Rotorua's incumbent mayor, Steve Chadwick, has been successful re-elected for a third term as mayor of Rotorua district, following the preliminary counting of votes in the Rotorua Lakes Council 2019 triennial elections.

Steve has won the mayoralty by nearly 2,000 votes, and the results are based on the counting of approximately 95 per cent of the returned votes.

Steve Chadwick won with 7,796 votes, well ahead of Reynold MacPherson with 5,837 votes.

The ten successful councillors voted in for the Council –At Large seats are Tania Tapsell, Raj Kumar, Sandra Kai Fong, Mercia Yates, Peter Bentley, Merepeka Raukawa-Tait, Fisher Wang, Reynold MacPherson, Dave Donaldson and Trevor Maxwell.

Nick Chater, Phill Thomass, Jennifer Rothwell and Sandra Goodwin have been elected to the Rotorua Lakes Community Board.

Shirley Trumper, Bryce Heard, Ben Hollier and Sarah Thomson have been elected to the Rotorua Community Board.

The voter return was 41.9 per cent, being 19,679 votes, excluding votes in transit to the processing centre and special votes.

The progress result does not include some special votes and votes returned today, October 12 that are still in transit to the processing centre. The outcome of these elections may change once all votes have been counted.

Votes which came in this morning, before the midday deadline, will be added to the results tomorrow and these preliminary results will then become available about 4pm on Sunday October 9.

Final results will be released Wednesday or Thursday and will be publicly notified with the newly elected council and community board members officially taking office the following day.

The inaugural meeting for the incoming elected members will be held on Thursday October 24 at which they will be sworn in. Induction of the newly elected members will follow.