Youth big winners in Greens' final list

Chloe Swarbrick, Marama Davidson and Golriz Ghahraman have emerged as the big winners in the Green Party’s final list.

Former diplomat Kennedy Graham also sees his placing in the list jump a few spots, with former TV presenter Hayley Holt jumping 12 places, moving to 17^th on the list.

The Greens revealed its final list for this year’s election this morning.

The party’s initial list was released in early April and was put together by delegates at the Green candidates' conference in February.

Former Auckland mayoral candidate Ms Swarbrick jumped from 13^th place in the initial list to 9^th on the final list.

She has switched places with former Paekākāriki community board chairman Jack McDonald, who dropped to 13th.

Barrister Golriz Ghahraman, originally from Iran is now 10th, jumping from 15th into the winnable position.

Marama Davidson moved to third, switching places with Julie-Anne Genter.

 “This list looks a lot like modern New Zealand,” says party co-leader James Shaw.

“We are bigger, bolder than we have ever been before.”

Denise Roche, who was 14th on the initial list, has dropped one place, as has Jan Logie who falls to seventh.

“Our returning MPs are joined in the top 20 candidates by new Maori and Pasifika candidates, a human rights lawyer and a refugee, indigenous rights activist, climate change campaigners, business people, a farmer, a former diplomat and TV presenter.”

Mr Shaw and co-leader Metiria Turei fronted a press conference in front of the first 18 on the list.

Both Mr Shaw and Ms Turei say they were confident all 20 would be in Parliament after the election.

But the co-leaders were reluctant to reveal how many of the candidates in the room would make it into Parliament.

“None of the MPs have dropped below what is entirely possible with the vote at this election – we’re confident we will return the caucus and entirely new people to Parliament in September,” Ms Turei says. 

Mr Shaw says he’s “very confident that the vast majority of these people will be members of Parliament.”

“If we get 15%, that is 18-20 members of Parliament.

“If you look at the trajectory of our polling, it is heading in that direction and we’re still yet to start the campaign – the Green Party has a tendency to rise during the course of the campaign as well.”

The most recent Roy Morgan political poll – unveiled on May 26 and conducted before the budget – shows National’s support at 43%, a whisker ahead of Labour/Greens combined support of 42.5%, with the Greens support rising 1% to 14%.