Opportunity projected to enter Parliament on early election-night results
Opportunity is projected to enter Parliament for the first time, with between six and seven MPs, according to RNZ. The party's leader, Quilae Wong, told supporters on election night that Opportunity was set to make history by entering Parliament.
The party was formerly known as The Opportunities Party, or TOP. It was founded by economist Gareth Morgan in 2016. Before this election it had never made it into Parliament, and it had polled as high as 8 percent in some pre-election polls.
To win seats, a party in New Zealand must cross the 5 percent party-vote threshold. The party vote is the vote cast for a party rather than for an individual candidate. As of 9.30pm on election night, with close to 50 percent of votes counted, Opportunity was sitting at about 5.5 percent of the party vote.
Early results for the larger parties showed National and Labour each on 29.7 percent. The Greens were on 13.8 percent, ACT on 10.6 percent, NZ First on 9.5 percent and Te Pāti Māori on 0.5 percent. Seventeen registered parties contested the election, with 530 candidates between them.
National leader Christopher Luxon has repeatedly ruled out working with Opportunity in any coalition, the arrangement in which parties share government.
