New election result: New Zealand Conservatives fail to form a majority

Result of the new elections
New Zealand’s Conservatives cannot form a majority

November 3, 2023, 4:40 am

Listen to the material

When the official election results were announced, millionaire Christopher Luxon was faced with a nasty surprise: his slim majority in Parliament had been wiped out by voters who had voted outside their constituencies. Now there is a risk of a complicated alliance with the populists.

Three weeks after New Zealand’s parliamentary elections, the majority suddenly changed again as the official results were announced. The conservative alliance between millionaire Christopher Luxon’s National Party and the right-wing Liberals is now unable to achieve the required majority of votes, the National Electoral Commission announced.

The Pacific nation has been ruled by the Social Democratic Action Party for the past six years, which has not relied on any coalition partner during this period. The day after the election, it still looked like Luxon’s party would get 50 of the 120 seats in parliament, while the right-wing Liberal Labor Party would get 11 seats – enough for a slim majority. But “special votes” from voters who voted outside their electoral districts still need to be counted. This time, that represented nearly 21% of the total 2.9 million votes cast, the Electoral Commission has now announced – a much larger number than in the previous election.

According to the final count now available, there will be 123 MPs, of whom 11 will still be from the ACT, but only 48 from the National Party. So Locson’s Conservatives may find themselves forced into an uneasy alliance with the populist New Zealand First party, which did not initially seem necessary.

The National Party in particular scored points in the election campaign with its promises of tax cuts, while the New Zealand First Party particularly attracted attention with its anti-immigrant slogans. The Labor Party, led by former ruling Labor Prime Minister Chris Hipkins, who has already conceded defeat and wants to continue as leader of the opposition, is still far behind: it still has only 34 seats – and thus has lost almost half of the previous states. Hipkins only became Prime Minister in January after his world-famous predecessor Jacinda Ardern unexpectedly resigned from his post.