Politics

Hūhana Lyndon leads Te Tai Tokerau poll as six candidates stand for the Māori seat

Hana SinclairPublished 6m ago3 min readBased on 6 sources
Hūhana Lyndon leads Te Tai Tokerau poll as six candidates stand for the Māori seat
Photo by Clerk of the House of Representatives and/or the Parliamentary Corporation on behalf of Parliamentary Service / CC BY 4.0

Green Party candidate Hūhana Lyndon leads a recent poll of the Te Tai Tokerau electorate, RNZ has reported. RNZ said that if the poll result were repeated on election day, Ms Lyndon could become the first Green candidate to win a Māori seat.

Te Tai Tokerau is one of Aotearoa's seven Māori electorates, the seats for voters on the Māori roll. The electorate stretches about 400km, from Te Rerenga Wairua/Cape Reinga to the North Shore and into West Auckland, according to RNZ's electorate preview. It has roughly 45,000 enrolled voters, and one in three of them is aged under 35. RNZ reports that the seat has changed hands regularly in the past.

The seat is held by Mariameno Kapa-Kingi, who won it from Labour's Kelvin Davis in 2023. She split from Te Pāti Māori last year and set up her own party, the Te Tai Tokerau Party, which she is contesting. She is a former chief executive of Te Aupōuri iwi. RNZ describes the current contest as unlike any other before it.

Labour's candidate is Willow-Jean Prime, who won the Northland general electorate in 2020. She is at number seven on Labour's party list, the ranking that decides who enters Parliament through the party vote. RNZ describes her as the party's highest-ranked wahine Māori, or Māori woman.

Ms Lyndon is a first-term list MP and a former chief executive of the Ngātiwai Trust Board and the Ngāti Hine Forestry Trust.

Te Pāti Māori's candidate is Aperahama Edwards, chairman of the Ngātiwai Trust Board and co-chair of Te Kahu o Taonui, Northland's iwi leaders forum. Former MP Hone Harawira has endorsed him, after briefly considering standing himself.

Maki Herbert of the Aotearoa Legalise Cannabis Party and Karl Barkley of Your Pic Party are also standing. National, New Zealand First and ACT are not contesting the seat.

In polling reported by RNZ, Labour tops the party vote in Te Tai Tokerau. The electorate boundaries were set by the Representation Commission / Te Kōmihana Whakatau Rohe Pōti in 2025, and the Electoral Commission publishes maps and enrolment statistics for the seat.

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