[1] The seat was vacated following the resignation of Lianne Dalziel of the Labour Party from parliament, who contested and won the Christchurch mayoralty in October 2013.

[2] On 19 June Dalziel formally confirmed that she would contest the mayoralty, also announcing that she would resign from Parliament, which would cause a by-election in the Christchurch East electorate.

[6] In a surprise move, then Labour leader David Shearer appointed former MP Jim Anderton as the party's by-election campaign manager.

[11] The third person to join the Labour candidacy race was Tina Lomax, who is the principal of Kingslea School and who, from 2004 to 2010, was a Burwood-Pegasus Community Board member.

[13] Clayton Cosgrove, an existing list MP who had lost the Waimakariri electorate to National's Kate Wilkinson at the last election, had considered standing in the by-election, but in the end decided not to put his name forward for the Labour nomination.

[15] The party's Canterbury Westland Regional Chair, Roger Bridge, noted that a sitting government has never won a by-election in an electorate that it did not already hold.

One, Adam Holland, previously contested the Ikaroa-Rāwhiti by-election, and says that he will be running on "a platform of donating the entirety of my parliamentary salary to the region".

[5][29] Blair Anderson, a former deputy leader of the Aotearoa Legalise Cannabis Party,[30] considered standing as an independent,[27] but did not put a nomination forward.