Labour could have stood a ham sandwich and Green supporters would have voted for it. Instead they stood... the former boss of the Police union, so a lot of Greens *and* Labour supporters will vote for the incumbent just to keep that sociopath out of parliament

and and and, yeah it sucks that electorate votes are first past the post and not single transferable vote or some other system that doesn't lead to tactical voting but this wouldn't matter here

National voters would rank
1. United Future (the incumbent)
2. National

Angry Greens/Labour voters would rank
1. United Future
2. Labour

but if it was STV, Greens wouldn't have had to drop their candidate to avoid splitting the vote, so...

our possible savior could be the Māori electorates, if Labour's plan to take them comes to fruition

not hopeful though

and then there's the mess of NZ First wanting to get rid of those

to highlight how silly this is, quote from a news article:

"National's candidate in Ohariu Brett Hudson has pledged to [...] vote for [United Future candidate] Peter Dunne rather than himself."

He's only standing because parties are allowed more electoral financing depending on how many electorates they (pretend to) contest