So going on how things changed as voters were counted, it would appear that the early voting broke more for Nat / Act, and then the day of voting broke for Lab / G. NZF & TPM stayed relatively consistent throughout the night. This makes sense, blue-collar working people are somewhat more likely to vote Labour than National, and are less likely to have time to get to one of the fewer advance voting posts, than the typically white-collar / retired voters who are somewhat more likely to vote for the right.

The vote totals have now tightened up considerably on whether National can form a government with just Act; such that I am interested to know how many overseas / special votes there might be, and if any of them have been counted yet. If there’s enough of them, and they tipped more Labour/Green than National then it might be enough to pull another vote from the right to the left, and given Parliament has an overhang this term Luxon would need to pick up the phone to someone to get an outright majority, at least on confidence & supply.

Another big talking point for me is that one in every twenty voters this election has no representation in Parliament at all due to the threshold requirements for minor parties.