Three strong contenders and a mish-mash of minor candidates once again made for an interesting race and a complicated preferences count that will take days to be finalised.
The Echo went on a deepdive into the polling data to see how we voted around the electorate, revealing the picture of Byron Shire being a Greens stronghold, and Labor edging ahead of The Nationals in both the Tweed and Ballina shires.
As the count has progressed we saw strong early numbers for The Greens shifting in Labor’s favour, reflecting that Labor and the Nationals do particularly well in prepoll and postal votes, while Greens voters tend to go to the polls on election day.
Positive swings were recorded for all three of the frontrunners, however it’s worth noting that the positive swing to The Nationals is likely skewed by the absence of the Liberal Democratic Party who took 7.7% of the vote in 2022.
All the major media outlets were quick to call a healthy win for Justine Elliot yet The Greens were slow to concede while there was still a possibility of the final preference count favouring them.
A similar outcome to last election looks likely. After the back-runners are excluded and their preferences distributed, the last three left will be Kimberly Hone in the lead and Justine Elliot in the crucial second place of the last three before being propelled to first place with the allocation of Greens preferences at the final exclusion. The final results will show Justine Elliot having a healthy margin over Kimberly Hone that won’t reflect how close the race actually was between her and Mandy Nolan.
The informal vote at 7.15% is well above the 5.27% national average.
For four decades The Echo has printed the stories some people loved, some people hated, and some pretended not to read. If you want us to keep telling the truth, the real truth, not the sugar-coated version. We’ll need your support to keep the presses rolling. 
