Green vote highest in central cities, lowest in south Auckland

Former Green Party co-leader Metiria Turei secured 23.8 per cent of the votes in Te Tai Tonga. Photo / Mark Mitchell

Support for the Green Party remained strongest in Wellington and central Auckland, and weakest in south and southeast Auckland - areas where leader James Shaw says the party's social platform should appeal.

The five strongest electorates for the Greens were Wellington Central, Rongotai, Mt Albert, Auckland Central and Dunedin North - the same five electorates where its vote was strongest in the 2014 election.

But their share of the party vote still fell dramatically, mirroring the overall drop from 10.7 per cent in 2014 to 6.3 per cent in 2017.

Shaw said the result showed that the party's core support remained loyal.

"Our vote came down proportionately in those places, but it was still really high. It demonstrates that our base hasn't really shifted over time.

"The historical profile [of a Green voter] tends to be urban professionals, tertiary educated, often in public service roles."

The weakest results for the Greens were in Manukau East, Botany, Manurewa, Mangere and Papakura.

Shaw said the Green's social justice policies should be attractive in south and southeast Auckland, but the party faced challenges from both major parties.

"National have been making inroads into those areas, and they've done that pretty assiduously in the course of the last 10 years or so. It's [also] pretty hard to compete against those loyal Labour communities."

Shaw said the silver lining to National's growth was that there were blue votes that could be swayed left, and a Labour-Green coalition cannot happen without eating into National's support.

"That's why we've put effort into recruiting good candidates to run in those areas to start to build that ground campaign, but you're not going to do that in one election - especially in an election where the head winds are against you."

Of the party candidates, former co-leader Metiria Turei had the strongest support with 23.8 per cent in Te Tai Tonga. Her supporters were more likely to vote for her because winning the electorate was her only path back to Parliament, after she removed herself from the list in the wake of her admission of welfare fraud.

The other Green candidates who secured at least 15 per cent of the candidate vote were Matt Lawrey (Nelson), Marama Davidson (Tamaki Makaurau), Hayley Holt (Helensville), and Shaw (Wellington Central).

Except for Nelson, the Greens did not actively campaign for candidate votes - but did not discourage it either. National's Nick Smith won Nelson with a majority which was more than 5000 votes fewer than Lawrey's total.

Shaw did not lament a more strategic approach with Labour in Nelson, saying that standing candidates would have helped both Labour and the Greens to build party votes.

Maungakiekie was another electorate where the Green candidate, Chloe Swarbrick, won more votes than the difference separating the National and Labour candidates.

National's Denise Lee won the seat with a 2157 majority over Labour's Priyanca Radhakrishnan, who entered Parliament on the list. Swarbrick won 4060 candidate votes.