Running in central ward, Mr Dickerson had received 965 of a possible 2006 votes as of Monday afternoon which puts him well ahead of Labor's Vicki Etheridge and fellow former mayor Ben Shields.

In a shock to some, Ms Etheridge had a strong lead over Mr Shields in the voting with the former receiving 515 votes for her group with Joe Knagge with 132 of those being individual votes.

Mr Shields' team had received 285 votes while 43 of those were individual votes.

Mr Dickerson admitted he thought the race between himself and Mr Shields would be a lot closer.

"I thought that it would be very close between Ben (Shields) and I," he said.

"I actually expected Ben to beat me.

"I was just trying to get in the top two because that's all you need to do.

"I was very surprised that Ben polled the way he did."

While only a third of the votes had been counted as of Monday afternoon, Mr Dickerson is confident nothing too dramatic will happen going forward.

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"I think most of them now we've got a reasonably clear picture," he said.

"My experience with elections is once 30 per cent of the votes have been counted then things will change a little bit.

"There might be a few percentage points here or there change.

"It would be very surprising not to see those trends continue.

"There is a couple of wards which are still close because of preferences.

"But in central ward is seems pretty obvious to me that both Vicki (Etheridge) and I will be elected and Ben won't.

"There's just too big a gap in those percentages and I don't see that changing dramatically."

Meanwhile, in east ward, Lewis Burns and Jeremy Ellis are locked in a tight battle with Damien Mahon close behind the pair.

Shibli Chowdhury and Josh Black have seemingly done enough to secure spots in south ward while Matt Wright and Pam Well were still leading in north ward.

Wellington's two positions will also come down to the wire with Richard Ivey and Anne Jones separated by only a handful of votes while Jess Gough and Helen Swan were close behind.

Voting numbers will continue to come in over the coming days with still only a third of the votes having been counted as of Monday afternoon.

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