Sam Uffindell holds a commanding lead over his Labour rival Jan Tinetti in the Tauranga byelection to replace longstanding electorate MP Simon Bridges.

The most recent update, representing 65% of the total vote to be counted, has Uffindell on 8878 votes to Tinetti’s 3754, a margin of 5124 votes.

Act’s Cameron Luxton is on 1519 votes.

The vote count is well ahead of projected schedule. Earlier this week officials said they hoped to have 50% of the vote counted by 9pm, and 95% by 10.30pm. Going by the speed of the count so far it appears the election will be called far earlier than that.

The Ministry of Health is today reporting 4,404 new community cases of Covid-19, 356 current hospitalisations, and 11 deaths.

The seven-day rolling average of community case numbers is 5,154. Last Saturday it was 5,914.

All of the deaths reported today occurred in the past three days. They take the total number of publicly reported deaths with Covid-19 to 1,401. The seven-day rolling average of reported deaths is 13.

Three of the people who have died were from the Auckland region, one was from Tairāwhiti; one was from Lakes; two were from the Wellington region; two were from Canterbury; one was from West Coast; and one was from Southern.

One person was in their 40s; one was in their 50s; five were in their 70s; one was in their 80s; and three were aged over 90. Four were women and seven were men.

It’s election day in Tauranga, with voting booths now open in the byelection triggered by the resignation of Simon Bridges, who has retired from parliament.

Advanced voting began on 4 June, with officials reporting low turnout so far. There are 20 polling booths across the electorate today and a full list of locations can be found at vote.nz.

Polling closes at 7pm tonight. Preliminary results will be progressively available tonight, with a target of 50% of voting places reported by 9pm and 95% of voting places by 10.30pm.

We’ll update you on results here on Live Updates, and they will also be available at electionresults.govt.nz as they come to hand.