A technical glitch left meant results from the Whanganui local body elections were slow to be posted online.

The results were expected to be posted from about 3pm and the district council later apologised for the delays citing a computer failure as the main reason.

There was also the matter of telling individual candidates the result before they were made public and with a field of 33 for council that also took time.

But the delays irked some locals keen to get the results. On Facebook Hayden Montgomerie with the council website out of action for almost two hours "it's a good thing it's not an emergency".

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"But this does little to convince residents of our digital future and makes a mockery of the (district's) new slogan 'all you need (and them some)'," he said.

As it was 17,506 votes were received by the electoral office which represents 56 per cent of the districts' more than 31,000 eligible voters. This is about two per cent less than the votes cast in the 2013 elections.

The results published in the Chronicle today are only preliminary and the official results should be posted on Thursday once special votes have been verified.

The new mayor and council will be sworn in early next month.