Late coming voters have helped curb a worrying trend in Hawke's Bay polling figures in which those who voted over the last three weeks still totalled more than at the last Local Elections in 2013.
Provisional figures available last night indicated voting across the the one city council and four district council elections from Wairoa to Tararua was close to the 48 per cent achieved three years ago. In most areas more than 40 per cent of votes were lodged in the last five days.
The number of voters who've exercised their right to vote is up in Wairoa, Hastings, Central Hawke's Bay and Tararua, but in Napier the preliminary count is 1252 down on the vote in the last triennial election.
But no area came close to the figures achieved in the Hawke's Bay reorganisation vote 13 months ago when voters rejected a merger of the the Hawke's Bay Regional Council and the four councils in its boundaries - at least 15,000 Napier and Hastings voters who took part in the amalgamation decider did not vote in Local Elections 2016.
That vote attracted over 59,500 votes in the twin cities alone, more than the provisional figure of 59,420 who voted across all the councils this year, representing about 48 per cent of the provisional combined roll of 123,448.