New Zealand's prime minister says she won't step aside as party lags ahead of elections

New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark said Monday she has no plans to step aside as her governing Labour Party lags badly in opinion polls less than five months ahead of general elections.

Stepping aside as leader is "a question I'm not even prepared to contemplate," Clark said after a weekend poll showed popular support for Labour at 30.5 percent — 21 percentage points behind the center-right National Party's 51.5 percent.

Three other polls in the past two weeks have shown Labour trailing by similar margins — enough to hand the government, in power since 1999, a stinging defeat in elections due by mid-November.

"I believe that in the home straight before the election itself the polls will begin to narrow," Clark said.

She said fuel and food price spikes, fallout from the subprime mortgage crisis, a summer drought that hit farm production and a winter national electricity crisis had affected the government's popularity — but were not of its making.

"We have to get through a winter," she said. "The winter is vexatious because of a number of issues over which the government has no control whatsoever."

New Zealand's economy currently is teetering on the edge of recession following eight years of good growth.

Asked what she was telling Labour lawmakers, she said: "Put the hard hats on."