With a third of the votes counted in the Invercargill electorate, National's Penny Simmonds is closing the gap but Labour's Liz Craig still leads by 273 votes.

Labour has secured 49% of the party votes so far in the Invercargill electorate, while National has 28.9%.

More than half of the votes (57%) have now been counted in the Southland electorate where National's Joseph Mooney has a 2510-vote lead over Labour's Jon Mitchell. However, Southland voters have favoured Labour with their party votes, currently sitting on 40.6% to National's 35%.

Nationally, with 48.3% of the votes been counted, Labour is projected to win 65 seats - an outright majority on 45.9% of the vote. National has 26.4%, the Greens 7.9% and Act 7.8%.