Hipango's lead cut after special votes counted

National's Harete Hipango remains the MP in Whanganui, but with her 1841-vote lead over Labour's Steph Lewis on election night cut back to 1706. Photo / File

Whanganui's new MP has had her lead cut - but the result remains the same.

The official election results were announced on Saturday afternoon, after special votes were counted. National lost two seats, and Labour and the Greens both picked up one seat each.

In Whanganui, National's Harete Hipango remains the MP. However, her 1841-vote lead over Labour's Steph Lewis on election night has been cut to 1706.

All of Whanganui's five candidates picked up extra votes in the final count. Ms Lewis picked up the greatest number of votes, with 1510; while Ms Hipango gained an extra 1375. The Green Party candidate, Nicola Patrick, picked up the next highest number of votes, with 366 - taking her total to 2067.

New Zealand First's Reg Skipworth is up 247 to 2580 to confirm his third place in the election, while ACT's Alan Davison is up 42 to 294.

Labour also did well in the party vote, picking up an extra 1663 votes, to have a total vote count of 13748. But National still came out ahead, gaining 1400 votes to come in at 16,874 votes.

Special votes are cast by people who voted outside their electorate (including overseas), and those who enrolled and voted on the same day.

Special votes number 384,000 across the country, or 15 per cent of total votes. There were nearly 4000 special votes in the Whanganui electorate.

The total number of votes cast in the Whanganui electorate was 37,724.