Although our national election was a week ago, we are still waiting for a final result. We should have this result in another week, by October 7th. Special votes have yet been counted. These are votes from people who could not vote in their home electorate or who enrolled late. There is a large number of these votes and they could make a difference to the final result.
We need to remember that with our MMP system of voting, we are likely to have a coalition government. With the results at the moment, no party has a majority. The National Party has 46% of the vote so needs the support of another party to gain 61 seats in a government of 120 seats. The other party will probably be NZ First but this party will want some privileges. One privilege might be giving the role of Deputy Prime Minister to the Leader of New Zealand First, Winston Peters. We will have to wait and see.
Vocabulary
MMP – Mixed-Member Proportional, each party gets a proportion or percentage of their votes e.g Party A gets 10% of the vote, it gets 10% of the Members of Parliament which is 12 seats
coalition – a group working together
privilege – an advantage or a right to have something