7:40 – I want to be clear that I haven’t called anything. With nine booths my model is only projecting 52% for Liberal.
7.25 – With eight 2CP booths reporting, the models are aligning. Liberal is on 55.5%. My models have them winning with 55-56%.
7:22 – When I just apply matched swing to the 2CP, I get the Nationals leading, but by less than the raw figures. It’s projecting to about 52% off seven booths. But when I calculate preference flows and apply those to the projected primary votes, it predicts the Liberals winning with 57%. I’m gonna investigate but it’s interesting.
7.11 – We now have four booths reporting 2CP and the Nationals have 53.8%. My model says this is a swing of 21.7%, and would project to the Nationals getting about 60%. But the primary vote figures look better for the Liberals.6:56- So I’m out tonight and forgot to bring my laptop but Maggie Perry at 6 News is using my results spreadsheet and I thought I’d give an update thanks to her data entry.
With four booths reporting primary votes, my model is projecting the Liberals to gain a 1.5% swing and the Nationals a swing of 7.3%.
With two booths reporting on the 2CP, the swing is 11.2%, putting the Nationals just ahead on 50.4%. Very close.
6:00 – Polls have just closed for the by-election for the New South Wales state seat of Port Macquarie, covering one of the larger regional cities on the mid north coast.
I’m out tonight so probably won’t be live-blogging much, but you can discuss the results here and I might drop in a little bit.
This is a fascinating contest pitting the Liberal and Nationals parties up against each other. The Nationals have dominated the Coalition on the north coast of New South Wales, despite Liberal incursions into local councils in Tweed and Mid-Coast and a large influx of ex-Sydneysiders in the area. Former sitting MP Leslie Williams quit the Nationals and joined the Liberal Party in 2020 over policies regarding koalas.
The Nationals want to win the seat back, while the Liberals won’t want to lose their sole foothold in the north coast. The 2023 contest in this seat was the first time we’ve seen a proper contest between the coalition parties in this part of the world in a long time. The Liberals won easily, but that was with a sitting MP who has now retired.
While we wait for results, you can read my election guide here.
No results yet, but some should come in soon.
I also won’t be doing any updates after 10:15pm AEST (11:15pm AEDT) as the Women’s League Cup Final is on at that time.
Very low-key by-election in my opinion. I expect a Liberal retain but honestly that’s about it.
At the moment it seems that the Camden Haven is voting Liberals but the rural areas and surprisingly also parts of Port Macquarie are voting Nationals.
Didn’t even know it was on
Current counts:
Primaries:
* Liberals leading: Bonny Hills, Dunbogan, Kendall, Kew (Camden Haven High), Lord Howe Island, North Haven, Port Art and Craft Centre
* Nationals leading: Johns River, Moorland, North Shore (Port) Regional (Port)
* Tied: Lorne
On TCP:
* Liberals leading: Dunbogan, Kendall, Lord Howe Island, Lorne
* Nationals leading: Coopernook, Johns River, North Shore, Regional
Just for some info, locally St. Columba Anglican School is called SCAS, and St Joseph’s Regional College is called Regional. To save me having to type so many letters, I’ll just use their nicknames.
The Liberals currently have 50.2% of the TCP and 32.4% of the primary vote, compared to 49.8% and 31.6% for the Nationals.
The booths in the Camden Haven area and in Harrington are clearly favouring the Liberals, likely because Robert Dwyer is from Kew which is in the Camden Haven. Meanwhile, the Nationals are dominating the rural vote outside the Camden Haven and in Port Macquarie it’s surprisingly mixed, with the more coastal parts favouring the Liberals and the more inland parts and the semi-rural suburb of North Shore favouring the Nationals.
I wonder if the Nats will win because their pre-poll vote harvesting efforts will probably be stronger than the Libs…