Southland voters on the Māori roll have a new MP. Labour's Mananui Ramsden has won Te Tai Tonga on the preliminary count, finishing 2773 votes ahead of the Greens' Lisa Te Morenga and pushing the sitting member, Tākuta Ferris, back to fourth.

Election-night figures published by RNZ from Electoral Commission data, with all voting places reported, give Mr Ramsden 8614 votes, a third of those cast. Dr Te Morenga received 5841 (22.5 per cent). Te Pāti Māori's Lisa Murch was third on 4951 (19.1 per cent), and Mr Ferris, standing as an independent after parting ways with Te Pāti Māori last year, had 4716 (18.2 per cent). Tania Henare of the Legalise Cannabis party polled 1250. In total 25,903 candidate votes have been counted.

It is a steep fall for Mr Ferris, who took the seat from Labour's Rino Tirikatene in 2023 with almost 13,000 votes, according to The Spinoff. As an independent he has no party list to fall back on and will leave Parliament.

The order of the leading candidates was foreshadowed by the only published poll of the seat, a Curia survey for Whakaata Māori in September that had Mr Ramsden in front and Mr Ferris last of the four, though the Greens' second place on the night was stronger than that poll suggested.

No other electorate comes close to Te Tai Tonga for size. It takes in the whole of the South Island, Rakiura, the Chatham Islands and part of Wellington. Mr Ramsden told RNZ's Morning Report on Monday that the area matched his own whakapapa, calling it "a footprint" of where his tīpuna had been, and that he had covered it by doing repeated laps during the campaign.

RNZ reported that he has chaired Te Rūnaka o Koukourārata, the Banks Peninsula rūnaka, and held other Kāi Tahu governance posts. He said he came from a whānau, hapū and iwi of service and that the past three years had spurred him to stand. He singled out changes to freshwater management and their effect on Māori interests and customary food gathering, saying iwi had met barriers "every step of the way".

His message to people across the electorate, whoever they voted for, was: "I'll be there for you." He also said he wanted the electorate "to reach its political potential" by tying its scattered communities more closely together, and RNZ reported that in a social media post he acknowledged Mr Ferris, Ms Murch and Dr Te Morenga and their teams.

The party vote in the seat was a two-horse race. Labour took 10,663 votes (40.5 per cent) and the Greens 9797 (37.2 per cent), well ahead of New Zealand First on 1597 and National on 1429. Te Pāti Māori, which asked for candidate votes only, drew 929 party votes, or 3.5 per cent.

Nationally, Te Pāti Māori won five Māori electorates out of seven, and Labour two, Te Tai Tonga and Ikaroa-Rāwhiti. Because its party vote is worth only a single seat, the other four are overhang seats that help stretch the provisional Parliament to 131 members.

The Greens' showing here was part of a wider pattern. RNZ reported that the party's candidate and party votes rose sharply across the Māori seats, and Mr Ramsden described the result as offering Māori voters a "smorgasbord of options".

Special votes are still to be counted and the official result will be declared on Friday 27 November. RNZ's analysis of seats that could change hands did not include Te Tai Tonga; the closest Māori contest is Te Tai Tokerau, where 436 votes separate the top two.