After six years of leftist leadership, most of the time under Jacinda Ardern, New Zealand voted for Christian conservatives. With more than one-third of the votes counted, former businessman Christopher Luxon was poised to become the nation’s next prime minister.
Ardern unexpectedly stepped down as prime minister in January, saying she no longer had “enough in the tank” to do the job justice. She won the last election in a landslide, but her popularity waned as people got tired of COVID-19 restrictions and inflation threatened the economy.
She would not have won another election. Her legacy of tyranny is over.
Another pandemic tyrant, Chris Hipkins, 45, took her place when she resigned and he failed miserably.
The initial vote counting showed Luxon’s National Party with over 40% of the vote. Under New Zealand’s proportional voting system, Luxon, 53, was expected to form an alliance with the libertarian ACT Party.
Meanwhile, the Labour Party that Hipkins leads was getting only a little over 25% of the vote — about half the proportion it got in the last election under Ardern.