1940 Auckland West by-election

The Auckland West by-election of 1940 was a by-election for the electorate of Auckland West held on 18 May 1940 during the 26th New Zealand Parliament. The by-election resulted from the death on 27 March 1940 of the previous member Michael Joseph Savage, the revered prime minister whose terminal illness had not been made public.

Background
The by-election was won by Peter Carr; also of the Labour Party. The other aspirants for the Labour nomination were Charles Bailey, Mary Dreaver, L. W. Holt, N. E. Herring, John Thomas Jennings, Thomas Percival McCready, Winnifred Moore, Joe Sayegh, John Stewart and Jeremiah James Sullivan.

Because of the war, the National Party did not nominate a candidate, and four of the five candidates who stood against the Labour candidate lost their deposit. The freshly forged Democratic Labour Party (DLP) by expelled Labour rebel John A. Lee also abstained from contesting. Lee's chief lieutenant Norman Douglas was approached by the DLP to contest the by-election in an effort to boost the new party's publicity, but Douglas declined to stand.

Results
The following table gives the election results:

Four of the six candidates lost their deposits.

In 1946, Carr also died in office. Wilfred Fortune, who stood as an independent, subsequently became a National candidate (1943) and MP (1946) for the Eden electorate.