WELLINGTON — New Zealand Prime Minister Christopher Luxon is on course to hang on to power as head of a coalition government with a razor-thin majority following Saturday's election, according to a Reuters analysis published on Monday, November 9 — but his National Party could lose control of key government ministries to its right-wing coalition partners.

Source: Reuters via SRN News

Preliminary Electoral Commission data shows Luxon's three-party coalition — National with the libertarian ACT and the populist New Zealand First — could govern with a majority of just two seats. National won the most seats of any party, while the main opposition Labour Party also fell short of what it needed to govern alone.

The result broke a long pattern in New Zealand politics: centre-right National and Labour both polled below 30 percent of the party vote for the first time ever, losing votes to minor parties on the left, right and centre — a trend analysts told Reuters mirrors a global shift away from the political establishment.

The partners name their price

The bargaining has already begun. ACT leader David Seymour said on Monday that National holding the finance ministry is "no longer tenable". New Zealand First, which wants stricter controls on net migration, has said it is "imperative" that it takes control of the country's immigration ministry in any new government, Reuters reported.

Luxon will also have to govern without key National moderates who lost their seats, including Finance Minister Nicola Willis and Transport Minister Chris Bishop, one of his main policy architects — losses that weaken National's hand inside its own coalition.

Awaaz Punjab followed Saturday's count as it tightened through the night — read the election-night report here

The kingmaker waits, Labour does not concede

The margin may yet disappear. Special votes — overseas and out-of-electorate ballots that make up about a seventh of the total, nearly 400,000 votes — typically skew left and are included in the final count on November 27. If they shift one or two seats, Luxon could need a fourth party: the centrist Opportunity Party, which crossed the 5 percent threshold to enter parliament for the first time and is being described as a potential kingmaker.

Opportunity leader Qiulae Wong said on Monday she had not yet heard from the prime minister but was keen to talk, and that she would negotiate first with whoever secures the most seats in parliament — while insisting her party's bottom lines on climate action, the cost of living and cleaning up politics are non-negotiable. Labour leader Chris Hipkins insisted on Monday that the election is "not over yet", and political analyst Brigitte Morten said Labour could still have a path to power with Opportunity as kingmaker, though a four-party deal would be very difficult to negotiate and manage.

Source: AP reporting via UM Legacy Press

Formal coalition negotiations are effectively on hold — Luxon, who will run a caretaker government until the final count and who survived two attempts to unseat him in the months before the election, has suggested everyone take a break from politics for the next few weeks, the BBC reported. What happens next is therefore set by the calendar: the official final count on November 27, and then coalition talks in earnest among as many as four parties.

Source: BBC via The Time News