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What if the National Party won the 1957 New Zealand election instead of the Labour Party? Keith Holyoake would be Prime Minister of New Zealand at least until 1960 instead of Walter Nash. I did this by having National win all the seats Labour won with a majority of 600 or less, and applied the swing nationwide. 1957 New Zealand election Keith Holyoake-National: 43-2 46.29%
Walter Nash-Labour: 37+2 46.23%
80 seats
41 for majority
Labour loses Lyttleton, Nelson, St Albans and Tamaki, and among those losses are Norman Kirk and Bob Tizard.
How could such a result occur-what PoD would be needed? What would be the effects? Labour would likely have a change of leadership, Nash was nearly overthrown in 1954 and now he would have lost 3 elections. The most likely replacement looks like Arnold Nordmeyer, but I'm not sure if Nordmeyer could win back power for Labour. How would National govern in this period? Would there still be the Black Budget of 1958? With the balance of payments crisis(that National hid from the public during the election and forced Labour to abandon its 'election bribe' election promises) would 1957 be a poisoned chalice? Would Labour win in 1960 and govern for the 1960s? Or would National keep power well into the 1960s? What if?