Waitakere (New Zealand electorate)

Waitakere was a parliamentary electorate, returning one Member of Parliament to the New Zealand House of Representatives.

The last MP for Waitakere was Paula Bennett of the National Party, who had held this position since the 2008 election.

The 1941 New Zealand census had been postponed due to World War II, so the 1946 electoral redistribution had to take ten years of population growth and movements into account.

Given the nature of population growth in greater Auckland, and the addition of three new seats in Auckland, the boundaries of Waitakere moved around at every electoral redistribution; in 1999, they were moved northwards as far as Helensville before being pulled back south three years later.

In its last boundaries before abolition, the electorate included the Waitakere City suburbs of Henderson, Rānui and Swanson before heading west over the Waitākere Ranges to Piha.

[9] A high turnout for the Alliance in West Auckland in 1996 split the left wing vote and denied then-Titirangi MP and Waitakere candidate Suzanne Sinclair re-election to Parliament, to the benefit of Marie Hasler, also a former Titirangi MP.

In 2005 Pillay was re-elected with a five thousand vote majority over National's Paula Bennett.

In a nationwide swing towards the National Party in 2008 Bennett managed to unseat Pillay, with a majority of 632.

Carmel Sepuloni was selected by the Labour Party to challenge Paula Bennett for her seat in 2011.

The outcome of Waitakere's recount was released on 17 December 2011, returning Paula Bennett with a nine-vote majority.

[12][13] The margin was two orders of magnitude smaller than the number of voters who voted while not being on the electoral roll, 393.