Wellington's Labour MPs most popular in the country

MP for Remutaka Chris Hipkins. Photo / Mark Mitchell

Chris Hipkins won Remutaka with the biggest margin of any MP in the country.

He got 17,237 more votes than his opponent, National's Mark Crofskey.

It's a lead even bigger than Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern's margin in Mt Albert, although she came in at a close second.

Hipkins has held the seat since 2008, and has had a particularly busy year stepping in as Health Minister during a global pandemic.

But on the campaign trail he said he was still an active and visible MP.

Hipkins said the electorate work kept him grounded.

"When you get out and about, even if it's just popping into the cossie club on a Friday night for a beer, you do realise that actually some of the things that happen in the political bubble barely register with people."

A voting booth in Hipkins' electorate was also home to the most advance votes cast in the country.

More than 10,200 people cast their votes early at The Mall in Upper Hutt, making up 94 per cent of votes cast at that location.

Nationally, 70.5 per cent of votes were cast in advance, and overall Remutaka was close to that voting rate with 69.7 per cent advance votes.

Back to the most popular MPs, Rongotai MP Paul Eagle and Wellington Central MP Grant Robertson have the third and fourth highest margins in the country respectively.

Wellington Central MP Grant Robertson. Photo / Alex Burton

Both substantially increased their margins from the 2017 election- Eagle's by 5,136 votes and Robertson's by 4,972. The difference will likely grow when special votes are in.

That's despite National's Wellington Central candidate Nicola Willis spending the last three years as a list MP compared to 2017 when she was a relatively unknown face.

The only thing that really went wrong for Robertson on election night was that he cut himself shaving before heading to the Wharewaka for Labour's Wellington event.

"But overall I've had a good day. It's been quite a nice quiet day, which has been unusual lately", he said before Labour's powerhouse election results swept in.

The Wellington Central and Rongotai electorates also experienced a massive left landslide, being the only two in the region where the Green Party polled second highest over National.

National list MP Nicola Willis arrives for yesterday's caucus meeting after a left landslide in Wellington Central. Photo / Hagen Hopkins

The Greens snapped up 30.7 per cent of the party vote in Wellington Central and 23.7 per cent of it in Rongotai.

New Hutt South MP Ginny Andersen had the lowest margin of the Wellington electorates.

She took the seat from National's Chris Bishop by 2,292 votes.

The margin was at about 100 votes right up until 10.30pm on election night when a fresh set of results were dumped, putting Andersen ahead by more than 1000.

She described the turn of events as a "rollercoaster" of an evening.

Bishop still earned 16,531 votes in the electorate - almost double National's party votes there and the highest ratio candidate votes to party votes for any blue candidate.

"It's just almost impossible, as I discovered on Saturday night, to hold a seat against a swing of that magnitude because a lot of people just do the two ticks. They want to support Labour so they vote for Labour", Bishop said earlier this week.