Matt Heath: Why this is the best election ever

Best Election Ever. Great to see a good old-fashioned National Labour ding-dong. With two superstar leaders going head to head. Both of them good guys. It's like Mankind v The Rock in the 1999 WWF championship.

With more or less the same policies on both sides, it's going to come down to which leader we like more. Both have the skills to lead our country. Neither is a vain power hungry weirdo. Neither of them stupid or annoying. Neither of them is orange. Neither looks like a giant cat. You would have to be an uber partisan to hate either of them.

Of course Bill and Jacinda are extremely different. One is clearly a woman, the other a man. One is youngish, the other oldish. One from Dipton in the deep south, the other from the Waikato. Jacinda is dating super-hunk Clarke Gayford, Bill isn't. Well, not that I know of.

There are similarities too. Both are political insiders and both are liked by children. In a previous column I showed my boys, aged 7 and 10, clips of the two leaders and asked them to rate their likeability.

Both scored 9 out of 10. Although Baz did say "Jacinda is so cool but she isn't allowed to be Prime Minister is she? Only National is allowed to be the government right?" At his age he has seen nothing else.

Jacinda is the feel-good uplifting energised option.

New Zealanders haven't been this excited about a political party leader since ... John Key. Whereas Bill is a bit boring. Or is he? I'm not so sure.

He's nowhere near as boring as Don Brash. In fact there are some pretty exciting things about Bill. He had bad acne once, he swam into a boxing ring that time, he goes for "walk runs". He's extremely fertile as proven by his 17 children. I was impressed the one time I met Mr English. He had a firm rural handshake, a friendly quip and a charming smile. Interestingly so did Jacinda. She also had a glass of whiskey.

The only thing that could make this election more exciting is more polls. Last year, like many of you, I became dangerously obsessed with Trump v Hillary. There were multiple daily polls. There were polls of polls. Sure they ended up being completely wrong, but they kept us on the edge of our seats. At best we're only getting a poll a week. How hard is it to ring 850 people and ask them who they are voting for? How lazy are Colmar and his mate Brunton? Get on the phone. Hire 10 people and get them to ring 100 people a day, every day. The people need polls. This election is like watching test cricket without a scoreboard.

New Zealanders have been so disappointed with the lack of polls we were forced to run some unscientific phoners on The Matt and Jerry Hauraki Breakfast.

Obviously our polls add nothing worthwhile to the political discourse, but in the absence of regular meaningful research here are the results. Our first poll of five people gave Winston 96 seats (margin of error + or - 100 per cent).

Our second had Winston getting no votes at all. While Labour and National bounced back tied on 48 seats each. Len Brown with 24. Obviously the former Auckland mayor and Ngati Whatua room enthusiast isn't running.

But with an extremely small solicited sample size you have to expect anomalies. Finally Friday's poll had Opportunities Party candidate Abe from Whakamana earning 120 seats in Parliament.

Abe from Whakamana recently left the Aotearoa Legalise Cannabis Party and joined Gareth Morgan. So this poll was a great first result for him.

However, we did run it late in the morning and may have hit a vein of wake-and-bakers. I'd be hugely surprised if Abe from Whakamana got 100 per cent of the vote in September.

Pointless polls aside, this general election is looking more and more like a good old-fashioned ding-dong. Labour v National with Winston choosing the winner.

Two smart, honest capable people leading two good solid political parties. What happens when an unstoppably exciting force meets an immovably stable object? We will soon find out.

I might even enrol to vote this time.

This article was first published on nzherald.co.nz and is republished here with permission.