Friday evening. Another 2878 postals have added 288 to Peter Hendy’s lead, which is not at 990. 1562 absent votes have been better for Mike Kelly, breaking 844-718 his way, but as Kelly acknowledged with today’s concession of defeat, it’s too little too late. Unless some late count surprise occurs, I’m going to stop following this one.
Thursday evening. 20 pre-polls have favoured Mike Kelly by 148, but 3653 postals have unfavoured him by 275. That means a net gain of 127 for Peter Hendy, who now leads by 633. There are likely to be a further 3000 pre-polls and 3000 postals to come, plus over 2000 absent votes of which none have yet been counted, with Kelly needing about 54% of them to break his way.
Wednesday 4pm. Still slow progress here, with the addition of 729 pre-polls being the only substantial new addition. These have favoured Mike Kelly by 407 to 322, reducing the margin to 506.
Monday 4pm. Cooma South, Jindabyne and Sunshine Bay booths finally added, together with one hospital booth, each have which has contributed to a widening of Peter Hendy’s lead from 246 to 569.
Sunday 6pm. There are another 1544 votes in the count, but there are still missing results from Cooma South and Jindabyne and a couple of pre-poll voting centres. The newly added votes have given Peter Hendy a lead of 246.
Election night. After initially looking promising for Mike Kelly, the count has steadily drifted away from him to the point where Liberal member Peter Hendy has overtaken him on two of three available measures. Antony Green’s booth matching has the swing at 4.4%, giving Hendy a lead at 0.2%. He also provides a raw preference count that gives Kelly the narrowest of leads at 36097 to 36093. The AEC for some reason has percentages but not the numbers they are derived from, and they have Hendy leading by 0.55%. However, they are based on fewer booths than the primary vote count, and the primary vote count total is equal to Antony’s two-party calculation, so either Antony’s figures are a projection of some kind or it’s his numbers that are more up to date. A half-dozen booths, both ordinary and pre-poll, are yet to report one or both of their counts.