Special votes looking good for Labour and Greens

Green party co-leader Rod Donald

Labour and the Greens are growing more confident the centre-left will win another seat from the special votes - a change which would significantly strengthen Helen Clark's hand in forming the government.

The special votes are being counted in electorates around the country and political party scrutineers are monitoring the progress in a number and reporting back to their headquarters.

The target for releasing the results is 2pm on Saturday.

Labour Party president Mike Williams yesterday declined to comment on the count, saying it was early days.

But party sources suggested indications so far favoured Labour or the Greens picking up a new seat.

Green Party co-leader Rod Donald said: "It's looking promising, but we are not cracking open the feijoa wine just yet".

The Greens won 5.07 per cent of the election-night vote and could end up out of Parliament in the worst- case scenario.

That would require them to gain less than 4.45 per cent of the 218,000 special votes, but would significantly buck the trends in the last two elections when they have each time gained an extra MP.

The party is considered the most likely to benefit from the specials and would need 5.32 per cent of those votes to get Nandor Tanczos back into Parliament.

Mr Donald said this week that winning a seventh seat "means more than just getting Nandor back into Parliament, it means Labour, Progressives and the Greens get 58 seats to National's and Act's 50, because National would lose a seat to us".

"That changes the whole balance of power in the House."

It meant that together Labour, the Progressives and the Greens (dubbed LPG) would have 58 votes and with New Zealand First abstaining on confidence and supply, could command a majority vote on those motions.

This would be critical if the Maori Party and United Future refused to promise to support a Labour-led government on confidence and supply votes, which it needs to govern.

Election-night results give National and Act 51 votes - but the pair would command 58 votes if United Future and the Maori Party chose to vote against Labour - to LPG's 57.

The scenarios assume New Zealand First leader Winston Peters keeps his promise to enable the party with the biggest number of votes to form a government by abstaining on confidence and supply.

With 58 votes and Mr Peters' support, the Labour-led grouping would not be forced to seek an agreement of some kind with either United Future or the Maori Party to govern.

Alternatively, with 58 seats the LPG group could do a deal with the Maori Party, which holds four seats, and have a majority of 62 of the 122 seats.

National had little to say about the special votes yesterday. But its new list MP Katrina Shanks, the MP most likely to lose her seat if there is a change, said she had "no predictions and no expectations".

Mr Tanczos said of his potential return: "The rumours I'm getting are that it's looking pretty good".

He had unfinished business at Parliament, but was relaxed about the outcome.