NSW councils – declaration of results post

4:00pm Tuesday – We are now approaching the end of the declaration process.

In Ryde, the third Liberal won the final seat in Ryde West, giving the Liberals a total of eight seats against three Labor, one Greens and Roy Maggio. A very solid result and frankly one of the few bright spots for the Liberals in major urban councils.

Shoalhaven had no further uncalled races but for the record everything went as expected: seven Shoalhaven Independents, three Team Tribe, three Labor and no Greens on a council that previously had four Greens.

In Sydney, the Greens have won a second seat for the first time since 2008, winning the final seat. This produces a council of four Clover Moore councillors (including Moore herself), two Labor, two Greens, one Liberal Yvonne Weldon.

In The Hills North, the Greens were one vote behind Labor on primary votes, but managed to win by 117 votes. This produces a final council of 9 Liberals, 3 Labor and 1 Greens.

The only ward I have been following which is yet to declare is Wollongong 3, which I have called as 3 Labor and 1 Greens. If this goes as expected, the final Wollongong result will be 8 Labor, 3 Greens and 2 independents – Ryan Morris and Andrew Anthony.

I’m going to wrap up this live blog here, and probably stop analysis on the council election for the next week or so while I get all of my other election guides up to date with candidate announcements. When I have time (which could be in October or could be much later) I will be preparing a full dataset and that will allow me to do some further holistic analysis looking at swings, informal rates and candidate trends across the state.

3:00pm Tuesday – Newcastle, Ryde and Lake Macquarie have been coming in over the last hour and a half. Newcastle and Lake Macquarie are finished, and Ryde is about to be.

In Lake Macquarie, independent Swinsburg won the last seat in the West Ward, beating a wide range of candidates off a low primary vote. The council has a total of six Labor councillors, three Liberals, three Lake Mac Independents and Swinsburg, meaning that Labor has lost their majority.

In Newcastle, the Greens won the third seat in Ward 2 and Labor won the third seat in Ward 4. The council has split Labor 5, Our Newcastle 3 (including the lord mayor), Greens 3, Liberal 2.

In Ryde, the Greens have returned to the council by winning the last seat in the Central Ward, defeating independent Nicole Rizk. The ALP won two seats there in 2021, so that’s a backwards step for them. Ryde East split 2 Liberal, 1 Labor, 1 Maggio, but that was expected. The remaining outstanding contest is about to be declared in Ryde West, where the Liberal Party could win a third seat, or it could go to independent Karen Alden. Either way, the Liberals have already won a majority with the new directly-elected mayoralty.

10:30am Tuesday – I might need to wait to call the Sutherland E result from the sidelines of swimming lessons, but we have final result for Tweed. Independent councillor Meredith Dennis has retained her seat. With Warren Polglase retiring and supporting Hone, she has retained his seat, and thus the result is entirely status quo: 2 Liberals, 1 Labor, 1 Greens, three independents. Two of the independents are left-leaning so the progressive majority is maintained.

10:15am Tuesday – Parramatta has now been finalised, as expected in my previous comment.

Northern Beaches was also finalised, with the Greens winning the final seat in the Manly ward with less than 700 votes over the second YNB candidate. As a result, Your Northern Beaches won’t win a majority in their own right. The final seat count is 7 YNB, 4 Greens, one independent Liberal Mandeep Singh, two seats for Vincent De Luca, and one for Good For Manly.

Randwick has also been finalised. There were no uncalled seats in Randwick prior to the declaration, but for the record the final count is 6 Labor, 5 Liberal, 3 Greens and one independent (Noel D’Souza). No change to the balance of power, with the Greens and Labor having a clear majority between them.

We have also got results from the first three Sutherland wards, two of which were unclear. The deselected Liberals Carmelo Pesce and Carol Provan have been re-elected to the last seats in the C and A wards respectively. With that outcome, the door has now shut on the Liberal Party’s majority, although they could win a seventh seat in the E Ward which is due at 10:30am. At the moment I have the other seats as 6 Liberals, 5 Labor, 3 independents, and one seat undecided.

9:30am Tuesday – Charles Chen, running for the Lorraine Wearne Independents group, has narrowly defeated the Greens for the last seat in Parramatta Epping. This was the last undecided seat. It means the council will have seven right-wingers – six Liberal and Chen. On the other side, Labor will need the support of both the Greens and Kellie Darley for a mayoral majority.

5:50pm Monday – This afternoon we’ve gotten the final results for Georges River, Inner West, Mid-Coast and Penrith. Georges River finished as expected.

For Inner West, Labor won a second seat in Ashfield after a close challenge from the Liberals, winning by just 45 votes. They also won a second seat against the Greens in Stanmore, replacing the retiring independent Pauline Lockie. It should be noted that I briefly called Ashfield for the Liberal but after discussions about the flows of preferences I concluded that Labor did have a chance and uncalled the seat yesterday, and they barely won. This means Labor has retained its majority, losing a seat in Leichhardt but replacing it with a seat in Stanmore.

For Mid-Coast, the eleven seats went as I expected. Labor won a second seat and three Libertarians replace two Liberals, leaving the council with two less independents. Three out of four incumbent independents to run for re-election were successful, along with two others. Plus the Greens held their one seat.

In Penrith, independent candidate Glenn Gardiner won the final seat in the North Ward. This leaves the council with 9 Labor, 2 Liberal, 3 independents and one Libertarian.

Tomorrow morning we’ll start up with Parramatta, Northern Beaches and Sutherland all declaring uncalled seats before 10am. I’ll do a brief update in the morning then a bigger one in the afternoon.

2:30pm Monday – We only have results for the first three wards of Georges River but that includes the only uncalled race in Kogarah Bay, where GRRRP leader Elise Borg has held on. If the other two wards go as expected, that’ll produce a final total of 6 Labor, 5 GRRRP, 3 Liberal, and independent Ben Wang.

2:25pm Monday – There were no uncalled races left in Cumberland, but the final results are in and confirm my calls: 5 Labor, 4 Liberal, 3 Our Local Community, 2 independents (Sarkis and Ouf) and one Green.

2:20pm Monday – For Canterbury-Bankstown:

• Community Voice defeated the Libertarian in Bass Hill.
• Greens beat the second Labor candidate in Canterbury.
• Second Labor candidate beat the Greens in Roselands.

This produces a final council total of 8 Labor, 3 Liberal, 1 Community Voice, 1 Greens, 1 Our Local Community, and independent Coorey. The Libertarian Party missed out.

For Camden, Eva Campbell defeated Cindy Cagney for the final seat in Camden South. This produces a final total of 3 Labor, 2 Libertarian, 1 Liberal and three independents – Suri, Campbell and McLean.

The Greens won the final seat in Campbelltown, giving a total of 6 Labor, 3 CFTI, 2 Community Voice, 2 Greens, 1 Sustainable Australia and independent Zahra.

For Central Coast:

• Eaton and Mouland won the last two seats in Budgewoi.
• In Gosford West, independent Smith won the last seat.
• In The Entrance, independent Lamont won the last seat.

This produced a total of 5 Labor, 4 Liberal and six independents, two of whom are part of Lawrie McKinna’s team (including McKinna himself).

12pm Monday – Bayside and Blacktown have now finished.

In Bayside 2, the Greens won a seat off Labor, defeating independent Hollink. In Bayside 3, Peaceful Bayside has won a seat off the Greens. This produces a final council of 6 Labor, 5 Liberal, 2 Peaceful Bayside, 1 Greens and 1 Liz Barlow.

In Blacktown 2, the Greens have won their first seat on that council. This produces a final council count of 8 Labor, 6 Liberal, 1 Greens.

10:30am Monday – We’re now getting most of the mayoral results in, although none of them were on my list of races to watch:

• The Greens have re-gained the Byron mayoralty from an independent after a strong Labor challenge. This means the Greens will hold four out of nine seats on the council.
• Ross Kerridge has defeated Nuatali Nelmes in Newcastle with a 1.68% margin.
• Clover Moore has won a sixth term in Sydney with a 12.9% margin over Labor. This is down from a 17.9% margin against Labor in 2021, so that’s a 5% swing.
• Patricia White from Shoalhaven Independents has been elected over Jemma Tribe by a 5.3% margin, bringing an end to the Greens-Labor majority.
• Liberal mayor Trenton Brown has won Ryde’s first direct mayoral election with a 6.5% margin.

8:00am Monday – All of the results of NSW council elections conducted by the NSW Electoral Commission are due to be declared over the course of today and tomorrow.

For this campaign I have focused on the 27 most populous councils (2 of which, Fairfield and Liverpool, have employed a private provider to conduct their elections and thus are not part of this process). For the last few weeks I have been tracking the count in the 26 of those councils where parties play a large role (sorry, Ku-ring-gai). This is my most recent post analysing the races I am yet to call.

The NSWEC has published a schedule of when each council result will be declared. Two in fact: one for mayor and one for councillors.

I have converted this schedule into a spreadsheet and then matched that to my estimates of who has won and who is likely to win for the 95 contests being held in the 24 partisan councils being run by the NSWEC.

Of these 95 contests, I have identified 29 where I have been unable to call the final result, covering 30 seats uncalled (thanks to two seats being unclear in Central Coast Budgewoi). One of the tabs of the spreadsheet simply lists these 29 contests in order of when declarations are due.

The mayors are being mostly declared first, and should be done by 10:30am. The last council declarations are due at 4pm tomorrow. Of course there may be some delay in the time between when a declaration is made and when it is publicly available online, but this gives you a sense of where to look first.

Bayside 2 and Blacktown 2 are both due at 11am, with Bayside 3 at 11:15am. The declarations are due in a roughly alphabetical order, with The Hills North being the last uncalled race to be declared at 3:30pm on Monday.

That’s it for now, but I’ll drop in every few hours with updates over the course of today and tomorrow.

Liked it? Take a second to support the Tally Room on Patreon!