People felt that she spoke about topics that concerned them such as families and housing Young people liked her youth and energy Plus her feminist views appealed to many women In fact after just one week with Ardern as its leader Labour had begun to catch up to National in polls The media called her rise in popularity Jacindamania During the debate English downplayed Ardern’s popularity He claimed that the buzz about her would soon settle down Instead he focused on the state of the economy under his leadership In contrast Ardern talked about poverty climate change and the high cost of education No one she said should settle for the problems facing New Zealand On September 23 people around the country cast their votes To control the government in 6
New Zealand a party must win a majority of seats in Parliament either on its own or by agreeing to work with another party Neither Labour nor National had enough seats for a majority Both won fewer than 61 of the 120 seats in Parliament As a result they needed to form coalitions by convincing other parties to join with them FORMING A MAJORITY Five political parties won seats in New Zealand’s Parliament in 2017 Labour NZ First Green ACT 46 seats 9 seats 8 seats 1 seat Total 120 seats Speaker 7 National 56 seats
Because the Green Party had many ideas in common with Labour people assumed the two parties would work together But the Greens alone did not have enough seats to give Labour a majority Ardern still needed another party to join her coalition So she approached Winston Peters who led the New Zealand First Party Peters was quite different from Ardern He had a gruff personality and conservative ideas Even so Ardern and Peters had some things in common Like Ardern Peters wanted New Zealand’s government to do more for people who were struggling with poverty He also wanted to support better jobs in rural parts of the country Ardern negotiated with Peters for weeks So did Bill English He tried to convince Peters to join with the National Party instead Both English and Ardern waited for Peters to make his decision 8
Winston Peters and Ardern sign an agreement to form a coalition On October 19 Peters announced that his party would join with Labour Labour’s coalition now had 63 seats enough for a majority That meant the Labour Party would control New Zealand’s government On October 25 Jacinda Ardern became the country’s youngest prime minister in 150 years In this new role she would continue to make both change and headlines 9
