out and about

i spent a good part of the day canvassing today, and the results were really quite encouraging. contrary to what the fairfax poll is showing, labour support seems to be holding up. and there are still a large number of undecided voters out there. and there were very few rejections. in fact the only nasty remark i got was one old fellow telling me i was conducting a home invasion, even though i never set foot in his home.

we had a good team out today, and they were all so positive after being out for a couple of hours. which means that they were also getting some good results. it was obviously not a group of people disheartened from a whole heap of negative responses. i think this race is still wide open, with a good chance of a labour win.

the campaign is getting rather ugly in hamilton though. there has been an amazingly systematic destruction and defacing of hoarding sites that it much worse than we've seen in previous campaigns. everyone i talk to has been noticing this happening around the city. i got the full brunt of it when i woke up this morning to find the hoarding torn down from my fence (it was a pretty big one) and thrown on the road. and then the people responsible decided to vent their anger on my letterbox. thank goodness we have a wonderful team who managed to fix it all up on the same day.


a couple of campaign links: here's some excellent commentary and discussion in comments on the national party plan to require 40% of the cullen fund to be invested in nz. and it looks like mr wishart's attempt to smear labour around an immigration case has backfired a little, given that pansy wong had also supported the person concerned, and he also donated to the national party. funniest comment regarding the whole affair is here (be sure to click on the bbc link in the comment). thank you julian blanchard for getting the truth out there about the government's support of plunket.

finally, i'm sorry but i couldn't resist this caption competition on stuff, involving david bennett and some candy floss. enjoy.