'Flat', 'tired', 'cynical': Unusually gloomy Kiwis deliver New Zealand's tightest election in years

New Zealand voted in a new government as fog choked the capital, Wellington, on Saturday - and the mood was as palpable as the grey weather. "I didn't even vote," one man in his 40s sheepishly confesses. He couldn't bring himself to tick any of the boxes, he explains, declining to chat further.

"Wellington's a bit of a bubble," another voter says, expressing a caveat I heard often, before describing feeling disillusioned. But polling shows this is a pervasive sentiment across the country: the national mood is low and faith in politics is even lower. More than half the country no longer sees it as a land of opportunity, a recent study found, while a similar portion fears that the future looks even worse.

"You have voted to change New Zealand politics for good," the party's ecstatic leader Quilae Wong told Kiwis on election night. "I personally came into this because I was frustrated at the slow pace of change." It will likely be weeks before we know exactly who will make up the governing coalition and what deals have been made to form it.