Last night Labor was on track to pick up the inner western Sydney seat of Reid and possibly the central coast electorate of Robertson,while teal independents are set to win the electorates of North Sydney and Mackellar in Sydney’s northern suburbs and probably Wentworth in the city’s east.
There was one potential bright spot for the Coalition in NSW with former NSW transport minister Andrew Constance ahead in the Labor-held south coast electorate of Gilmore. With 47 per cent of the vote counted as of 11pm on Saturday night Constance had received a swing of around 3 per cent and was marginally ahead of Labor incumbent Fiona Phillips on a two-party-preferred basis.
In a shock for Labor,star candidate Kristina Keneally failed in her bid to win the southwestern seat of Fowler. Last night the once safe Labor seat was projected to go to local independent Dai Le.
However,Labor successfully defended a series of vulnerable NSW seats. Last night the ALP had a clear lead in the previously ultra-marginal seat Macquarie in the Blue Mountains and Hawkesbury region. In 2019 Labor’s Susan Templeman won Macquarie by just 371 votes making it the most marginal seat in the country going into the 2022 poll.
The ALP also led the count in two important Labor-held marginal electorates - the southern NSW seat of Eden Monaro (held previously by the ALP by just 0.8 per cent) and the seat of Hunter in the Hunter Valley (previously held by ALP frontbencher Joel Fitzgibbon) which had been targeted by the Coalition.
NSW was viewed as a crucial electoral battleground with both major parties eyeing a path to victory through the nation’s most populous state.
While NSW is always important in federal elections because of its sheer size,this election it was even more so because of its high share of marginal Labor seats.
Labor went into the 2022 election holding 19 federal electorates with a margin of 5 per cent or less,and 10 of them were in NSW.