Christopher Luxon is behaving like he’s won the election. Has he?

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Thomas Coughlan, Political Editor at the New Zealand Herald, loves applying a political lens to people's stories and explaining the way things like transport and finance touch our…

Christopher Luxon said National wouldn't do business with Opportunity and its leader Qiulae Wong (inset) but has since reversed that decision. Photo / Annaleise Shortland, Dean Purcell

After being given the bloodiest of bloody noses on Saturday night, leading National to its third-worst party vote performance of the MMP era, and losing several of his most senior (and vital) MPs, with the prospect of losing more when the final count is announced on November 27, Luxon behaved as if he’d won a great victory.

He mourned his departing friends and noted, correctly, that National has a “pathway to forming the next government”.

Despite preliminary results giving the National-led coalition the barest of majorities, 67 seats in a Parliament in which 66 will be needed, he took nearly two days to talk with Qiulae Wong, whose Opportunity Party may be vital to Luxon being able to cobble together a government.

Is this reluctance to build a relationship with Wong a fair reflection of National’s strong position – or is it bluster?

National enjoys a fragile majority; it holds two seats with majorities of less than 500 votes, which could easily flip once special votes are counted.

A leftward tilt in the party vote could result in New Zealand First losing a seat, and the Greens or Opportunity picking one up. It’s not difficult to see a situation in which the final tally delivers a hung Parliament – it’s slightly more difficult, but not implausible, to see a situation in which the final count gives the left bloc plus Opportunity the chance to form a government with a one-seat majority – hell, if things go really well, maybe a two-seat majority.

The party, which didn’t have enough money during the campaign to do polling, has, thanks to the election results being published, the most detailed dataset yet about who its voters are. From that dataset, it can deduce what its voters might want.

The most important thing to say about Opportunity’s voters is that they’re concentrated in urban seats…

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