Wellington: New Zealand’s centre-right National Party led by Christopher Luxon is in a strong position to form a new government with its preferred coalition party ACT, with 52% of votes counted showing them likely to gain a majority in Saturday’s general election.
The National Party, now in opposition, had 41% of the votes to 26% for the governing Labour Party, according to the Electoral Commission.
The ACT party had 9%.
New Zealand’s Electoral Commission said that National and ACT would have 63 of the expected 121 seats in parliament based on the latest tally, enough to form a government without the help of a third minor party.
There are normally 120 seats in parliament but because the Te Pati Maori’s four seats from constituencies exceeded its share of the national popular vote, the system calls for creating additional proportional seats to even out representation. This will alter the final seat tally.
Political commentator and former National staffer Ben Thomas said the result for the core centre-right bloc was much stronger than polls were showing in the last few weeks of the campaign.
“The overwhelming driver was dissatisfaction with the government,” he said.
Under former leader Jacinda Ardern, Labour in 2020 became the first party to capture an outright majority since New Zealand switched to a mixed member proportional system in 1996.
But Labour has since lost support, with many New Zealanders dissatisfied over the country’s long COVID-19 lockdown and the rising cost of living.
Prime Minister Chris Hipkins has tried to re-engage with those voters, refocusing on what he termed “bread-and-butter issues”, but was unable to gain traction in the polls.
National has campaigned on providing relief for struggling middle-income New Zealanders, bringing historically high inflation under control, and reducing the country’s debt.
The provisional count of votes is expected to be completed later this evening but the official vote count, which includes overseas and special votes, is not due until Nov. 3.
Special votes have historically made slight changes to the election outcome, adding seats for the left and taking them away from the right-leaning bloc.
Thomas said the right will want to have a bit of a buffer to ensure it can form a government when those results come in.
Labour’s losses were significant, with some high-profile members of the party looking likely to lose their seats. Nanaia Mahuta, the foreign minister, was losing in her constituency with 51% of the vote counted.
(Reporting by Lucy Craymer; Editing by Edmund Klamann)
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