Tuesday 4pm. If there was any lingering doubt here, it’s been resolved by 1452 pre-polls breaking 861-591 Owens’s way, pushing her lead out to 931. I’m not going to continue following this one.
Monday 4pm. Julie Owens has recovered her footing with the addition of 2340 absent votes which evidently came from a friendlier area than the first batch, breaking 1274-1066 her way and boosting her lead by 208 to 690. Martin Zaiter will need about 57% of roughly 4500 outstanding votes here, and appears unlikely to get them.
Friday 3pm. A better day’s counting so far for Julie Owens, with another 1588 postals biting into her lead by only 20 votes, leaving it at 403.
Thursday evening. As part of a general trend against Labor in late counting, Parramatta is well and truly back on the danger list after 6084 postals cut into Julie Owens’ lead by 642, reducing it to its present 389. Still to come are about 2000 postals, 2000 pre-polls (likely to be better for Labor) and 4500 absents.
Election night. With all ordinary election night results accounted for, the ABC has Labor member Julie Owens suffering a 3.6% swing to Liberal candidate Martin Zaiter, leaving her with a likely sufficient 0.7% margin.
I agree this is probably enough. The Coalition sometimes but rarely closed by this much in seats in 2010 and this is one where they went backwards.
http://kevinbonham.blogspot.com.au/2013/09/2013-federal-election-late-counting.html
Had a look at 2010 figures to see if there is any risk to this seat from the increased number of postals. The answer is that provided Julie Owens performs anything like as well on postals as last time relative to her ordinary vote share, there isn’t.
ALP performance on postals not as good as 2010. Potentially still dicey if ALP performance on prepolls also not as good.
Update on Parramtta: Julie Owens’s lead is now 482 votes, so obviously the counting in the later part of today went well for her.
Julie Owen’s lead has increased to 589 votes, Parramatta firming up as a Labor retain
With Julie Owens outperforming the Lib in both EVPPs and Absents, and only a couple of hundred postals remaining, Labor are home and hosed in Parramatta. Lead has increased to 690 by lunchtime , Monday.
Owens lead has ballooned to 931 on Tuesday evening with 3291 to count.