Chloe Swarbrick achieves historic victory in Auckland Central

Chloe Swarbrick has achieved a huge surprise by winning the coveted Auckland Central seat for the Green Party.

The 26-year-old becomes the second Green MP to win an electorate seat, 21 years after party co-leader Jeanette Fitzsimons won the Coromandel seat, which she held for only one term.

With 100% of the votes counted, Swarbrick had a margin of 492 votes. She was sitting at 9060 votes to 8568 for Helen White of Labor and 7566 for Emma Mellow of National.

Two weeks ago, White was leading in a Colmar Brunton Q + A poll at 35 percent, Mellow at 26 percent and Swarbrick was third at 26 percent.

A previous Reid Research poll for Newshub Nation had White with 42.3 percent support, Mellow with 26.6 percent support and Swarbrick far behind in third place with 24.2 percent.

White ran for the seat in 2017, 1,581 votes from Nikki Kaye, who had held the seat since 2008 when she beat Judith Tizard of the Labor Party, becoming the first national MP to win the seat.

Emma Mellow from National. Photography / Brett Phibbs

Swarbrick, who ran a “two tick” campaign, was unfazed by the poor vote of the Greens electorate in 2017 and went on to win the seat, as a guarantee in case the Greens did not exceed the 5% threshold of party votes to return. to Parliament and a burning desire to represent Auckland Central.

“What else is the use of politics, if not practicing the art of the possible,” Swarbrick told the Herald last month.

Mellow, a 30-year-old communications manager at ANZ bank, was selected at the end of the article after a messy and failed process by party officials.

When Auckland entered a level 3 lockdown, the campaign came to a halt and had an uphill battle to retain the seat of its mentor, Nikki Kaye.

Mellow rose from her humble beginnings – she was 16 when her mother, a beneficiary of illness, died and her grandmother took on the role of mother. She described herself as a liberal young woman in the same vein as Kay.

White, who grew up in Freemans Bay and lives outside the electorate in nearby Morningside, practices at Chancery Chambers in the central city and specializes in employment law.

L: about candidate Helen White. Photography / Brett Phibbs

At age 22, Swarbrick burst onto the political scene with almost no resources and came third in the 2016 Auckland Mayor’s contest.

Until then, she was not interested in partisan politics, but had to interview many politicians over a four-and-a-half-year period on 95bFM, the independent radio station based at the University of Auckland.

A clever social media campaign that resonated with young and progressive voters during the mayoral race was followed by Swarbrick, who won a spot on the Green Party list in 2017 and became the youngest person to enter Parliament. since Marilyn Waring in 1975.

Swarbrick told the Herald that she comes from a conservative home where her father was a National supporter but is now a Green voter, and her grandmother is still a National voter.

“I was raised on a solid diet of politics and philosophy. Up to that point, I’ve always had a healthy appetite for criticizing and holding those at the top of the hierarchy accountable.”

Swarbrick, 26, grew up in Hillsborough but has spent the last decade living in Auckland Central in Beaumont Quarter, Freemans Bay, Ponsonby, Eden Tce and Newton Rd. He currently lives in the electorate in an apartment off Karangahape Rd.