Final Auckland Mayor results confirm Wayne Brown (right) decisively beat Efeso Collins. Photo: RNZ
The final results for Auckland Council races confirm Wayne Brown won the mayoral race by a decisive margin, while one local board has seen a shift in its winners.
With special votes now validated and counted, it is confirmed Wayne Brown won the mayoral race with a total of 181,810 votes ahead of Efeso Collins by 57,008.
"No matter how close, every councillor and every local board member has a mandate to represent their communities, deliver their promises from the campaign trail and work together to fix Auckland," Brown said in a statement released to media.
Brown said he was pleased this year's election turnout was higher than three years ago, both in absolute numbers and as a percentage of registered voters.
"It is flattering to know 181,810 Aucklanders expressed their confidence in me with their votes, and exciting to be getting on with the job of fixing Auckland for everyone."
Brown has spent his first week meeting with councillors and other officials. He has also continued calls for certain officials to resign.
Brown said his focus this weekend is reading council documents, preparing a statement to be made tomorrow about "an industry important to Aucklanders," and surfing.
"We are well on our way towards putting behind us the debates and discussions of the election and forging a team to deliver on our campaign promises to make Auckland an even better place to live."
In the final count, a total of 405,149 votes were returned - just 35.5 per cent of enrolled voters. However, the number of people who returned voting papers was the second highest on record.
In 2019's election, the voter turnout was 35.3 per cent.
A total of seven new councillors out of 20 are joining Auckland Council and 36 percent of local board members elected are new to the council.
For Waitākere Ranges Local Board there is a change between the final count and the official results declared.
Ken Turner was leading in both the Waitākere Ward Councillor position and Waitākere Ranges Local Board. Turner has been declared as Waitākere Ward Councillor, alongside Shane Henderson, and withdrawn from the local board seat.
This makes Mark Allen, the next highest polling local board candidate, elected to the sixth seat on the board. Allen received 5216 votes, polling in front of Angus Cathcart by 11 votes, who was leading in the preliminary round.
The full results can be found on the Auckland Council website.
Bay of Plenty
Voters elected a new mayor and 11 councillors for the Western Bay of Plenty District Council as well as 14 Bay of Plenty Regional Councillors.
The confirmed results released Friday show no change from the preliminary results released on October 9.
Western Bay mayor James Denyer, who was previously a Katikati-Waihī Beach Ward councillor, will govern four new councillors and the seven councillors who stood for re-election and retained their seats.