NSW election open thread

By
Ben Raue
-
15

The people of New South Wales are going to the polls today in a state election. The Coalition is expected to win a massive majority, with the Labor Party facing one of their worst results in the party’s history.

Use this thread to discuss the election during the day. A new post will be opened at 6pm to discuss results.

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15 COMMENTS

  1. I did a quick trot around inner west polling stations (Balmain, Marrickville, Drummoyne) early this morning, and bumped into lots of friends and acquaintances… Many people clutching Liberal HTVs, marching grim-faced under a threatening grey sky into NSW’s uncertain future. Labor in Balmain changed their HTV, eliminating any preference slip to the Greens. That will occur anyway, but yet another twist in that seat’s bizarre campaign!

    At a dinner party last night, a high-up State dept bureaucrat told me she had a meeting scheduled for wednesday, where she would have to announce that most of her staff’s job’s were gone. She was upset and dreading it.

    Someone did quip, “They’ll probably feel worse than you.” But I kept quiet, and didn’t even smirk

  2. Finished my booth work for the day

    Seemed to be a bit more support for Labor than I would ahve expected, but almost impossible to predict a Seat just from one booth.

  4. Been at a busy booth in Swansea all day, we have been handing out HTV or Gillian Sneddon, it’s encouraging that many people were saying, “Yep, that’s the one I want……”

  6. Booths in Menai have NO Labor or Greens workers, even Labor booths! They packed up and went home. Woman here stopped her car, wound down the window and (tears in her eyes) told us she had just voted Liberal fotthe first time in her life, wearig an ‘Im Over It’ t-shirt.

  7. News from the big Jerrabomberra booth in Monaro – not a strong booth for the Greens I wouldn’t have thought– huge presence by Nationals, a strong presence by ALP including Mike Kelly, Greens 2-3 people continuously with how to vote literature, someone handing out upper house tickets for John Hatton and the Christian Democratic Party respectively plus a representative for a local independent. The full catastrophe but with a good coffee van on hand and a sausage sizzle for the local school.

    Nationals quietly confident, ALP uncertain but not discouraged. “Stick with Steve” was their slogan. ALP was trying the risky strategy of having someone handing out a pamphlet which read” Thinking of voting Green 1- Vote Labor 2 Give Labor your second Preference. A complicated message to sell in the context and one that might have the result of encouraging people to vote Green.

  8. Majority of the booths on the Northern Beaches don’t even have any ALP volunteers. Most have set up the section for the ALP, then buggered off without handing out a single HTV.

  9. Many booths on north coast are the same, or there’s large booths where there’d normally be several ALP people, but today just 1 die-hard.

    NSWEC website now has listing of which candidates will be in tonight’s 2PP counts. They are going for straight ALP v Coalition counts in almost all seats. Counting between ALP and Greens in Balmain and Marrickville, but not including Greens in 2PP count anywhere else. Counting between ALP and Tate in Newcastle, but otherwise no non-sitting independents in 2PP counts. This all could mean several seats where we’ll get no good indication of likely final outcome tonight.

  10. Libs have set up a system where people from safe seats go to marginals. So my wife and I helped at the southern part of Londonderry. ALP helpers very grim faced. Lots of voters only taking Liberal HTV cards.

  11. Sky exit poll says Coalition 52, ALP 27, Greens 9 – 2PP 64-36. I wonder how broad a sample of seats that takes in. I missed it if they discussed earlier.

  13. The woman handing out Labor HTV cards at Menai Public School was telling people to “vote then go around and go to a different book to vote again. We need the votes!”

  14. From a Pollbludger poster:

    Labor scored a crushing victory tonight in the NSW election tonight. Their primary enemy, The Greens, managed to only obtain a little more than 10% of the vote.

    “This is a wonderful win”, a Labor spokesman announced. “They barely managed to score more than 10%. We, on the other hand, managed nearly 25%!” When quizzed further about the matter, the Labor spokesman said “look, they could have ended up with 15% of the vote or more, threatening our position as the true opposition party in NSW for quite some years to come! By comparison losing one or two seats to the Libs tonight is small beer!’

    When it was pointed out that Labor appeared to have lost some thirty seats in the election, the spokesman said _ “yeah, but how many of them were to the Greens? No question about it. This is one of the historically great victories for Labor. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.

    However one has to ask why GRN has not done better particularly in the two lower house seats of Marrickville and Balmain. Was it simply becasue the candidates were not good enough and carried too much baggage.

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