The Green party won in Auckland by reaching beyond its own bubble | Chlöe Swarbrick

A minor party hasn't won a general electorate seat in well over 20 years. The result shows what is possible when convention is scrapped

I was making toast in my tiny apartment kitchen four weeks ahead of election day. Not that I really had track of the days. They had melded into one ever-extending runway as Auckland went through its second Covid-19 lockdown and New Zealand's election date was pushed back a month.

We were a few months into an insurgent campaign for an electorate seat at the centre of the country's largest city. We'd built a team of hundreds of people - particularly young people, some so young they couldn't even vote yet - who, despite their claims to the contrary, were all doing a lot more than the least they could do. They were about to make history.