This year needed to be really good if Labour was to have a fighting chance of winning a fourth term.
Ministers needed to be at the top of their game, with their announcements bullet proofed so that National wasn't given any space to attack them.
And the Government needed a bit of luck, because there is an element of that in politics.
It has enjoyed none of the above.
The first two months went reasonably well, but in Parliament ministers are now on the back foot, fighting from defensive positions on several fronts.
Opinion polls which had started to show the gap National opened late last year was starting to close have turned around, now they're going from bad to worse.
The economic slow down had been anticipated, but conditions are worse than most commentators had predicted.
Mortgage rates, hiked by Reserve Bank governor Alan Bollard to crush the housing boom, are hurting home owners.
People don't have near as much money to spend, and retail sales dropped by a surprising amount in the first quarter of the year.
Petrol and food prices have soared, adding to the pressure on households.
And the Government is getting the blame, even though some adverse events are way beyond domestic control.
All these factors came together on the front page of Saturday's Dominion Post -- an opinion poll that showed National on 56 percent and Labour on 29 percent.
Slipping below 30 percent is very bad news for either of the main parties.
It last happened before the 2002 election, when National went on to lose the election with its worst-ever result.
That level of support means that right now even staunch Labour supporters must be losing heart, and it makes MPs start thinking about looking after their own interests as they consider spending the next few years in opposition.
In National's ranks there is a crackle of excitement as MPs who have spent nearly nine years on the wrong side of the debating chamber get ready to seize the levers of power.
A support level of more than 50 percent, which several recent polls have shown, is landslide territory for National.
If it can achieve that on election night, it won't need any bothersome negotiations with minor parties to gain a majority and form a government.
For Labour, the figures represent an awesome obstacle in the party's path to a fourth term which even the most optimistic must now believe to be beyond its ability to overcome.
The budget will dominate the news for the next few weeks, and ministers can be thankful for the diversion.
Even if it isn't the sort of circuit-breaker Labour needs, and there are no indications it will be, it will be a diversion from the debilitating assaults on climate change legislation, the Mary Anne Thompson affair and the rail buy-back which has turned into a row about how much it is really going to cost.
The Government has had to backtrack on some of the provisions of its flagship emissions policy by putting back implementation dates when it was faced with the political impossibility of raising costs to consumers to even more unpopular heights.
The inquiry into the Immigration Service has raised questions about how much ministers knew, and when, and why they didn't act sooner over concerns regarding Ms Thompson's qualifications.
The timing has been atrocious for the Government. National has been able to use these issues to obscure any good news ministers were able to release, and question time in Parliament is like a shooting gallery with ministers to gun down.
National is making the most of all this while it lays low on anything that might spoil the fun.
Party leader John Key has already removed just about everything that could be unpopular during the election campaign.
When the Government tried to fire up asset sales at a core difference between Labour and National, Key simply said he wasn't going to sell any. In the first term, anyway.
So when the Government bought back the railways, National said it wasn't going to reverse that decision either.
Finance Minister Michael Cullen says he can't afford big tax cuts, an issue the polls are showing is going to be a big deal in the campaign, so National will probably be able to out-spend him on that.
National isn't going to set out many of its policies before the campaign, because it doesn't have to, which will deny Labour the chance to pull them apart over an extended period.
Key and his front bench MPs can just swing along, riding that big wave of support that isn't really there because of anything that National has promised it will do.
It's there because a series of adverse events are making more and more voters think its time for a change, time to give the alternative government a go at making a better job of it.
Can Labour turn this around? Possibly, but it is going to need an absolutely stunning election campaign and/or something absolutely catastrophic to befall the National Party.
