New Zealand general election leaves no clear winner after knife-edge count
New Zealand's general election ended without a clear winner on Saturday, November 7, leaving Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and opposition leader Chris Hipkins waiting up to three weeks for special votes to determine the next government. With nearly all regular ballots counted, the New Zealand Electoral Commission will not declare the official result until Friday, November 27, after hand-counting hundreds of thousands of overseas and out-of-electorate ballots. Preliminary figures put Luxon's centre-right National Party on 42 seats, narrowly ahead of the opposition left bloc when combined with its right-wing coalition partners, ACT New Zealand on 13 seats and New Zealand First on 12.
