New Zealanders give Labour more votes than at any other election in past five decades

Jacinda Ardern will govern New Zealand for a second term after the Labour party secured a historic landslide victory in the general election, attracting so many votes it could become the first party in decades to be able to govern alone.

Ardern’s deft handling of the Covid-19 outbreak and resolute belief in science and experts was credited with earning the trust of New Zealanders, who cast early votes in record numbers, giving her party more votes than at any other election in the past five decades.

Judith Collins has the look of a defeated woman as Labour heads to likely victory

Long time no see. Jacinda Ardern left it late, but turned up at last night’s fourth and final debate of the election campaign as the prime minister. Ghostly versions of herself made weird, kind of shifty appearances in the previous three debates. God she was terrible, an anxious mess, uptight, easily thrown, unable to say anything memorable or with much conviction. She got better or at least less terrible as the debates dragged on and last night, back at the TVNZ studios where the series began, she was in the ascendant. She looked like she knew what she was doing. She looked like herself.

Who was the person sitting beside her in the mauve lights of the studio, though? Someone who only had a faint resemblance to the National leader, Judith Collins, someone who looked like she had the fight taken out of her and had nothing left to give. God, it was sad to witness. It’s a lie that it’s lonely at the top. It’s a lot lonelier at the bottom, and that’s where Collins seems right now at the end of a campaign that has turned into a nightmare, with the prospect of a sound thrashing on Saturday.

Jacinda Ardern and Judith Collins both bring B-game to seemingly interminable show

Are we there yet? Is it election day? Is it possible to bring the date forward a little bit from 17 October? Not by too much – things have to be put in place, pens secured to pieces of string and the like. How’s tomorrow?

Election fatigue hit hard during Tuesday night’s leaders’ debate. It was a long programme. It could have been worse: it could still be going. Mind you, it feels like it still is and always will be; that the prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, and the opposition leader, Judith Collins, will go at it unhappily ever after in front of a live audience in a dark room in Christchurch.