This coming week, the special votes will be counted. There are 193,000 of them, which is nearly 10% of all the votes cast. Will they affect the provisional outcome?

We will all know next Saturday.

Who are the special voters? There are five categories:

Those people who voted outside their electorate on election day.

Those people who enrolled in the last four weeks and whose names therefore are not on the published roll that you see being crossed off in the polling booth.

Those people who turned 18 in the last four weeks, and had enrolled.

Those people who cast their vote overseas

Those people who claim to be on the roll (but who in fact failed to enrol)

The votes of the last category are invalid, and will not be counted. It is likely that this will amount to 30% of all special votes cast on election day.

National’s best chance lies in the Green Party being knocked out. On election night they had 5.07% of the vote. To go below 5% the Green Party will have to get less than 4% of the Special Vote.

Of course there is plenty of speculation about the final result. However, the votes have already been cast. We now simply have to wait for next Saturday.

A Great Campaign

Thank you for your support in North Shore.

We had an excellent result. National has 53.8% of the party vote, the third highest in the Auckland region (after Epsom and Port Waikato The electorate vote was 59.3%, also the third highest in the Auckland region (after Helensville and Port Waikato).

Among the fully urban seats, it is the best result in the country. Both these results are likely to improve after the special votes are counted.

The electorate team in North Shore worked incredibly hard over many, many months, canvassing in shopping centres, canvassing in the Takapuna market, visiting businesses in North Shore, delivering tens of thousands of pamphlets, raising money, organising functions. All these activities started in full force back in March. The excellent results in North Shore are a testament to this effort and the support of so many people in North Shore.

It is a privilege for me to be returned as the Member of Parliament for North Shore. I will continue to work hard to represent you and your issues.

Dr Wayne Mapp

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