Election 26: Labour leads Wigram

With just over 50% of the vote counted, Dominik Yanzick is leading with 10,930 votes, a lead of 1510 over Tracey Summerfield who's won 9,420 votes so far.

Wigram is shaping up to be one of the closer electorate races of the night. With the incumbent MP Megan Woods moving to the list and the seat seeing significant changes at the 2025 Boundary Review; the seat has been tipped as one to watch tonight.

At the boundary review, the electorate lost heavy Labour voting neighbourhoods in Spreydon and Addington, while picking up semi-rural neighbourhoods on the outskirts of Christchurch such as Prebbleton, West Melton and Templeton.

With the incumbent electorate MP moving to the list, the seat will have a new electorate MP. Labour’s candidate Dominik Yanzick is hoping to hold the seat for his party. The 33-year-old is a technology project manager who grew up in North Otago.

National’s Tracey Summerfield is also having another run at the electorate, hoping to flip it for the National Party. She previously ran childhood education centres and has experience in accounting and finance across both public and private sectors.

Speaking to MetroNews at National's Christchurch gathering this evening, Summerfield said this campaign's highlight for her has been people she's met along the way. "We've given it everything that we could, to try to turn Wigram blue."
She said she is still confident in the ability of National to win the seat. 

Current ACT List MP Laura McClure will also be contesting this seat, having contested Banks Peninsula at the last election. The Greens have put up Shreejan Pandey in the electorate, while New Zealand First is running Bryce Park.

The seat also has an independent candidate in Geoff McTague and a Free Palestine candidate, William Donald Alexander.

The seat has a number of issues including an increasing population, rural areas slowly becoming suburbs and the closure of local post offices.