Andersen ahead of Bishop in Hutt South count

Labour's Ginny Andersen led National's Chris Bishop in the Hutt South electorate when 26.2% of the vote had been counted, RNZ's election results page showed. Andersen was 367 votes ahead.

Earlier in the count, with 20% of the vote counted, Bishop had been in the lead.

Hutt South has been a closely watched seat for most of the past decade. Trevor Mallard held it for more than 20 years from 1996 and stood down in 2017. Bishop won the seat for National that year, and the Electoral Commission's 2023 list of successful candidates records him as the Hutt South member after that election. Since 2017, the seat has changed hands between Bishop and Andersen.

Electorates are the local seats that each elect one member of Parliament. The whole Hutt Valley is covered by two electorates, Hutt South and Rimutaka. Hutt South's boundaries have changed several times. The 2014 boundary review moved Naenae and part of Epuni to Rimutaka, and gave Hutt South Kelson and Belmont from Rimutaka. The same review added Tirohanga, Harbour View, Normandale, Maungaraki and Korokoro from the Ōhariu electorate. In the 2025 boundary review, Hutt South shifted south-westwards and took in the suburb of Newlands.

RNZ's results for the electorate showed the following shares of the vote. Andersen had 45.2% and Bishop 43.5%. The Greens' candidate, Courtney White, had 6.2%, and the Opportunity Party's candidate, Ben Wylie-van Eerd, had 2.6%.

The two main candidates were Bishop and Andersen, who were also the top two in the 2026 contest's pre-election coverage, according to the New Zealand Herald.