ardern and Labour, who she says have "no plan" to save the economy.
"People need to focus on not just a hug and whatever, they need to think about the fact we have an economy that's on economic morphine and is going to tank anytime soon," she said.
"You can't continue down a path of just borrowing and hope. We do need to have a borrow and build policy, which is what we've got.
"I know people like to think everything's going to continue on and be happy families - but actually we're going into really tough economic times and the more people feel that, the more they will realise there's no plan at all from Labour.
"[Labour's finance spokesperson] Grant Robertson is out there banging us on every occasion, but has never produced one plan as to how he'd grow the economy. We've got the plans, and we're moving on."
Labour has produced parts of its economic plan, which promises infrastructure investment and financial support to keep people in jobs and businesses afloat, but are still yet to roll out parts of it.
