Labour's Taieri candidate Ingrid Leary has won the electorate, but the seat is much closer than last time.
With 99.1% of the vote counted Ingrid Leary has 14,623 votes, with National candidate Matthew French back on 13,275 votes.
In the party vote, Labour is in 34.88%, followed by National on 33.78%.
In the 2020 election, Labour captured 59.4% of the party votes in Taieri, up 11.2 percentage points on its party vote share in 2017. Turnout (total votes cast as a proportion of enrolled electors) in 2020 was 86.2%.
Early in the evening last night Ms Leary said she was a bit worried about what was unfolding nationally.
"We don't appear to have got off to a great start, but it's early days."
She was nervous about colleagues who were in some tight electorate races.
Her campaign team had worked hard in Taieri.
"I don't think we could have worked any harder than we have."
A small but enthusiastic crowd at the Dunedin National gathering were cheering enthusiastically as their momentum showed little sign of halting.
"So far its going well, there signs are positive although its early days," Mr French said.
"The campaign we have run has been just about being positive. We've been out and about everywhere in the electorate, and we've had good feedback."
Dunedin green party co-convenor Alan Somerville said the party had run a strong campaign in the city and had been energized by the prospect of potentially electing Taieri candidate Scott Willis and Dunedin candidate Francisco Hernandez to Parliament.
"We might not know until tomorrow, it could be quite a wait for specials and overseas votes, but we are very hopeful," he said.
"It's a great to see such a good crowd here and what is fantastic is that there a quite a few people here who I don't know, which is a good sign for the future of the local Green party."
At the Mornington Bowling Club New Zealand First Taieri candidate Mark Patterson was cautiously optimistic that he would be returning to parliament as a list MP.
"It's been a massive challenge to get back into Parliament, I think people underestimate just how hard that is, so we have to really celebrate that. The dream was to hold the balance of power, it looks like we might be in opposition, but there could be a few curve balls yet I think "
