Kaipara Topping Leaderboard In Northland's Local Election Turnout

Sunday, 5 October 2025, 8:37 pm
Article: Susan Botting - Local Democracy Reporter

About a quarter of Northland’s [133,713] local election voters have already had their say ahead of next week’s October 11 vote deadline. 

Latest figures, published on Thursday October 2, showed 32,750 Northlanders had cast their local election votes. It breaks down to 15,150 people in Whangārei, 12,250 in the Far North and 5400 in Kaipara. 

The voting rate among Kaipara District Council (KDC)’s 18,327 electors remains in top spot, where it’s been all week. Turnout was expected to crack 30% by Friday, 3 October. 

“I think it’s beautiful news,” Kaipara voter and Tangiteroria Marae kaumatua and kuia flats resident Martha Heaton said. “Councils have such a big influence on our lifestyle.” 

Former Kaipara Deputy Mayor Peter Wethey said voting helped ensure the right sort of politicians sat around the council table. Wethey said voting was particularly important for Kaipara residents who had faced Government-appointed commissioners running their council for four years from 2012. 

Kaipara District Council (KDC)’s voter turnout is ahead of that for Far North District Council (FNDC), Northland Regional Council (NRC)and Whangārei District Council (WDC) respectively. All four are fostering an inter-council rivalry to help boost election engagement but the effort is very much unified. The social media teams have joined forces to create tongue-in-cheek memes to help springboard the competition. Popular memes feature images from the movies Taika Waititi’s Boy and the romantic vampire fantasy film Twilight as well as television series Narcos. These are the overwritten with council voter return percentages – the ultimate aim to help boost awareness and turnout. Their post to Facebook attracted 28,780 views, 1890 engagements, a reach of 15,590 and engagement rate of 11.6% per impression in its first 24 hours after being posted on Wednesday, October 1 afternoon. 

Whangārei District Council (WDC) digital communications adviser Craig Neilson said memes were a fast, cheap and easy to implement tool. “Memes are pretty common among the people who talk online and we are appealing to those people,” Neilson said. “We have to think like dandelions and spread dandelion election seeds into every crack in the footpath,” he said. Neilson said the memes would be updated next week with the new voting turnout percentages. 

NRC social media and digital marketing advisor Esther Malcolm said the meme swere created to reach voters in a different way. “We wanted to catch people’s attention and decided to give memes a go,” Martin said. Whangārei lagging Whangārei District Council (WDC)’s 87,004 electors are currently the bottom of the region’s voter turnout leader board with 22.6% turnout by Thursday. Retiring WDC politician Patrick Homes was elected to Whangārei Heads General Ward in 2022 with a 55.2% voter turnout – Northland's highest. He said Whangarei’s voters needed to step up and aim for the highest voter return. “The other councils look to use to take a lead,” Holmes said. He said Northlanders should also make sure to vote for NRC’s nine politicians across eight constituencies. “Particularly in this part of the world with rising sea levels and inundation, that’s NRC’s gig,” Holmes said. 

In third place on the leaderboard NRC’s 133,789 electors achieved a 24.5% voter turnout by late Thursday. That means WDC voters will have to overtake two councils also including FNDC voters to top to the leaderboard. FNDC’s 48,458 electors achieved a 25.2% voter turnout as of Thursday. Kerikeri’s longtime local and central government politician Dover Samuels KSM, joining in on the spirit of the lighthearted but serious rivalry, said his district’s voters should try to top the leaderboard, but that everybody should have their say. 

“Value our democratic process and show your appreciation of the opportunity for the ordinary ratepayer and resident to have your say, when around the world this basic principle our forebears fought for is diminishing,” Samuels said. “Get off your backside and vote. “Don’t waste the opportunity.” It was critical people exercised the democratic right to vote that was denied to so many around the world. 

LDR is local body journalism co-funded by RNZ and NZ On Air.

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