After weeks of political limbo, the final results of New Zealand’s election have been released showing the centre-right National party will need the support of the libertarian Act party and populist party New Zealand First to form a coalition government.
The governing Labour party was ejected from office after six years in the October election, with preliminary results handing a slim majority to National and its traditional coalition partner Act.
On Friday, the Election Commission released the results from about 600,000 “special votes” – those cast from overseas, or outside a voter’s electorate. National dropped from 50 seats in the preliminary count to 48 seats. Act and New Zealand First seat numbers remained unchanged from preliminary results, at 11 and eight respectively. Labour won 34 seats, the Green party 15 seats and Te Pati Māori six seats.
Incoming prime minister Christopher Luxon said the results were expected, “... that is why we have been progressing and advancing the arrangement and relationships with both the Act party but also New Zealand first,” he said. “Now we can get cracking with it and accelerate those conversations.”
He said National would likely pursue recounts in the two seats that it lost to Labour by only a few dozen votes – ex-prime minister Jacinda Ardern’s former seat of Mount Albert and Nelson.
Luxon said on Thursday it was likely negotiations to form a coalition government would continue well into next week. In 2017, when Peters was last in the kingmaker position, negotiations lasted two weeks with Ardern and the Labour party.
Special votes in previous elections have favoured the left, and typically have cost the right one or two seats. Until Friday, a question mark hung over whether National would be able to govern comfortably alongside Act or whether it would be forced to cut a deal with NZ First leader Winston Peters – a maverick politician who could slam the brakes on some of National and Act’s core policies.
Andrew Geddis, a politics law professor from the University of Otago, said the final results show National and Act will need to rely on NZ First to form a coalition – significantly increasing Peters’s hand in the negotiation process.
“New Zealand First can approach the government formation process as ‘You need us’ rather than as the usual insurance policy to get a few more seats,” he said.
Political commentator Ben Thomas called the results a “confluence of surprises”. National lost two seats by razor-thin margins in the special votes, with a recount potentially affecting the final results, Thomas said.
Prof Geddis agreed, but added the outcome would not affect the need for National to form a coalition with Act and NZ First.
The number of parliamentary seats has also increased – from 121 to 122 – as Te Pati Māori won more electorate seats than it would otherwise have been allocated from its share of the party vote.
National has been in talks with Act and New Zealand First since the 14 October election about coalition agreements, but there is no defined timeframe for a decision.
Reuters contributed to this report
