The Entrance is a marginal seat on the Central Coast. It was won in 2011 by the Liberal Party’s Chris Spence. He was caught up in an ICAC investigation in 2014 and stepped down from the Liberal Party, and subsequently retired at the 2015 election.
The Liberal Party held The Entrance by an 11.8% margin, and at the time of writing Labor’s David Mehan leads by 145 votes, with very few votes left to be counted. This makes The Entrance the second-closest seat at the election, just behind the neighbouring seat of Gosford – another Liberal seat where it appears Labor has won.
In my pre-election guide, I split booths in The Entrance into three sub-areas. The “east” covers those booths closest to the ocean, and the “central” area covers those near the Tuggerah Lakes. The “west” mostly covers booths in the Gosford council area, well away from both the lake and the ocean.
| Voter group | ALP 2PP % | LIB 2PP % | ALP swing | Total | % of votes |
| East | 50.8 | 49.2 | 11.0 | 14,188 | 29.7 |
| West | 50.8 | 49.2 | 15.2 | 10,827 | 22.6 |
| Central | 49.8 | 50.2 | 11.3 | 6,969 | 14.6 |
| Other votes | 49.2 | 50.8 | 10.8 | 15,825 | 33.1 |
At the 2011 election, the Liberal Party comfortably won all three areas, winning between 60% in the east and 64% in the west.
The vote across the seat was very consistent in 2015 between each area. Labor won 50.8% of the two-party-preferred vote in both the east and the west, while the Liberal Party won 50.2% in the centre and 50.8% on the special vote.
When you look at individual booths there is more variety, but no particularly strong trend of the ALP winning in one area, and the Liberal Party winning in another. Overall about 36% of election-day ordinary votes were cast at booths where the Labor two-party-preferred was between 48% and 52%, and there was only one tiny booth where either party polled over 60% of the 2PP.
