This story draws on reporting by The Southland Tribune.

With three days of voting left, the shape of the contest in Southland's two general electorates is settled, and the question for most of the 11 candidates is not whether they win the seat but what the party vote does for them.

In Invercargill, National's Penny Simmonds is seeking a third term. She took the seat in 2023 with 55 per cent of the candidate vote and a margin of more than 9800 over Labour's Liz Craig, according to a 3 November analysis by The Southland Tribune. National also won 42 per cent of the party vote in the electorate that year, four points above its national share.

Labour's challenger this time is Janice Lee, who founded the Koha Kai charitable trust in 2015 to teach hospitality and horticulture skills to people in the disability sector. The Tribune's Logan Savory wrote that Lee has a higher local profile than Craig did, but that overturning Simmonds' majority would still rate as a surprise.

The Greens' Dave Kennedy is campaigning for party votes rather than the seat. Anntwinette Grumball of the Aotearoa Legalise Cannabis Party and independent Hayden John Seager complete the ballot.

In the Southland electorate, National's Joseph Mooney is defending a seat his party has held since it was created in 1996. He polled 23,231 candidate votes in 2023, a little over 17,000 ahead of Labour's Simon McCallum, and National took 48 per cent of the electorate's party vote.

This year two farmers with long Southland records are among those lining up against him. Labour's Peter McDonald has farmed at Dipton with his wife Kim for 41 years, sat on Environment Southland between 2019 and 2025 and has spent 30 years as a volunteer firefighter. New Zealand First's Jason Herrick was Southland Federated Farmers president until this year, spent 31 years farming, including sharemilking near Lumsden, and was the organisation's national advocate of the year in 2025. Farmers Weekly reported in April that he now lives on a lifestyle block near Invercargill, runs a Night 'n Day convenience store in Invercargill and is a sales manager for the dairy automation firm Afimilk.

ACT's Todd Stephenson, a sitting list MP who won 7 per cent of the Southland candidate vote in 2023, is standing again, alongside Bianca Beebe of the Opportunities Party and Naomi Maclean of Vision NZ. New Zealand First did not field a Southland candidate in 2023, when the party drew 5 per cent of the electorate's party vote.

List rankings make the stakes personal. Simmonds is 14th on National's list and Mooney 49th, while Lee is 61st for Labour. The Tribune noted that both Simmonds and Lee need to win the seat to be certain of a place in Parliament, and the same is true of Mooney. Stephenson, at sixth on ACT's list, and Herrick, at 17th for New Zealand First, are both well placed to return on the list even if they lose, though Herrick's position depends on his party clearing the 5 per cent threshold.

The final 1News-Verian poll, published on Tuesday night, had National on 30 per cent, Labour 29, the Greens 16, ACT 10, New Zealand First 8 and the Opportunities Party 6. On those numbers New Zealand First would return about 10 MPs, comfortably including Herrick, while National's 36 seats would still fall short of Mooney's list position without the electorate.

Savory's conclusion was that it would take a shock for National to lose either seat, but that the party vote in a region that leaned heavily right in 2023 will be watched closely for signs of a national shift.

Election day is Saturday 7 November, with voting place details at vote.nz.