Remuera, Epsom, Parnell voters give Act the key to Parliament

photo / John Stone

Voters in the suburbs of Remuera and Parnell were the key to the Act Party's survival, figures from polling booths show.

Act's candidate David Seymour won his party's only seat in the Epsom electorate, where he claimed 45 per cent of the vote in preliminary results.

Mr Seymour's strongest support was in polling booths in the suburbs of Epsom, Remuera and Parnell.

Polling booths in Mt Eden, where Labour and the Greens have more support, were a different story. National's candidate Paul Goldsmith won in all but one of the Mt Eden ballot boxes.

Prime Minister John Key encouraged National supporters to vote for Mr Seymour because his election would ensure National had a right-wing coalition partner, while Mr Goldsmith would still get in on the list. The electorate clearly followed his advice.

Mr Seymour won nearly half of the electorate vote, but Act's share of the party vote in Epsom was just 2.8 per cent. National won 65 per cent of the party vote in Epsom - one of the biggest majorities in the country.

As in 2011, left-wing voters again could have prevented Act from getting into Parliament if they had voted tactically.

The combined support for the Labour and Greens candidates was 5000 votes. If these votes had instead gone to Mr Goldsmith, the Act Party would not have made it into Parliament. Some Labour and Greens voters appeared to have voted tactically in the electorate, but not enough to make a difference.

The support for Labour candidate Michael Wood and Green candidate Julie-Anne Genter was lower than their respective party votes, suggesting that Labour and Green voters gave their electorate vote to National's candidate in an attempt to keep Mr Seymour out.

Before the election campaign, Mr Key openly encouraged National supporters to split their vote in the Epsom and Ohariu seats, though he did not go as far as casting his own vote for Mr Seymour at his local ballot box in Parnell.

Labour sent a signal to its supporters to vote tactically by running little-known candidate Michael Wood. The Greens' candidate was a popular sitting MP who had a relatively high profile.

In 2011, data on split voting showed that 55 per cent of Green supporters and 35 per cent of Labour supporters voted for National's candidate.

More than 60 per cent of National voters voted for Act's John Banks.