​Ōpōtiki election returns buck national trend

Voting in the 2025 local government elections began on 9 September and Ōpōtiki District Council’s Daily Voting Returns show that almost 18% of voters have already got their ballots in.

This compares favourably with most other councils, with voting return rates sitting at around half that level in neighbouring councils and even lower in big centres like Auckland and Wellington.

Council’s Deputy Electoral Officer, Cindy Butt, explained that the daily document returns provide an indication of how many people have voted so far in this election, broken down by ward. Cumulatively, by 23 September, 17.6% of electors had voted.

“It’s not easy to compare to previous elections as our voting period is longer this year, but usually early in the voting period we might be around the 5-6% mark as it takes a while to build up momentum towards election day.

“There are likely to be several reasons for this, and I’d like to think it is the impact of having Māori wards for the first time, and having lots of great candidates putting their names forward, and council activities being really visible in our community. But I think it is also clear that the publicity about the omissions in the candidate profile booklets has boosted engagement with the process and there is a real desire to get out and vote.

“If we keep up this pace, I hope we’ll see close to two thirds of the district’s registered voters making sure their vote is counted in this year’s elections. That will be our best result in decades I think.

“Historically we have been one of the highest in the country so we hope to top the league table (if there was such a thing!) this year,” Ms Butt said.

You can see the full daily returns and comparisons to previous elections on the council website www.odc.govt.nz/elections.