10am Sunday, February 13
Michael Holland has claimed victory in the Bega by-election after a double-digit swing towards Labor.
However, Fiona Kotvojs is not conceding the seat yet, preferring to await official confirmation of pre-poll and postal vote figures that will come in over the next two weeks.
In the final count of Saturday's polling booth results, Dr Holland netted 6427 first preference votes, 43 per cent of all those counted.
Dr Kotvojs received 5358 first preference votes, in what amounted to an almost 14 per cent swing against the Liberals who have held the seat since it was created in 1988.
Greens Party candidate Peter Haggar claimed eight per cent of the primary vote with 826 first preferences, while the Shooters Fishers and Farmers Party's Victor Hazir perfromed strongly with 5.62 per cent of the primary vote.
In the two candidate preferred counting, Dr Holland and Labor topped Dr Kotvojs by 57.1 per cent to 42.9 per cent.
Looking at the final counts for Saturday as reported by the NSW Electoral Commission, there's a clear division between the north and south of the electorate.
The booths where Dr Kotvojs performed as well as, or indeed better than her Labor counterpart, were predominantly in the Bega Valley. While Eurobodalla booths - where Dr Holland has a much greater presence given his history as a obstetrician in the region - clearly favoured the Labor candidate.
9pm Saturday, February 12
Counting in the Bega by-election has begun with Labor looking to have a strong initial lead, although there's still a while to go before a winner is declared.
Polls closed at 6pm on February 12, and as of 9pm, just over 12,000 votes have been counted.
Of those, Labor's candidate Michael Holland has 5142 first preference votes and Liberal Fiona Kotvojs has 4313.
Peter Haggar of the Greens is next with 1042 first preference votes, then Victor Hazir of the Shooters, Fishers and Farmers Party on 757.
On the two candidate preferred count, Labor is well in front in the early numbers, with 57.2 per cent favouring Dr Holland to claim the seat that has been held by the Liberals since its formation in 1988.
The night is young however, as it's estimated more than a quarter of Bega voters took advantage of pre-polling and, as of 9pm, only one of the seven early voting centres has had votes recorded on the official NSW Electoral Commission tally.
There was also talk during the week that a similar number of voters made use of postal votes, which don't get counted for another week.
Ben Smyth
I have worked as a journalist since 2005 and am now Editor of Australian Community Media mastheads in Bega, Merimbula and Eden
I have worked as a journalist since 2005 and am now Editor of Australian Community Media mastheads in Bega, Merimbula and Eden
