Mahesh Muralidhar makes history as National takes back Tāmaki

Mahesh Muralidhar is set to become the National Party's first Indian MP to win an electorate seat, taking back one of the party's traditionally safest constituencies in an election night upset for ACT.

The party's two previous Indian-origin MPs, Kanwaljit Singh Bakshi and Parmjeet Parmar, both entered Parliament through the party list.

Muralidhar led ACT's James Christmas by more than 5300 votes in Tāmaki after 97 percent of the votes had been counted on Saturday night.

He had secured 15,303 votes, compared with 9961 for Labour's Max Harris and 7659 for Christmas, who is expected to enter Parliament through ACT's party list.

The result marks a return of the electorate to National after former ACT deputy leader Brooke van Velden defeated National's Simon O'Connor in 2023, ending his four-term hold on the seat.

The closely contested election has Labour narrowly ahead of National in the party vote, with the two parties separated by less than one percentage point as counting nears completion.

Preliminary projections suggest National, ACT and New Zealand First could secure a narrow majority in Parliament, although special votes are yet to be counted, with that total to be revealed on 27 November.

Muralidhar said getting out into the community from the beginning of the campaign had been crucial to his success.

"The day after I was chosen as the candidate for Tāmaki, the next day I went out door-knocking, and that's the most important thing," he said.

He said he had knocked on about 16,000 doors during the campaign, crediting his visibility, party support and volunteers for helping secure the result.

"Tāmaki appreciates someone with a commercial background, and my campaign was launched by the prime minister," he said.

"I raised $15,000 for a community patrol in Glen Innes, and this is the result."

Muralidhar is chief executive of Phase One Ventures, a venture capital firm investing in New Zealand start-ups. He also worked at online graphic design platform Canva between 2015 and 2017.

Tāmaki is one of the country's three wealthiest electorates, alongside Epsom and the newly created Wellington North.

Established in 1946, the electorate has voted Labour only twice.

Former Prime Minister Robert Muldoon secured the seat for National in 1960 and represented it until he left Parliament in 1991.

National's Clem Simich and Allan Peachey followed, before Simon O'Connor held the electorate from 2011 to 2023.

Even during Labour's landslide victory in 2020, when the party won the Tāmaki party vote with 39 percent against National's 37 percent, O'Connor secured more than 50 percent of the electorate vote.

That changed in 2023 when van Velden campaigned successfully to unseat O'Connor, winning by a majority of 4158 votes in what was considered a major upset for National.

Earlier on election night, Muralidhar told RNZ the mood at his campaign gathering was upbeat.

At Colin Maiden Rugby Club in Stonefields, he appeared confident as the results began coming in.

"The mood is really great, and I'm looking forward to seeing a centre-right government coming in and the National Party doing well," he said.

The result is Muralidhar's second attempt to enter Parliament.

In 2023, he contested Auckland Central but lost to Green Party MP Chlöe Swarbrick.

Muralidhar, who describes himself as a proud Kiwi-Indian, said he wanted to make sure the Indian community's concerns were heard.

"I'll be there for the community in regards to making sure that the community is understood and heard," he said.

He thanked Tāmaki voters for choosing him to represent them, saying he intended to live up to a promise his father had made during the campaign.

"My dad said in one of the campaign events that 'my son will make sure that he serves the community really well', and I intend to make sure that it comes true."