Northcote was held by National with a comfortable majority at the last general election 23Sep17. The voter turnout was 77.57%. Yesterday 41.37% turned out to vote – this will increase a bit when final numbers are all addded but it is a pathetic result considering bye-lections usually go against the Govt although National should hold the seat. National could only rustle up 53.2% of their 2017 vote while Labour did better with 68.3%. So at a time when the new marxist lead Labour/Greens/NZFirst Govt has been stumbling between multiple botch-ups and crises – tens of thousands of National voters feel too lazy to vote and hand Labour a free boost. The Greens vote crashed from 6.73% in 2017 to 2.9% yesterday which would have helped Labour and NZFirst did not stand yesterday but got 1362 or 3.73% in 2017 so a good % of those votes probably went to Labour. The 2017 NZFirst candidate Kym Koloni stood as an indie yesterday and got a risible 95 votes – interesting. Media views – NZ Herald – Stuff a bit more info – Whaleoil
My chart of NZ elections 1938-2017 Large version