Electorate contests likely to be close

A109 Light Utility Helicopter flight with mayor Gisborne City from the air in November 2023.

Opinion

Whether on the general roll or the Māori roll, Tairāwhiti voters will be having their say in competitive electorate races that will be followed as “bellwether” seats that could go either way when the numbers come in on Saturday night.

No public polling has been carried out for the East Coast electorate which straddles most of Tairāwhiti and the eastern Bay of Plenty, but it is clearly a very different race from 2020 when Kiri Allan won 51.7 percent of votes — just ahead of Labour’s 50.4 percent party vote here — for a convincing 6331-vote winning margin over Tania Tapsell. Three years earlier Allan was defeated by Anne Tolley with a margin of 4807 votes.

This election Dana Kirkpatrick, a newcomer to politics, is standing for National against Labour’s Tāmati Coffey — who answered the call when Allan announced her resignation in July after being charged over a car crash. Coffey had announced his own retirement from politics four months earlier after the birth of his second child, to spend time with his family.

Coffey, a former television presenter, entered Parliament in 2017 winning the Waiariki seat. He has been a list MP this term after being defeated in Waiariki by Te Pāti Māori co-leader Rawiri Waititi, by a margin of 836 votes — Labour’s only electorate MP to lose their seat in the “red tide” of 2020.

Coffey is ranked 36 on the Labour Party list while Kirkpatrick is 44 on the National Party list.

Green Party candidate Jordan Walker is likely to place third.

Cushla Tangaere-Manuel is another to answer the call for Labour this year — announcing her candidacy for the Ikaroa-Rāwhiti seat in late June, eight weeks after incumbent Meka Whaitiri defected to Te Pāti Māori.

Each Māori electorate has been polled by Curia Market Research, surveying 500 registered voters for a margin of error of 4.4 percent. The poll for Ikaroa-Rāwhiti was completed on September 19 and found 33 percent support for Tangaere-Manuel, 25 percent for Whaitiri and 29 percent still undecided.

Ikaroa-Rāwhiti covers the eastern North Island from the Hutt Valley to East Cape and has been a safe Labour seat since it was formed for the 1999 election; it was held by Parekura Horomia until his death in 2013, and by Whaitiri since then.

Tangaere-Manuel is an electorate-only candidate, while Whaitiri is No.3 on the list for Te Pāti Māori — meaning she is expected to return to Parliament even if she is defeated in Ikaroa-Rāwhiti. Waititi is widely tipped to win Waiariki again, and with Te Pāti Māori polling from 2-3 percent or more, they would get another three or four MPs; co-leader Debbie Ngarewa-Packer and Whaitiri are also seen as potential victors in their electorates.