All as it not quite as it seems from Saturday night.
It looks like both National and Act went a little to soon on patting themselves on their respective backs.
Dont get us wrong, the huge swing to the right is just what this country needed.
As we watched Christopher Luxon give his valedictory speech, he was perhaps just a little to early, as not long after the National Party vote count by percentage started to slip.
National on election night had initially polled well above expectations and into the 40s, but soon enough it was back at around 38%.
Act was the biggest failure of the night with just over 9% – well down from the polling highs of 12 – 14% depending on the polls you believe.
Seymours behaviour towards Winston Peters almost certainly cost him the 2 party coalition he wanted so badly.
TPM delivered Labour some damaging blows with its claiming of the Maori seats, in some cases with spectacular winning margins. The long standing stronghold Labour members like Mahuta were banished from parliament.
As the sun rose on Sunday a bit of a different picture started to become clear.
Special votes are still 2 weeks away, which are a total of well over 500,000
Special votes have in the past favoured the left, so what could that do to National and Act?
Will the offshore special votes swing right after the Ardern regimes disgraceful handling of Covid and MIQ?
Then you have TPM who are looking like creating the ‘overhang’ where they have more electorate seats than allocated by percentage of the party vote, and that ‘overhang’ could grow yet seeing 122 – 124 seats in parliament.
Act has a by-election in couple of weeks and looks likely to lose the seat to National.
In the electorate seats of Te Atatu National leads by just 30 votes, in Nelson National leads by just 54 votes, Banks Peninsula National leads by just 83 votes, in Mt Albert Labour is ahead by 106, and then its New Lynn, Te Tai Tokerau,Tamaki-Makaurau, Rongotai, and West Coast-Tasman – with leads of between 483 and 915 votes split between National, Labour and Green.
So some very close results still yet to be determined.
That could create some headaches for Luxon as he attempts to hold the right with a decent advantage.
Luxons best move is to deal quickly with Act and NZ First, and form a cohesive agreement, and present NZ with the way forward.
Having a 1 seat majority is far from ideal, as it will take just one clown MP to put a foot wrong, be sacked, and then its effectively a hung parliament situation, Both National and Labour have a pretty poor track record over the last 3 years with MPs needing to be sacked.
The voters of NZ, who after the last 3 years of Labour Party failures, deserve a coalition that is well over the 61 seat threshold – a threshold that would grow with the possible TPM overhang.
National, Act, NZ First is the only option.
