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ANALYSIS: The election was on Saturday, but we are still not living by the results.
The results are still preliminary and could change something in the full and final story. For now, the government elected in 2017 remains.
In Detail: A Vote-by-Vote Analysis of New Zealand’s Historic Left Turn
But Labor leader Jacinda Ardern doesn’t need to wait to form a new government. Here’s an idea for the future timeline.
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* Labor one-party majority is not a failure of the MMP, it is a sign that New Zealand’s electoral system is working
* Election 2020: Jacinda Ardern claims biggest Labor victory in 50 years
* Election 2020: Final poll has Labor only ruling
TUESDAY – ENCOUNTER OF NEW CAUSES
On Tuesday, Labor and National plan to meet as a caucus. That is another word for all the deputies of the party.
Robert Kitchin / Things
Most of the new Labor MPs.
By tradition, outgoing MPs will be there, as well as new ones. For National, this will mean that many “silver trays” will be handed out. For the Labor Party, all the new MPs could be a bit cramped in the government meeting room on the first floor of Parliament House.
These meetings will be a time to celebrate or commiserate. Caucuses are generally masters of their own destiny, so some votes could be gotten if a caucus wanted it on things like leadership, but there’s no real indication that it’s going to happen anywhere tomorrow.
The Labor constitution requires the party to vote if it “supports” its leader within three months of an election, and that is likely to happen tomorrow. Ardern is a safe bet to get the full backing of your group.
Parliamentarians generally speak to the media at their caucus.
Waikato Times
Every vote will be counted.
NOVEMBER 6: PUBLICATION OF THE COMPLETE RESULTS
The Electoral Commission aims to release the full results of the elections and referendums at 2:00 p.m. on Friday, November 6.
They will count all the votes already counted in the preliminary count and will include “special” votes, generally made up of the vote abroad, the votes cast by people outside of their electorate and the votes cast by people who are registering in the heat of the choice.
Special votes are estimated at 480,000 or about 17 percent of the total vote. In the most recent elections, these results favor the left: in the last elections, two national MPs who seemed elected that night were replaced by a Green MP and a Labor MP.
If the election were tight, this could be quite important, but Labor is currently projected to win 64 seats, three more seats than it needs to govern alone. The special vote is highly unlikely to move the outcome so much that Labor loses that majority. This means that if Ardern wanted to, he could visit the governor general tomorrow and ask to form a government, and the governor general would probably allow it.
ROSA WOODS / Things
Technically, the old government is still in power.
SOME TIME SOON – A GOVERNMENT IS FORMED AND PARLIAMENT RETURNS
Ardern has indicated that it will take “two or three weeks” to form a government. He met with the Green Party co-leaders on Monday to discuss how talks with the party could progress.
Ardern doesn’t need all 10 Green Party seats to govern, but he can choose to include them in some kind of government deal anyway. This would keep the party, which shares many of Labor’s stated goals, in the tent for a bit.
Supplied / Stuff
The Electoral Director, Alicia Wright, with the Governor General, Her Excellency the Rt Hon Dame Patsy Reddy, at Government House for the signing of the car, a key part of the electoral process.
Once this has been decided, Ardern can go to the Governor General and ask him for permission to form a Government, which will be granted, and the new Government will take office.
The Governor General will allow this essentially because she will be confident that if a “confidence” motion is called in Parliament, the new Ardern Government would get a majority.
Interestingly, this happens before Parliament returns.
Parliament will finally meet for a speech from the throne, a speech written by the prime minister to lay out what the government wants to do this term.
Parliament has to meet within six weeks of the “return of the car”, which is the formal process by which the results are declared in the House, and is scheduled to happen on November 12.
Realistically, Parliament will sit well before that deadline.
