Andrew Dickens: A Government before Christmas is unlikely

Early Edition with Ryan Bridge · Oct 20, 2026 · 1m · transcript

The other day Christopher Luxon sent conniptions through the commentariat by saying we'll be lucky to have a Government by Christmas.

I'm not surprised.

So we have an election on November 7th. Writ day is December 3rd – that's the deadline for all the votes to be counted.

It's three weeks later. It's always been three weeks later.

Now here's a thing: same day voting was removed from this election and the reason given was to make the vote count faster.

If it's not faster, then the allegations of electoral manipulation will be strengthened.

That it was done to disenfranchise the votes of the…