Labour’s Campaign chair Megan Woods has acknowledged that results in previously safe Labour seats in the city reflected “Auckland’s very difficult times”. Aucklanders experienced longer lockdowns during the pandemic, often while the rest of the country lived with fewer restrictions. 

Speaking to Newshub Nation this morning, Woods said the election results were not what anyone hoped for or wanted, least of all Labour leader, Chris Hipkins.

Hipkins gave an emotional speech last night, particularly when he spoke about the support he has had from his family. Woods said he was “entitled to a bit of emotion”.

Woods rejected the suggestion that Hipkins should bear the brunt of Labour’s collapse in support saying the loss falls on “all of us”.

The party will now undertake a review, ask themselves “some questions” and examine what went well and what didn’t.  

“We were against a very strong mood for change,” Woods said but it was far too early to say whether Labour had lost touch with voters.

In the Auckland seats of Mt Roskill, New Lynn, Te Atatu and Mt Albert, both National and Labour candidates hold very slim majorities and with over 500,000 special votes to be counted, outcomes are likely to change. Woods said the party wants to go through the numbers and fully digest them and look at turn out.

“We’ve done this before, we need to regroup and pick ourselves up,” Woods said.

A moderately cheerful Winston Peters has held a press conference in Northland alongside his deputy Shane Jones, predicting some of the promises made by other parties during the election soon “won’t be worth confetti”.

“They didn’t see the economic and social crisis New Zealand is in,” said the NZ First leader. “In the sober hours of the day they’ll wake up and start seeing what they didn’t know, and some of the promises made in this campaign won’t be worth confetti.”

Peters has previously claimed National’s promised tax cuts are not financially viable.

NZ First gained 6.46% of the party vote, giving them eight seats in parliament. On current numbers, National will be able to form a government with just Act, but with the special votes yet to be counted, Christopher Luxon’s party may still need NZ First’s help. Luxon has said he will speak with Peters “in due course”.

Peters said this election campaign had been the “toughest by a long shot”, blaming, predictably, the media. Repeating a familiar refrain, he said, “We were given no chance, shown by our lack of coverage. We were Cinderella-ised, marginalised, shut out by the mainstream media the whole way and you guys failed,” he told the journalists gathered.

He wouldn’t be drawn on what his party’s priorities were. “This is a business called democracy. My job is to consult with my colleagues; we’ve had no change to talk to each other, not even Shane and myself. When we’ve decided what we’re gonna do and who we’re doing it with, we’ll let you know.”

Asked if he was still aiming to be minister of broadcasting, he said “that’s a marvellous question – we’ll see what happens eh.”

Speaking at a press conference this morning wearing an All Blacks jersey, National party leader and the man set to become New Zealand’s next prime minister, Christopher Luxon, said he “wants to bring the country together”.

Luxon said he wanted to lead a government for all New Zealanders and that the job of prime minister was to leave the country more unified than when they came to the job.

 He said he would focus on delivering outcomes for New Zealanders “that improve their daily lives” and “getting the best out of his team.”

Luxon said last night’s results have created a mandate for a National-led government but he was appreciative of Winston Peters’ remarks last night that NZ First will help if needed. Luxon hasn’t called Peters yet but said they would be in contact in due course.

The party is bringing its strategy team together this afternoon to work through the next steps.

Asked whether he was surprised about some of the seats that look to have flipped blue after being Labour strongholds, Luxon suggested the key to those successes was a focus on the party’s “ground game”, with weekly meetings that tracked progress, and being out of Wellington.

Luxon said he’d spoken to Act leader David Seymour twice yesterday.

“In very broad-brush terms David and I have spoken every couple of days over the last couple of months. We’ve been neighbours for four years, we know each other fairly well. In terms of goals we’re very aligned,” he said.

Luxon said the process of forming a coalition was not not yet underway but the party had “made sure we have good alignment and good chemistry… I’ve done a lot of mergers and acquisitions, it’s about getting the chemistry right.”

With 100% of ordinary votes counted, a number of electorates have gone down to the wire, with special votes likely to hold the final sway.

Mt Albert

Labour’s Helen White is 106 votes ahead of National’s Melissa Lee.

Te Atatū

National’s Angee Nicholas is just 30 votes ahead of the incumbent, Labour’s Phil Twyford.

Nelson

National’s Blair Cameron is 54 votes ahead of the incumbent, Labour’s Rachel Boyack.

Banks Peninsula

National’s Vanessa Weenink is 80 votes ahead of the incumbent, Labour’s Tracey McLellan.

Plus…

The Labour incumbents have leads of just under 500 votes in Te Tai Tokerau and Tāmaki Makaurau. With Te Pāti Māori expected to pick up a lot of special votes, Kelvin Davis and Peeni Henare won’t be relaxing just yet.

After a divisive referendum campaign, Australians have decisively rejected a proposal to give greater rights to indigenous people, including enshrining an indigenous advisory authority in the constitution. All six states have voted ‘No’, with between 70-80% of the vote counted at the time of writing, and the national vote is sitting at 60% ‘No’ with 74% of the vote counted.

Prime minister Anthony Albanese accepted the result and made an immediate plea for unity, saying “we are not Yes voters or No voters, we are all Australians.” Peter Dutton, the leader of the opposition, has commended the result, calling it “good for our country”.

National’s campaign leader has confirmed that Christopher Luxon hasn’t yet spoken to Winston Peters, after the full ordinary vote count showed National and Act could govern alone, albeit with a single seat majority. “Our preference was to govern with the Act Party and essentially that has happened on the current numbers,” he told Jack Tame on Q&A this morning, but he wasn’t “counting chickens” just yet, with nearly 20% of votes still to be counted in the form of special votes. “It may be that with the specials the numbers bounce around a bit and, if required, we said we’d pick up the phone to Winston Peters and it may be that that is necessary.”

National will meet this afternoon to digest the result and plan any potential coalition movements. In the meantime, Bishop pointed to Auckland as a particularly strong area for National this election, thanks to – he said – the 2021 delta lockdown that frustrated the country’s largest city and distance many voters from Labour.

Given the single-seat majority currently on the cards, a government won’t be formed until the special votes have been counted in full, which can take up to 10 days. National’s chickens will remain uncounted until then.

As of 5pm yesterday, 78.4% of eligible voters had turned out to vote in the 2023 general election. As expected, that’s down on 2020’s record 82.2% turnout, and a slight dip from 2017’s turnout of 79.01%.

It’s also exactly what both Grant Robertson and David Seymour predicted in their appearances on the Gone By Lunchtime Megapod a couple of weeks ago. Half a chocolate fish each to those men.

Special votes are up on the past two elections, at an estimated 567,000 (20.2% of total votes), which includes 80,000 overseas and dictation votes. By contrast, in 2020, when fewer New Zealand voters were overseas due to the Covid-19 pandemic, there were 504,621 special votes including 62,787 overseas and dictation votes, around 17%.

Special votes traditionally have a sway on the final makeup of parliament. For example, in 2014 and 2017, National’s Maureen Pugh made it in on the party list, only to lose her seat once the specials came in.

At 8.05pm, when 25% of the vote had been counted, National and Act were looking like they could comfortably govern without NZ First – they had 64 seats.

As of midnight, with 96.1% counted, that was down to 61 seats – the slimmest possible majority in a parliament of 120 seats.

In reality we’ll have a parliament of at least 121 seats, because of the Port Waikato byelection, which will very likely go to National. Te Pāti Māori could potentially cause an overhang, which means we could end up with a parliament of 122 or 123 seats, and special votes – which last election counted for 17% of the total final vote – could conceivably give another seat to the Greens.

All of which means, according to Toby Manhire on the Gone By Lunchtime livestream anyway, that a National-Act coalition isn’t as sure a thing as it was looking earlier – NZ First just might still be needed.