A knife-edge result, 3 possible outcomes: what comes next after NZ’s election?

详细摘要

With special votes still to come, three possible scenarios could determine who governs NZ – and whether Christopher Luxon or Chris Hipkins becomes prime minister.

“New Zealand has spoken,” Labour leader Chris Hipkins said to the party faithful on election night, before adding: “It may take us a little bit longer to figure out exactly what it is that you’ve said.”

There hasn’t been an MMP election quite (or even anything) like the one that played out tonight. With the ordinary vote largely counted, the incumbent coalition parties – National, ACT and New Zealand First – hold 67 seats to the left bloc’s 56, with the centrist Opportunity party getting over the parliamentary line for the first time with 7 seats.

The numbers are likely to shift again with the counting of special votes, which tallied nearly 600,000 in the last election.

But the big story of the night is the size of the overhang: New Zealand’s parliaments generally have 120 MPs, but it looks as if there will be 129 or 130 MPs in the next one.

文章开头，摘自The Conversation AU。如需阅读全文，请前往媒体网站。