Hamilton's voter turnout soars
Hamilton’s voter turnout in the 2019 election has hit 38.78% - the highest result since 2004.
With special votes still to be counted, 39,837 of the 102,714 electors have had their say on who will lead Hamilton through an exciting and important time.
Chief Executive Richard Briggs says he’s proud of the work that’s been done all over the city to drive interest in this election.
“We’re very lucky to have passionate individuals and groups who have put in amazing efforts all over the city. We’ve had fantastic media profiles, community events, general awareness campaigns and so much more.
“We all pulled out the stops to encourage Hamiltonians to get involved and vote and we should all be incredibly happy with this result."
Hamilton City Council pushed the envelope this election period, including delivering a blunt Pre-election Report, staging a candidate bus tour and hosting a mayoral debate.
“We knew we had to ramp things up a bit, and we did. We were bold, we took risks, and it’s paid off,” says Mr Briggs.
The Council also made it as easy as possible for Hamiltonians to vote by increasing the number of ballot boxes across the city, making special voting available at all community libraries and hosting drive-through voting on Election Day.
Yesterday, the Council released progress results and provisionally elected Paula Southgate as Mayor Elect and five new councillors. However, these results do not include more than 3500 votes received on Election Day, or any special votes cast since 20 September. Progress results are available at yourcityelections.co.nz/results.
Preliminary results will be released later today and will include all votes cast, but not special votes.
The final results (preliminary results + special votes) will be announced on Thursday 17 October.
View the progress results