Ardern’s centre-left Labour Party, with two-thirds of the vote counted, was on 49.2 per cent and is likely to take around 64 seats in the 120-member parliament.
New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern won a landslide victory in New Zealand’s general election Saturday, cashing on her success battling Covid-19 to gain an unprecedented outright majority and the chance to implement her reform agenda.
Ardern’s centre-left Labour Party, with two-thirds of the vote counted, was on 49.2 per cent and is likely to take around 64 seats in the 120-member parliament.
Since New Zealand adopted a proportional voting system in 1996, no leader has achieved an absolute majority, leading to a succession of multi-party governments.
While the voting count wasn’t finalised, the figures were enough for opposition leader Judith Collins to concede after calling PM Ardern.
“Congratulations on your result because it is, I believe, an outstanding result for the Labour Party. It has been a tough campaign,” Collins told the cheering supporters in Auckland.
Collin’s conservative National Party was expected to take around 35, in what appears to be the worst result for the conservative party in 20 years.
Ardern’s performance foiled pre-election opinion polls and brought the labour party its biggest victory since 1946.
Claire Szabo, the party president, praised the campaign of the charismatic leader, who sparked a wave of support dubbed “Jacinda-mania” when she took over the party in 2017 as it was languishing in the polls.
“There’s no doubt the strong, great leadership we’ve had from Jacinda Ardern has been a massive factor in all this,” she told NZ.
Terming the vote “the Covid election”, Ardern campaigned on her government’s success in eliminating community transmission of the virus, which has caused just 25 deaths in a population of five million.
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