Stuart Nash gave the Labour Party an opportunity to celebrate on an otherwise night of blue across the country after defeating his National challenger Wayne Walford by 3733 votes.
And with the success of Meka Whaitiri in Ikaroa-Rawhiti it was a 2-2 draw for National and Labour in the four Hawke's Bay electorates.
For Mr Nash the result was an almost perfect turnaround in majority as he had lost to National's Chris Tremain by 3701 votes in the 2011 election.
Saturday's result had been predicted by many across the political landscape - given Mr Nash was an experienced campaigner, that Napier had until the arrival of Mr Tremain in 2005 been a Labour stronghold since 1951 and the emergence of Garth McVicar who stood for the Conservative Party.
Mr Nash agreed Mr McVicar had taken votes from Mr Walford, but added he, too, would have lost votes as the Conservative contender attracted 7135 votes.
Voting numbers were up in Napier - a trend which was also evident in the Tukituki, Wairarapa (which takes in a slice of Central Hawke's Bay) and Ikaroa-Rawhiti electorates.
Including special votes, 36,520 people voted in Napier - 34,228 had voted in 2011.
In Tukituki there were 36,059 votes cast - 1736 more than in 2011.
In Wairarapa, voting numbers were up from 35,079 in 2011 to 36,568, while 18,818 people voted in Ikaroa-Rawhiti - an increase of 499.
While the Napier result gave Labour some solace after the jolt of gathering just 24.7 per cent of voter support across the country, the celebrations in Tukituki were all National after Craig Foss retained the seat he has held since 2005.
He was however given a slight jolt of his own in that the majority of 9660 he achieved in the 2011 win over Labour's Julia Hayden-Carr was cut back to 5800 by Anna Lorck.
Mr Foss drew 16,887 votes (19,378 in 2011) while Ms Lorck attracted 11,087 votes.
There was no one else in the race - the total number of votes for the other five electoral candidates came to 4135.
There was also success for National's Alastair Scott in the Wairarapa electorate, which had a split-vote look to it like Napier.
Mr Scott polled 14,913 votes while Labour's Kieran McNulty (8685) went head-to-head with New Zealand First's Ron Mark who drew 8006 votes.
Mr Mark has made the Parliamentary cut though - he goes in as a list MP.
Labour's Meka Whaitiri ensured her party retained Ikaroa-Rawhiti by polling 8644 votes while nearest challenger, Mana's Te Hamua Nikora, took 4356.
Like Mr Mark, Marama Fox, who polled 3314 votes for the Maori Party, will also take a place as a list MP.
Hawke's Bay Police Senior Sergeant Clint Adamson said there were no reports of any incidents at any polling booths.
"A quiet day," he said.
There was, however, evidence some potential voters may have made their political feelings known with 1270 "candidate informal" votes cast (not eligible for a variety of reasons) across the four regional electorates.
There also appeared to be a lull in voting during the two hours another big Saturday event was taking place - the Magpies clash with Bay of Plenty at McLean Park for the Ranfurly Shield.
"It fired up again after that," one of the volunteers at a Napier voting station said.