New Zealand's National Party well-positioned to form new government

investing.com:

By Lucy Craymer

WELLINGTON (Reuters) -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