Newshub political editor Patrick Gower says the latest Newshub-Reid Research poll is "the dream scenario" for National - in more ways than one.
While National lifted by 4 percentage points to 47.3 percent, Labour dropped 1.6 points to 37.8 percent, and New Zealand First 0.6 points to 6 percent.
But while National will be buoyed by its own resurgence, it'll perhaps be most encouraged by the performance of the Greens - a drop of 1.2 percentage points to 4.9 percent meaning they'll be out of Parliament if that's the result come election day.
Gower featured on The AM Show on Wednesday morning, and told host Duncan Garner the results of the poll were "a big surprise".
"Labour are still pretty high [compared] to where they were, but maybe they've peaked out," he said.
"National have only come back to where they were just after the Budget, when they laid out their families package. If you think about it, they dripped back 4 percent over that time, and now they've bounced back again.
"If you look at what's happening out there, [National have] deliberately shrunk Winston Peters' vote, they've taken that back. That's helped them get back up again."
Crucial to National's hopes of forming a government by themselves, Gower says, is that the Greens fall beneath the 5 percent threshold, as the Newshub-Reid Research poll suggested they would.
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If that happens, all votes for the Greens would be wasted, and National would need a smaller percentage of votes to take power alone.
"This is a dream scenario for [National] - but it is a realistic scenario, and it's the tactics that Steven Joyce and Bill English have been following," he said.
"The wasted vote is National's best friend in this election. It's Steven Joyce's actual dream."
However despite the Green Party's slide, Gower thinks they'll make it - although he says Labour is making it even harder for them.
"My gut and my heart tells me [the Green Party] will be [in Parliament], because it's a long-standing political movement and James Shaw is a great Kiwi battler," he said.
"But what is the point of voting for the Greens when you can vote for Jacinda Ardern? That's the problem James Shaw has got.
"She is encroaching deliberately on their territory - of young voters, or anyone looking for change or to get National out of office."
Gower said the agreement the Green Party and Labour signed last year that saw them agree to work together to form a government is now dead in the water.
"It's as simple as this: it's not a memorandum of understanding, it's a memorandum of see ya later Greens," he said.
"That's what Jacinda Ardern is doing - she is quite happy for them to be out of office."
Newshub.
