The Electoral Commission released the list of candidates for all electorates yesterday.
On current polling, Invercargill will have three MPs: Sarah Dowie (National) electorate, Ria Bond (NZ First) list, and Liz Craig (Labour) list.
Dr Craig needs Labour to poll 30% to get into Parliament and the last Colmar Brunton Poll had Labour at 37%.
Ms Bond is number 11 on NZ First's list and just gets in on current polling.
All four Invercargill candidates are women. Rochelle Surendran is the Green candidate.
Dunedin will likely have three MPs, down from four now. Green MP Metiria Turei is not on the Green list and is staking her political future on winning Te Tai Tonga from Rino Tirikatene (Labour), an unlikely task.
Dunedin will have Clare Curran (Labour) in Dunedin South, David Clark (Labour) in Dunedin and list MP Michael Woodhouse (National).
Clutha-Southland will have Hamish Walker (National) as the likely electorate MP and Mark Patterson (NZ First) as a list MP as he is number seven on the list.
There are some familiar faces appearing in this election. Abe Gray who stood for the Aotearoa Legalise Cannabis Party in Dunedin North in 2014 is this year standing for The Opportunities Party.
Warren Voight who stood for Democrats for Social Credit in South Dunedin last election is standing for NZ First in Dunedin North this year.
Long-time independent candidate Stan Lusby again appears on the Dunedin North ballot paper.
Missing from the list this year are Stephnie De Ruyter, the long-time Democrats for Social Credit leader and Lesley Soper who entered Parliament twice on the list through retirements of Labour MPs.
One-term Clutha-Southland MP Todd Barclay is not standing again after he admitted bugging a staff member.
The Electoral Commission reported a total of 543 candidates - electorate and list - were standing this year, compared with 554 in 2012.
Eighty-one candidates were on the party lists only and 87 were standing as electorate candidates only. There were 46 electorate candidates standing either as independents or representing unregistered parties. Only registered parties were eligible to contest the party vote.
Tauranga had the most candidates with 11 and those having the lowest number of candidates were Hauraki-Waikato and Waiariki with two each.
The gender breakdown is 341 male, 190 female and three gender diverse or not specified. In 2014, there were 390 male and 164 female candidates.
