Jacinda Ardern and her party won by anyone’s standard and this is a remarkable victory. These elections were carried through by the star power of Ardern alone.
Ms Jacinda Ardern, 40, has claimed a landslide victory in the Saturday’s held New Zealand general elections. Ardern’s outright majority is the first time since 1996 after New Zealand introduced a voting system known as Mixed Member Proportional representation (MMP).
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New Zealand Elections 2020 were to be held in September 2020. But the COVID-19 pandemic has forced to reschedule the date of the elections by a month.
New Zealanders also voted in two referendums
- Do You support the End of Life Choice Referendum – Aims to give terminally ill people the option of requesting assisted dying. This is a binding vote, which means it will be enacted if more than 50% vote “yes”.
- Do you support the proposed cannabis legalisation and control bill – This however, is not binding – which means even if a majority of people vote “yes” – cannabis might not become legal straight away as the government has to introduce a bill to legalise this.
Who got how many seats?
Ms Ardern’s centre-left Labour Party won 49.1%, winning 64 seats which is a rare outright parliamentary majority in New Zealand’s parliamentary history.
The opposition centre-right National Party won 26.8%, winning just 35 seats.
ACT New Zealand won 8%, winning 10 seats.
The Greens won 7.6%, winning 10 seats.
The Maori Party won 1%, winning 1 seat.
Others won 7.7%, but did not win a single seat.
A total of 120-seat assembly, require at least 61 seats to get a majority.
Ms Ardern will now be leading the country for the next three years.
After winning, Ms Ardern said
New Zealand has shown the Labour Party its greatest support in almost 50 years. We will not take your support for granted. And I can promise you we will be a party that governs for every New Zealander.
Opposition and the National Party (NAT) leader Judith Collins congratulated Ms Ardern and said
Three years will be gone in the blink of an eye,
We will be back.
New Zealand is in recession for the first time in 11 years and the COVID-19 crisis are the challenging tasks for Ms Ardern.