Auckland Central has gone Green.
Chloe Swarbrick, 26, has won the seat after defeatingLabour’s Helen White.
The electorate was previously held by National’s Nikki Kaye.
Swarbrick won 9060 votes, White polled 8568 and National’s Emma Mellow was third with 7566.
The Greens are expected to have 10 MPs in the new Parliament.
Earlier tonight Swarbrick told Newstalk ZB’s Mike Hosking she put her lead down to a community-based campaign.
She said the Green Party is stoked with its share of the party vote.
Two weeks ago, White was in front in a Colmar Brunton poll on 35 per cent, Mellow was on 26 per cent, and Swarbrick was third on 26 per cent.
White ran in the seat in 2017, coming within 1581 votes of Kaye, who had held the seat since 2008 when she beat Labour’s Judith Tizard, becoming the first National MP to win the seat.
Swarbrick, who ran a “two ticks” campaign, was unfazed by the Greens’ poor electorate vote in 2017 and threw herself into winning the seat – as insurance in case the Greens did not make it over the 5 per cent party vote threshold to return to Parliament and a burning desire to represent Auckland Central.
“What else is the point of politics, if it is not to practise the art of the possible,” Swarbrick told the Herald last month.
Mellow, a 30-year-old communications manager at ANZ bank, was selected late in the piece following a messy and bungled process by party officials.
White, who grew up in Freemans Bay and lives outside the electorate in nearby Morningside, practices as a barrister at Chancery Chambers in the central city specialising in employment law.
/cloudfront-ap-southeast-2.images.arcpublishing.com/nzme/ZCL3PLS63FP2VBSW22FE6ZSXGY.jpg)
Source: Read Full Article