South Auckland is the biggest hub for Labour's voter targets in the country.

In 2020, Labour won 60 per cent of the party vote in South Auckland electorates on average, compared to 50 per cent across all electorates.

"This is our heartland and turnout here is critical," said Hipkins.

"We’ve door knocked and phoned 20,000 contacts here in the last 7 days.

"In 2005 we won a close election because South Auckland turned out in big numbers. Our goal is to repeat that effort."

Overall Labour's team has made over 200,000 calls nationwide in the past six weeks.

Photos / Adam Pearse

Chris Hipkins hit the phones at one of the party's phone booths in Māngere. "That was a good one," he said if the first, claiming they planned to vote Labour.

"That was a voicemail, someone tricked me," he said of the second.

Ōtāhuhu put on a festival for Labour and leader Chris Hipkins during their visit to the town centre with supporters dancing and playing music over loudspeakers.

In what was one of the most amped up stops of the day the Labour team hit the party stronghold for their final go on the hustings ahead of election day tomorrow.

Hipkins has appeared to be leaving it all out on the field today - stopping and talking to every person and, crucially, making sure they have voted or plan to.

The electorates of South Auckland are generally strong red zones, but with turnout expected to be low this election Hipkins has been pushing the message to get out and vote.

 on Luxon to arrive a the Brook Bar in Botany, including wife Amanda and their two kids.

The choice of venue did prompt some quick thinking, given the bright red bull located outside.

Some resourceful National staff used a horse cover and plenty National signs to cover up as much red as possible.

Four small trucks with Freedoms NZ and Vision signage have crashed National’s sign-waving in Manukau.

They drove past National’s campaign bus and supporters, blasting Lil Jon’s Get Low from speakers while jeering and calling for people to vote for their parties.

In the final weeks of the campaign, National leader Christopher Luxon has told anyone who will listen that this election will be close.

But three days aboard National’s campaign bus travelling the length of the North Island shows that the message of caution is slowly turning into one of confidence as the hours tick down towards an election result.

Read more here:

With voting for this year’s General Election closing in just over 24 hours, here is all you need to know ahead of the big day.

By the end of Wednesday, nearly 1 million ordinary votes had been issued (970,818).

Electoral Commission chief electoral officer Karl Le Quesne says many people have got out early to vote, but there are still a lot who haven’t.

“We don’t want them to miss out."

Read more here:

On the campaign overall, Seymour said: "I think it's been disappointing in terms of a contest of ideas. The ideas that New Zealand needed to discuss haven't been aired as much as Act would like."

He declined to guess how many seats Act might win, but he said winning 15 to 20 MPs remained "realistic", even though Act is currently at 11 per cent in the Herald's poll of polls.

He was confident of winning Epsom, and that deputy leader Brooke van Velden would win Tamaki from National's Simon O'Connor.

"The polls show that in a few months, she closed the gap to within a statistical tie with someone who's had 12 years in the seat. That sounds like the momentum of someone who's going to win."

Seymour said he would work hard to the last minute this evening convincing people to vote for Act, and then tomorrow he had a lot of people to thank.

"I'm going to be making a lot of phone calls, all those people that have put up a sign, up and down the country. All our wonderful candidates, the people that have made donations, there's so many people that we have to be thankful for."

Seymour wouldn't say whether he thought it was a strategic blunder by National to rule NZ First leader Winston Peters in, and then threaten a second election.

Since then Act has been trending down, while NZ First as been trending up.

Nor does Seymour think he missed an opportunity to seize the antivax vote which, in online forums, had been tossing up between a number of parties including Act and NZ First, but now appears to be behind the latter.

"What Act has done throughout this discussion, going as far back as September and October 2021, is put out rational policy," said Seymour. "Vax or test, letting organisations make their own policy rather than blanket government-wide mandates, letting doctors make exemptions [rather than the Ministry of Health].

"People that have that view are very supportive of Act. People that are more into speculating about some of the more radical and interesting theories about that period and about vaccination, those aren't really people that Act can get because you need to be prepared to entertain a level of debate that I'm just not in politics for."

He had no regrets about Act's campaign.

"Sometimes when you're the one pointing out that the Government's out of money and the Treaty needs an honest conversation, that doesn't thrill people, but it is also the kind of honesty that New Zealand requires. So, no, we wouldn't change anything."