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Te Pāti Māori’s Oriini Kaipara won the Tāmaki Makaurau Māori electorate by-election on Saturday night.
Photo: RNZ / Lillian Hanly
While the Tāmaki Makaurau by-election turnout was low, it could have been worse, a political scientist says.
Te Pāti Māori will retain six seats in Parliament after Oriini Kaipara was declared the electorate’s next MP on Saturday night.
In preliminary results, she had just over 6000 votes, ahead of Labour’s Peeni Henare on just under 3100.
Voter turnout for the election was 27.1 percent.
Victoria University associate professor of politics Lara Greaves told RNZ that turnout was small but not much smaller than the Port Waikato and Hamilton West by-elections.
The turnout for those were 35.9 percent and 31.4 percent respectively.
Greaves said the amount of people that voted in the Tāmaki Makaurau by-election was not alarming compared to those other events.
“All by-elections tend to have low voter turnout, you’re asking someone to really go out of their way to vote and it is always at a time when people aren’t thinking about politics.”
She said her biggest surprise was how much Kaipara won by compared to the 2023 election, where Te Pāti Māori bet Peeni Henare by 42 votes.
“It’s shaping up to be a fairly safe seat for Te Pāti Māori looking forward to the next election.”
The result would trigger questions over whether what the Labour Party was offering was exciting enough, Greaves said.
“People will be saying like is the Labour Party radical enough or is the Labour Party enough change.”
On Thursday RNZ reported that both Labour and Te Pāti Māori had concerns about voter turnout at the Tāmaki Makaurau by-election.
At a standup on Saturday night Henare noted that the voter turnout was “extremely low”.
“The numbers haven’t fallen our way and we’ll just have to continue to work hard to make sure that we represent the many people that don’t vote, the many people that didn’t turnout this particular by-election.”
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