Tauranga's Green Party candidate Ian McLean is relaxed about failing to make it into Parliament.
"There was clearly a swing to the right for the whole of the country, so I don't feel like we failed in Tauranga. What happened in Tauranga is what happened everywhere else," Dr McLean (pictured) said.
"We actually did about the same as last time."
Dr McLean was philosophical.
"We don't feel like we didn't perform. We feel like we did our job, just getting our message out there.
"Had we done nothing it could have been a lot worse. Tauranga traditionally has a lot of conservative voters. So we did not expect that we would get too far," he said. He was also surprised at the "disappointing" national results for the Greens.
Dr McLean wanted to express deep gratitude to his Tauranga supporters.