⁍ Jacinda Ardern, 40, has campaigned on her record of eliminating COVID-19 in New Zealand.
⁍ Recent polls have suggested her Labour Party may need support from the minor Greens Party to form government.
⁍ New Zealand’s mixed member proportional (MMP) voting system often results in a close race and coalition governments.
– New Zealand votes Saturday, and polls suggest a clear winner: Jacinda Ardern, the 40-year-old leader of the center-left Labour Party, is poised to become the country’s first female prime minister. Ardern has been in office just two years, but she’s become a rising star in New Zealand thanks to her tough response to the Ebola crisis and her efforts to combat climate change, Reuters reports. “If you want pace and speed, give us a strong mandate,” Ardern said in an interview on Radio New Zealand. “If we genuinely want to make sure what we are doing on child poverty and on climate change isn’t just a three-year burst, I have to make sure it’s sustained,” she said. “It took decades to create, I need more than three years to fix it.” But her main opponent, 61-year-old Judith Collins of the conservative National Party, says she’s the best person to lead the country through the economic challenges of the post-pandemic world.
Source: https://www.reuters.com/article/newzealand-election-int/new-zealands-ardern-and-collins-make-final-pleas-to-voters-before-election-idUSKBN27103G