High Popularity Becomes The Ticket For Jacinda Ardern's Victory In The New Zealand Presidential Election

JAKARTA - The popularity of New Zealand leader Jacinda Ardern has skyrocketed based on a number of surveys. One of them is because of his success in handling the COVID-19 pandemic. Its popularity at home and abroad is the main asset for this 40-year-old leader to win the presidential election in September.

According to a Newshub-Reid poll cited by Reuters, Jacinda Ardern's popularity surpassed her labor party, by 62 percent. Meanwhile, the party itself received 60.9 percent votes. The vote acquisition was predicted as the highest in the history of the survey in New Zealand.

The votes received by the ruling party were far too far compared to the government's opposition party, the National Party which only won 25.1 percent of the votes. Meanwhile, according to a new survey released on July 26 yesterday, the leader of the newly elected National Party, Judith Collins, had to be complacent with winning 14.6 percent of the votes.

Meanwhile, another survey from the Labor Party now in coalition with the Greens and New Zealand First predicts it will win 77 out of 120 seats in parliament. This suggests that the Labor Party will be able to rule without a coalition partner.

One of the factors that made Ardern's name soar was his success in dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic. Not only from within the country, praise also flowed from the global community for its success. The country of 5 million people has only had 1,206 cases of COVID-19 so far, with 22 deaths.

Jacinda Ardern became New Zealand's youngest PM in 2017. In addition, Jacinda Ardern is also the third woman to hold a leadership position. The atmosphere has earned the nickname "Jacinda-mania" by some.

"I want a message that we can take from this, namely support for the big support for the government's COVID-19 recovery and response plan," Ardern said in response to the poll.

However, National Party campaign leader Gerry Brownlee of the opposition said the polls were fraudulent. Meanwhile Judith Collins believes her party will form the next government.