New Delhi (NVI): Jacinda Ardern will govern New Zealand for a second term after the Labour party secured a historic landslide victory in the general election today as voters rewarded her for a decisive response to COVID-19.
With nearly 100 per cent of the votes counted, Labour had secured 49 per cent, with the opposition National party on 27 per cent.
Ardern’s Labour Party headed to its biggest share of the vote since the 1930s — after a huge swing to the left in many urban and provincial electorates.
Speaking to a heaving crowd of 1,000 people at Auckland town hall, Ardern thanked the nation for the strong mandate.
The mandate means Ardern, 40, could form the first single-party government in decades, according to media reports.
The landslide victory will give Ardern more scope to deliver the transformational government she promised when she came to power three years ago.
Voters are rewarding Ardern for crushing community transmission of Covid-19 while countries like the U.K., U.S. and even neighboring Australia are still battling to contain the virus.
New Zealand has now gone three weeks without any cases in the community, with all new infections limited to returned overseas travelers undergoing mandatory quarantine.
The nation has recorded just 25 coronavirus deaths so far.
-CHK
