Rachel Brooking has comfortably won the Dunedin electorate and Labour pulled past the Greens in the party vote.
Ms Brooking finished the night on 14,596 votes with National's Michael Woodhouse second (7436) and Franciso Hernandez of the Greens third (6013).
Ms Brooking said she had spent the day with her campaign team and had voted at the university campus yesterday.
They had worked hard to get the turnout up.
It was her first time standing to be an electorate MP and she found the experience to be quite different from standing just for the party list, as she was able to focus more on Dunedin issues.
David Clark was at Labour's party in the Dunedin electorate.
It had felt a little odd campaigning for the party while not personally trying to hold the Dunedin seat, he said.
Dr Clark stood down after 12 years in Parliament, six of them in government.
He was happy to be passing on the Dunedin MP duties to Rachel Brooking.
Labour had 31.97% of the party vote, ahead of the Greens (22.92%) which had earlier been leading in the electorate.
In 2020, Labour captured 55.4% of the Dunedin party votes.
Dunedin green party co-convenor Alan Somerville said the party had run a strong campaign in the city and had been energised 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."
Defeated Dunedin candidate Michael Woodhouse, who quit his party's list in acrimonious circumstances early in the campaign, was in a jubilant mood.
"Any regret? Absolutely none. I'm delighted for the party and looking forward to the future."
Mr Woodhouse said National's result was testimony to a lot of hard work behind the scenes.
"We are having a fantastic night and leading in seats where maybe only the candidate thought that they had a chance."
Dunedin City councillor Jim O'Malley, who is also standing in the electorate, is hosting a barbecue, which he called a "win or lose party".
He was not yet sure of how the situation was looking locally.
There had been voter rejection of dogmatic politics, he said.
