Election result margins

I thought I would put some historical perspective on the recent run of political polls. Labour's roughly somewhere between 15 and 20 points behind at the moment with National looking like they will govern alone.

So here are the results by total vote percentage for Labour and National at all the big landslides since the first Labour Government took office in 1935.

1935 - 9.2 per cent gap - Labour 46.1 National 32.9 (United and Reform combined)
1938 - 15.5 per cent gap - Labour 55.8 National 40.3
1951 - 8.2 per cent gap - Labour 45.8 National 54.0
1972 - 6.9 per cent gap - Labour 48.4 National 41.5
1975 - 8 per cent gap - Labour 39.6 National 47.6
1984 - 7.1 per cent gap - Labour 43.0 National 35.9
1990 - 12.7 per cent gap - Labour 35.1 National 47.8
1996 - 5.1 per cent gap - Labour 28.2 National 33.8
1999 - 8.2 per cent gap - Labour 38.7 National 30.5
2002 - 20.4 per cent gap - Labour 41.3 National 20.9

So the two biggest ever election margins between the two major parties were the second term wins for the first and fifth (current) Labour government's - 15.5 per cent in 1938 and 20.4 per cent in 2002. National's biggest ever win over Labour was in 1990 - a victory by 12.7 per cent. You will also note Labour has never gone below 28 per cent at an election. It really puts National's 2002 performance under Bill English into perspective huh?

It remains to be seen whether the current polling numbers will hold - but even with the gap closing slightly in three of the four most recent polls, Labour is looking down the barrel at a record margin. That's not tidy.