In a masterclass of political resilience, Judith Collins is digging in, even claiming success, despite taking a disastrous knock where it hurts - in the polls.
Unlike Don Brash's Orewa speech of the early 2000s, Collins' recent beating of the race relations drum has done nothing to significantly improve National's numbers in our latest Newshub-Reid Research Poll.
Parliament has been a tinderbox of late, the tension and desperation palpable particularly over race relations.
Collins' claims that Labour is introducing separatism by stealth aren't working for her or National in the polls.
If anything the allegations have worked in Labour's favour. It keeps its majority stranglehold on Parliament on 52.7 percent, up 2.7 points on the election result.
National is on 27 percent, a tiny nudge up of 1.4 percentage points - but frankly, this is still mortifying territory for what was once a proud, dominant party.
The big parties are gaining from the Greens and ACT.
The Green Party is on 7.1 percent - down 0.8 - and ACT is just below on 6.9 percent, down 0.7.
The Māori Party has been front and centre of the race row - accusing Collins of racism, race-baiting and Māori-bashing. Its party vote remains the same on 1.2 percent.
Unsurprisingly the year after an election, all the minor parties including New Zealand First have dropped. They're too piddly to mention in any great detail.
How it shakes down as seats in the House is not entirely dissimilar to the actual Parliament right now.
Labour gets 66 seats, that's one extra. National gets one more as well with 34 seats.
They came from the Greens and ACT which lose one each - both parties get nine seats apiece.
The Māori Party is unchanged with two seats.
The poll was conducted between 7-13 May with a margin of error of 3.1 percent.
