Good morning. Here are 3 of the 10 stories in today's Ten@10.
1. Democracy Briefing: Could New Zealand be voting again?
Bryce Edwards writes that a second election remains unlikely, but the fear of one is already shaping the coalition talks. The right bloc has 67 seats, one more than it needs, and the specials could still remove that margin. Richard Prebble has told The Platform, "I think we'll be back at the ballot box within a year." Edwards sets out three ways it could happen, and argues that National and Opportunity have more to fear from a rerun than Act and NZ First, which is why Luxon may keep making concessions to avoid an election he cannot be confident of winning.
Read it at The Democracy Project
3. The Voters Are Always Right
Simon O'Connor takes issue with Vanessa Weenink's claim, after her defeat in Banks Peninsula, that National was pulled too far to the right. The preliminary count shows National down 8.87 points, while ACT and New Zealand First both rose. If voters were recoiling from the right, he asks, why did both coalition partners on the right increase their shares? His answer is that National drifted from its centre-right foundations, and that the voters are always right: the useful response is to examine the party's choices, not wish for a different electorate.
5. A little bit of election undermining, as a treat
Liam Hehir says you can argue about the enrolment deadline and still not call it "voter suppression". The Electoral Commission had told Parliament it was not confident of completing the count in 20 days without one, $18.1 million was spent on enrolment, and the provisional enrolment rate was 93.7%. Since the election, he writes, Chlöe Swarbrick has accused the government of knowingly indulging in voter suppression and of a "deeply cynical election", while also saying she is not interested in challenging the result. He wants an interviewer to ask her: "Do you agree that the 2026 general election was free, fair and legitimate?"
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