Election 2020: Potential Deputy Prime Minister? David Seymour joins Kerre McIvor in studio after leaders debate

It has been labeled as the “it” leader of the moment.

David Seymour’s meteoric rise in this week’s 1News / Colmar Brunton poll put Act at 8%, 1% ahead of the Greens. It means that the party would secure 10 seats in Parliament.

From a one-man gang to potentially bringing another nine MPs with him, it could spell the caucus’s largest ACT since 2002, when it had nine MPs under leader Richard Prebble.

Seymour is live on NewstalkZB with Kerre McIvor for one hour from 10:07 a.m. M.

Seymour himself was at 2 percent as the preferred Prime Minister, ahead of Winston Peters’ 2 percent in the TVNZ poll.

National leader Judith Collins said this morning that she would have no problem appointing Seymour as deputy prime minister if a National Law alliance reached the 51 percent mark of the party’s votes on Election Day.

Collins told Mike Hosking this morning that he thought Seymour would make an “excellent” vice premier in his administration, which was greeted with a “jeepers” from Jacinda Ardern during last night’s Mediaworks leaders debate.

“David Seymour is a principled person in my experience and he and I have worked together before. I’d rather have him any day than what Ms. Ardern has had,” Collins said.

Sunday’s Newshub Reid Research poll raised ACT three points to 6.3, which would give the party eight seats in Parliament.

The stars have lined up for the party that has struggled through successive leaders and scandals, to now be the third-largest party behind National.

In the past, the focus at ACT, come election time, has been whether or not it would get National’s go-ahead in Epsom, the electorate seat that has been the party’s lifeblood for several election cycles.

Seymour now argues that he is able to secure that seat on his own.

Not only that, but ACT, as one of the smaller parties, has been breaking the 5 percent threshold in recent months, meaning Epsom’s seat is “good” for Seymour, but not all that crucial for the survival of the party.

The combination of Seymour’s constant and persistent campaign on the End of Life Choice Act, his only opposition to the first tranche of firearms reforms, and the troubles of the National political ally, means ACT is right for the first time Two decades.

– Additional reporting, Jo Moir RNZ