Click here for full NSW election results updated live.
Thursday morning
As Antony Green explains, much of the Electoral Commission’s efforts yesterday were spent preparing declaration envelopes for votes that will be counted from today, including the first absents, which have the potential to pull a few rabbits out of the hat for Labor. So far as the seats I’m continuing to follow are concerned, significant progress was made in only three, each involving the resolution of election day and pre-poll booths. As explained below, this clarified the situation in two of them to the extent that I won’t continue providing updates henceforth, and I’m probably showing an abundance of caution in the third.
Kiama. The first batch of postals, which had previously only been reported on the primary vote, were added yesterday on two-party, and broke in Gareth Ward’s favour by 1165-732. That puts him 1367 votes ahead, with only 3000 absents, a handful of provisionals and however many postals to come — with the latter sure to continue favouring him, that settles the matter.
Miranda. After slow progress in the count previously, yesterday saw all the pre-polls added on two-party and the stragglers on the election day vote cleaned up, collectively pushing the Liberal lead from 525 to a safe-and-sound 1841.
Wollondilly. The Bowral pre-poll, which had been strong for the Liberals, was added on two-party, negating advantages to independent Judy Hannan on the newly added election day votes and reducing her lead from 1602 to 1350. The Electoral Commission has received over 4000 postal votes and should get a few hundred more, of which it has counted only 962 – given those counted broke 57-43 to Liberal, they could hope to rein in a good 500 or so. There could also be as many as 3000 absents, and if all goes well for them they could maybe scrape back another 500 there as well, since they performed strongly on them in 2019. That would still leave them short, but not by enough that I am quite willing to shut the door just yet.
Wednesday morning
Yesterday’s counting continued to take care of outstanding election day booths and reduce the number of unreported pre-polls, with no postals added anywhere that I’ve been tracking. Labor’s chances of a majority hinge on strong performances in a few place on absent votes, which won’t start being added until Thursday. Below are updates on seven of the eight seats I identified as seriously in doubt yesterday, the exception being Oatley where there was no further progress.
Holsworthy. Yesterday’s counting bore out Antony Green’s indication that this would continue to drift towards the Liberals: all the pre-polls reported their two-candidate results, for a collective Liberal advantage of 7038-6889, and the one outstanding election day booth, Menai Primary, broke 619-582 in their favour as well. Even without the addition of further postals, which will almost certainly play to their advantage, that increased their lead from 340 to 526. Labor would need a very strong result on absents to remain in the hunt here.
Kiama. Again consistent with what Antony Green was hearing, Gareth Ward stormed into the lead here after winning the Nowra pre-poll 3333-2145, and he further gained 852-680 from the one outstanding election day two-candidate booth (Bomaderry Public). He now leads by 615 after trailing yesterday by 752.
Miranda. The results caught up with my projection here after the Illawong Public election day booth finally reported (though there are still three election day booths without two-party and one without primaries), breaking 1279-818 to the Liberals and pushing their lead out from 71 to 525.
Pittwater. The Narrabeen pre-poll pushed the Liberal lead out from 377 to 664, which the outstanding postals can only widen further. That just leaves the unknown quantity of absents, of which the Electoral Commission was expecting about 3000.
Ryde. The Epping pre-poll broke 873-866 to Liberal, reducing the Labor lead from 241 to 234.
Terrigal. The Woy Woy pre-poll broke 836-683 to Liberal, amounting to a below par swing to Labor of 7.2%. My system continues to project a Labor lead, but that’s probably based on an underestimate of the number of outstanding postals. Labor’s hope remains a strong performance on absents.
Wollondilly. The Camden pre-poll broke 1022-1016 to Liberal, putting independent Judy Hannan’s lead at 1602.
Tuesday morning
Before dealing with the business at hand, you can hear more of my thoughts on the result in discussion with Ben Raue on his podast at his Tally Room website, and in an article for Crikey if you’re a subscriber.
Yesterday’s counting made Labor’s win look rather less emphatic, to the extent that Antony Green – going here off “inside information” – expects them to win no more than 46 seats, placing them one short of a majority. My projections still have Labor ahead in Terrigal and Holsworthy, but the Liberals have hit the lead on the raw count in the former case and remain ahead in the latter, and Antony’s sources evidently have reason to believe they will stay there. What follows is a summary of yesterday’s progress in doubtful seats, which I’ll define here a little more tightly than I do in my results summary, starting with the aforementioned two seats and then proceeding alphabetically.
Terrigal. The Liberals went from 556 behind on the two-party count to 87 ahead after three pre-poll centres broke their way by 5969-5154 and the first postals did so by 350-208. Whereas election day votes swung 13.8% to Labor, so far pre-polls have done so by 11.5% and postals by 10.8%; further, the number of formal election day votes was down from 30,625 to 27,560. My system continues to credit Labor with a lead based on the swing from the votes that are actually in, but if it’s indeed the case that the outstanding votes underperform that, the projected lead is unlikely to hold. On the other hand, Labor performed well above par on absents in 2019 (a Liberal TPP margin of 4.3% as compared with 12.3% across the electorate as a whole), likely to number about 3000, which I would have thought held out hope for them. The Woy Woy pre-poll is still to report – Labor did 3% better there on two-party preferred in 2019 than the pre-polls that have reported so far, but it’s actually located in neighbouring Gosford and the NSWEC’s pre-election estimate was that it would handle a fairly modest 1760 votes. The problem for Labor would appear to be that the number of postals has more than doubled from the last election — another 3000 of those continuing to break nearly 63-37 to the Liberals would boost them by 750.
Holsworthy. The Liberals lead here by 0.7% on the raw two-party count, but there are a lot of pre-poll numbers still to come, and the Liberal margin on those was only 1.4% in 2019 compared with 5.7% across the electorate as a whole. Labor should also get a bit of a boost from absents if their swing is like those of votes cast within the electorate. Again though, my system could be underestimating the advantage remaining to accrue to the Liberals on postals, the first batch of which broke 943-803 in their favour.
Kiama. Labor were looking good here at the close of election night, and they still hold a seemingly handy 752 lead on the two-party count. The reason my system now thinks it’s lineball is that Gareth Ward has scored an impressive 48.6% of the primary vote out of 2192 postals, compared with his overall progress score of 38.5%, and these are yet to report on two-candidate preferred. Antony Green’s sources go further than that, saying he has it in the bag.
Miranda. With only postals added yesterday, there are still a lot of holes in the count here: two election day booths haven’t reported at all, another two have primary vote numbers only, no pre-polls have reported two-party preferred, and only one out of five of them are in on the primary vote. My system’s efforts to fill the gaps credit the Liberals with a lead of 1.0% compared with a raw 0.2% on two-party preferred. As ever, part of the equation is that the first batch of postals broke 726-505 their way.
Oatley. The Liberals’ lead here inflated from 254 to 910 yesterday with the reporting of the large Mortdale pre-poll booth, which broke 4740-4084 their way for a slightly below par swing to Labor of 5.1%. The first batch of postals broke 1329-946 to Liberal and those to come will presumably widen the gap, leaving absents as Labor’s only chance — there should be about 3000 of them, and in 2019 they broke almost evenly in a seat where the Liberals recorded a 6.9% winning margin.
Pittwater. I’m still projecting a narrow independent lead here, but the Liberals have opened up a 377 lead on the two-candidate count after winning the Pittwater pre-poll 3924-3049. They are also smashing it on postals, a factor my system struggles with when they substantially increase in number, as they have done both at this election and in Victoria. Certainly Antony Green’s sources are telling him the Liberals are home and hosed here.
Ryde. Labor’s two-party lead fell here yesterday from 412 to 241, the size of the Liberal winning margin in the large Eastwood pre-poll outweighing their losing margin in the smaller Macquarie Park pre-poll. The swing to Labor in Eastwood was a weak 3.2%. The one outstanding pre-poll and the absents both produced results in line with the overall result in 2019, but Labor would have to be worried about the thought of more than 2000 postals yet to come — the first batch swung 12.2% their way, but still broke 1052-837 to Liberal.
Wollondilly. Climate 200-backed independent Judy Hannan holds a 3.2% margin on the two-candidate count, but she has some weak booths that have so far only reported on the primary vote, which is one reason I’m only projecting her to win by 1.2%. Once again, the large number of outstanding postals may mean my system is selling them short — those counted so far have broken 437-326 their way, with a good 3000 yet to come, and the Liberals did even better on absents in 2019 than they did on postals.
Monday morning
No counting was conducted yesterday, but today we can expect to see progress on the pre-poll voting centres that are yet to report, which is the majority of them; a smaller number of election day stragglers; and the postal votes received up to Friday in seats where they were not reported on the night, of which I count 36. The Electoral Commission has pulled the two-candidate count between independent Alex Greenwich and the Liberals in the seat of Sydney, having determined that Labor rather than the Liberals will finish second. A new count will be conducted, but I’m not clear when the results will be published – clearly it’s academic because Greenwich has easily been re-elected. I have cleared a blockage that was preventing my results system from calling Newcastle for Labor, for whom it is now calling a definite 45 seats.
Sunday morning
My ever cautious results system* is currently giving away 44 seats to Labor, placing it three short of a confirmed majority, but leading in another seven. So the likeliest outcome is that the incoming government will indeed hold a majority. I spent the evening as part of a six-member decision desk at the Nine Network calling seats the hard way, and by the close of business we had it down to nine in doubt: the Labor-versus-Coalition contests of Winston Hills, Goulburn, Holsworthy, Miranda and Oatley; Willoughby, Wollondilly and Pittwater, which are Liberal-held seats that might go independent; and Kiama, where ex-Liberal independent Gareth Ward effortlessly saw off his Liberal opponent as expected, but might fall foul of the swing to Labor. Immediately before it turned off booth matching and switched to raw results, the ABC was calling Winston Hills for the Liberals, but concurred with my system in not yet calling Ryde for Labor, Drummoyne for the Liberals or Balmain for the Greens.
The situation in the Legislative Council is always obscure on the night, with only a third of enrolled voters’ first preference votes counted, all of which are above-the-line votes. For what it’s worth though, Labor is currently clear of eight quotas, the Coalition six, the Greens two and One Nation one. Legalise Cannabis, the Liberal Democrats and Shooters Fishers and Farmers also look to be doing well enough to each win one of the four remaining seats, with the final seat perhaps going to the Coalition or Animal Justice. If that’s the case – and it must be stressed at this early stage that it may not be – that would result in the final seat deciding whether a broadly defined left has a majority with 22 seat out of 42, or if left and right are tied at 21 each.
* If you’re finding it of any value, donations are gratefully received through the “become a supporter” button at the top of this page and in the right-hand corner of the results page itself. Between the scale of an election for 93 seats and the confounding extra layer of complexity entailed by optional preferential voting, this involved a rather considerable expenditure of effort on my part, for which I am only rewarded to the extent that my kind donors see fit.
Andrew_Earlwoodsays:
Tuesday, March 28, 2023 at 10:47 pm
I was hit by the oddness of that comment too, about targeting a wide range of seats. I think he said Bob has the flu or something. And despite the comment, there was still a very small list of seats on the top tier of target seats until late in the campaign.
Not sure about ALP internal polling either – last week the word was that Camden was ‘In Play’, rather than ‘leading’. It’s hardly even marginal now.
The presumption of innocence should be valued; those who voted for Ward would appear to. This crucial concept of the criminal justice system can’t be cherry picked depending on the type of charges Ward will go to trial on, despite their abhorrence.
Why is the counting of votes so slow in NSW. Looking at the results to date there is for many seats still the best part of 20,000 votes to be counted. I have to say too, that everybody got a bit ahead of themselves on Saturday night when, at the close of counting, only 50% or less, in a lot of seats had been counted. Being the pessimist that I am, I was concerned then that later counting might count against the ALP and unfortunately at this stage it seems that most seats that looked like flipping will not. Hopefully they might still flip.
Lars Von Trier says:
Wednesday, March 29, 2023 at 12:08 pm
The difficulty for Labor is there are about 6 people on promises of ministries
Jason Yat Sen Li and whan being at the front of the queue
The disappointed often discover a predilection for independence. Is there a new Labor Geoff Shaw lurking in the wings ?
——————————–
Unlike in Victoria where the Lib/nats government seats were close enough for Labor to force a possible change of government or early election ,
NSW Labor government is safe , the lib/nats wont get near enough number of seats to be able to form any kind of government
Mavis @ #821 Wednesday, March 29th, 2023 – 11:12 am
Within the criminal justice system, absolutely. Not just valued, but sacrosanct.
But within the court of public opinion? No, not at all. Different contexts, different rules.
“ Lars Von Trier says:
Wednesday, March 29, 2023 at 12:08 pm
The difficulty for Labor is there are about 6 people on promises of ministries
Jason Yat Sen Li and whan being at the front of the queue
The disappointed often discover a predilection for independence. Is there a new Labor Geoff Shaw lurking in the wings ?”
_______
Jeezus, L’arse can dribble some shit.
I seriously doubt, Whan aside, that there will be many promotions onto the front bench when the full ministry is announced.
So what. Minns will be setting himself up for a long term Labor government.
Even in 1995, there were few promotions from the backbench to the front bench when Carr won his first term. Even Iemma had to wait until 1999. I expect that if/when labor wins in 2027, that most of the front bench that were not supporters of Chris back in 2019 will at that stage be ‘managed out’. If there is any mid term reshuffle, that process will probably start then.
Folk like Lawrence and Li will know that their time will come soon enough.
Plus there’s all kind of junior/assistant roles to keep them busy while the stayers get their due.
Disappointed about Miranda, Simon Earle is a great bloke and a bloody hard worker, that Eleni woman is just horrible(the Liberal MP, the one who Perrottett sacked from his ministry last year).
In better news, Steve Whan has claimed victory in Monaro, ought to be in the Minns cabinet, surely, given his past experience.
Evan, Notwithstanding Andy the r@t’s comments, party management will be a challenge. Although history shows the Liberals fall apart in Opposition.
Lars Von Triersays:
Wednesday, March 29, 2023 at 1:35 pm
Evan, Notwithstanding Andy the r@t’s comments, party management will be a challenge. Although history shows the Liberals fall apart in Opposition.
Life’s a soap opera Lars.
Good work.
a r:
Wednesday, March 29, 2023 at 12:46 pm
Mavis @ #821 Wednesday, March 29th, 2023 – 11:12 am
[‘The presumption of innocence should be valued
Within the criminal justice system, absolutely. Not just valued, but sacrosanct.
But within the court of public opinion? No, not at all. Different contexts, different rules.’]
As far as Ward’s concerned it appears that voters were more concerned with the presumption of innocence than by ‘the court of public opinion’, evidenced by the possibility that he may retain his seat.
The NSW Liberals will totally descend into infighting and division, guaranteed!
Optional Preferential Voting has saved 10 of their seats this time by my estimation, but there’s ripe fruit for Minns and Labor in 4 years time if the first term of this new government goes well.
Today’s SMH talks about the recriminations in the wake of the Liberal defeat in Wollindilly, accusations that Liberal Party HQ didn’t see the threat from Judith Hannan the independent until much too late, the Liberal campaign in that seat was badly resourced, also the Perrottett Government neglected the area when it came to increased funding for Western Sydney.
As financial planners say “past performance is not a guarantee of future success”.
Still you would have to say the NSW Libs falling apart is more likely than not. It’s not endemic also depends on how solid Labor looks say 2-3 years out.
It’s interesting looking at the party primary vote totals – OPV is almost becoming a first past the post system.
Labor has 37.0% primary and the LNP has 35.6% yet Labor will have 45 or 46 seats to the LNP’s 35 or 36 seats. 2PP its now looking more like 53.5 to 46.5 around about where the polls where for months BEFORE the last Newspoll.
That suggests the campaign didnt really matter and the results were pretty much baked in around January/February.
Not having a good day Lars?
“The presumption of innocence should be valued; those who voted for Ward would appear to. ”
Ah piffle.
The presumption of innocence is a limit to the (monopoly) power of the state over violence and incarceration.
On the other hand, in a liberal society, I can pretty much make up my own opinion on anything. If I think there is enough evidence or suspicion around the behaviour of a person to write them off, the I can do that. I am free to choose how I interact with them, including not to vote for them in an election.
In my individual capacity, I’m not bound to presume innocence.
I’ve been looking through the seats for examples where compulsory preferential would have changed the result, and the only one I can find with reasonable certainty is Balmain, which Labor would have taken from the Greens on Liberal preferences (assuming Liberal preferences were directed to Labor).
There are several cases where the coalition just snuck over the line instead of winning comfortably because ON and SFF preferences exhausted, but I can’t see any they actually lost because of that effect.
Similarly, there don’t appear to be any seats Labor lost because Greens and other left-wing minor preferences exhausted.
Am I missing something?
“The presumption of innocence should be valued; those who voted for Ward would appear to. ”
Maybe give that a bit more thought, that concept isn’t particularly valuable outside of the judicial system. The good people of Kiama have chosen to steer a high-risk course when they had safer options. Ward can have his presumption of innocence in the courtroom.
Aunty has just called Kiama for Ward.
I’d say a presumption of guilt is far more reliable concerning politicians.
[‘The Herald has called the seat of Kiama for independent Gareth Ward.
Ward, who has held the seat on the NSW South Coast since 2011, is leading Labor candidate Katelin McInerney by more than 1000 votes now, with three quarters of ballots counted.
The former minister was suspended from parliament last year after being charged with historical sexual and indecent assault. He denies the charges, and pleaded not guilty in Nowra District Court yesterday.
Premier Chris Minns would not be drawn further yesterday on his intentions if the MP was successfully returned to parliament.
“I want to wait and see what the outcome of the ballot is. We’re still very hopeful, and I think in the commanding position to win that seat. I think that will be good for the parliament,” Minns said at the time.’] – SMH live blog.
if piper is pleading to be speaker it means hewill not get it he is another lib leaning independent probaly daley could get it he was a minister before but is not a strong performer any more if piper is campaigning to be speaker it means he will not be hoenig is an other option or haris daley has no chance as earlwood would no he only has one single suporter in mark buttigiek so minns is safe
Heads need to roll at the NSW EC for its serious failings in the rolling out of the election and its subsequent stalling and drawing out of the counting process.
Additionally, the allowing of pre poll voting so early has caused a logistical nightmare that has kept the instruments of the state in a suspended animation while this amateur hour counting continues on and on.
With 3 greens plus the ind in Labor heartland Lake Macquarie and then the guarantee of confidence and supply I don’t think Minns will have too much to worry about.
When it comes to legislation he will be able to negotiate with the cross bench on proposed legislation bills on a case by case basis.
And not having these swathe of seats fall labor’s way will give them the drive the machine needs to to clinch them in 2027- as opposed to winning them now which would have been a high water mark of sorts.
With Latham et al in the balance of power I think clubs NSW can breathe easy.
buttigiak or primrose could get upper house role buttigiek did not help him self when he said onfriendley jordies that most mps dont have life expirences he should have been glad minns let him continue as wip desbite disliking him
haris may have been a okay teacher but prue car is education minister hopefuly rose jackson and houssos will get premotions hossos is one of our best upper house mps graham is not great in roads
Aaron have you ever thought about nominating to be on the Labor upper house ticket for the council?… you should and I think you’d make it in
John Graham is a solid performer, will do a good job with the Roads portfolio
Wollondilly got sweet fa during 12 years of the LNP.
The party put so much pork into Penrith propping up Ayres they forgot about the rest of the west.
Absolutely disgraceful the amount to dollars and pork barrelling they sunk into the riff to keep Ayres alive.
Antony Green explaining why the count’s slowed today.
Brereton’s appointment as head of the NACC will be welcomed by most – at least by those who have nothing to fear.
https://www.themandarin.com.au/216033-nsw-court-of-appeals-judge-to-lead-nacc/
Honestly, after reading PollBludger straight after the election, I don’t understand why the NSW Electoral Commission didn’t just burn all the ballot papers and declare the ALP the winner.
Clearly, they have questions to answer.
Kiama
Updated 29 March 2023 at 2:44 pm
76.69% counted
IND retain
Preference count
Party / Candidate
Vote %
Votes
IND
WARD Gareth
51.3%
20,670
ALP
McINERNEY Katelin
48.7%
19,622
51.3%
Swing for IND
Swing is based on the percentage change in voter support for the two preferred candidates between now and the previous election.
First preference
Party / Candidate
Vote %
Votes
IND
WARD Gareth
39.7%
18,341
ALP
McINERNEY Katelin
34.7%
15,997
LIB
GIBBONS Melanie
11.5%
5,327
GRN
GRAY Tonia
10.7%
4,937
SAP
GILL John
3.4%
1,547
– SMH
Kiama
Updated 29 March 2023 at 2:44 pm
76.69% counted
IND retain
Preference count
Party / Candidate
Vote %
Votes
IND
WARD Gareth
51.3%
20,670
ALP
McINERNEY Katelin
48.7%
19,622
51.3%
Swing for IND
Swing is based on the percentage change in voter support for the two preferred candidates between now and the previous election.
First preference
Party / Candidate
Vote %
Votes
IND
WARD Gareth
39.7%
18,341
ALP
McINERNEY Katelin
34.7%
15,997
LIB
GIBBONS Melanie
11.5%
5,327
GRN
GRAY Tonia
10.7%
4,937
SAP
GILL John
3.4%
1,547
– SMH
PL1 pls due process – a royal commission headed up by r@t and c@t to look into the NSWEC.
Player one there are better ways to get my attention than this dribble you post
Player one there are easier ways to get my attention than this dribble you post
Dandy Murray @ #866 Wednesday, March 29th, 2023 – 2:26 pm
+1
leftieBrawler @ #885 Wednesday, March 29th, 2023 – 4:46 pm
It’s all they’ve got.
Mavis @ #880 Wednesday, March 29th, 2023 – 3:30 pm
This is the NSW election thread, Mavis. 😐
Thanks, Cat.
C@t as you would remember many of us including yourself, outside left and others tried to reach out and help her after she had her public meltdown on the PB threads in the lead up to last years federal election.
It appears she has just doubled down on the micro dosing and is continuing full tilt with her anti labor agendas
Oops. Wrong thread. Removed.
leftieBrawler @ #890 Wednesday, March 29th, 2023 – 5:06 pm
Yes, you would think that, after years and years and years of people being able to see right through her efforts (remember her staunch advocacy for ‘Gas Peakers’?) and picking when she effortlessly shifts the goalposts to again seem right and others wrong, that she would get the message that we’re onto her scam? But no, like a broken record that gets played monotonously every day, she just goes on and on and on with the same schtick. Oblivious. Or knowing but just not caring about being a genuine contributor, instead getting a perverse pleasure it seems from pissing us off. And abusing us.
Some people here are apparently having a really bad day.
I sympathize – not with the posters, but with those of us here who have to read their drivel.
Either way, Absent votes can often trend toward Labor, so, from tomorrow we should see how these “In Doubt” seats play out.
For instance, in Terrigal in 2019, the Absent vote split 54-46 to Liberal, well below the 62-38 total result. And there was 3,342 Absent votes last time.
However, there’s also the matter of Postal votes, which could counter-balance that.
No one has to read anything, whether or not it might be drivel…
I repeat – can we please save this crap for the open threads.
Leftiebrawler: You old mate provide a lot of sanity on this thread and the main one too, cheers cobber, would be an honour to have a few beers with you one day.
Well my friends, they start counting absentees tomorrow and Labor usually does better with those than pre polls and postals, so let’s keep our fingers crossed especially for C@t in relation to Terrigal, and Ryde too and Goulburn(although most seem to think Wendy Tuckerman will prevail).
And let’s keep the garbage off this thread too, save it for the main thread if you must, the discussion in the NSW election only threads over the campaign and after it has been far better than some of the petty arguments in other areas of Poll Bludger.
Hahahaha thanks Evan…. I’m not really a pillar of sanity I’ll freely admit.
Yes we should all have beers and definitely make sure outside left is there…. He is the real one you’d want to knock a few back with.