Deputy mayor Tom Campbell has all but claimed the Invercargill mayoral race, saying he is “looking forward to the next three years”.

Progress results show Campbell has 6,064 votes so far, ahead of Alex Crackett with 4,167 votes and Ian Pottinger with 1,939 votes.

Although Campbell leads by almost 1900 votes, there are still 2,256 ordinary votes and 354 special votes yet to be counted, meaning the council is unable to determine a winner.

Campbell said it wasn’t a foregone conclusion he’d won, but he’d already had a phone call from second-place Crackett.

The single-term councillor finished the 2022 election as the second-highest polling candidate before throwing his hat in the ring for the top job this time around.

He served as Nobby Clark’s deputy over the past term.

The race for council is led by Steve Broad with 9,589 votes, Crackett with 8,350 votes and Grant Dermody with 7,142 votes.

If progress results remain unchanged, all councillors who sought re-election will get back in, with the three new members being Marcus Lush, Ian Reeves and Lisa Tou McNaughton.

Tou McNaughton currently holds the final seat available, but is just 12 votes ahead of Andrea De Vries and 60 votes ahead of Lynley McKerrow.

Special votes and votes cast on Saturday are yet to be included in the totals.

Final results are not expected until later next week.

LDR is local body journalism co-funded by RNZ and NZ On Air