Australia’s longest-serving lord mayor, Clover Moore, is on track to secure a record sixth term in Sydney, as the Liberals face wipeout in several councils across NSW after a nomination blunder.
Votes are not being counted for the state’s 2024 local elections on Sunday but will resume on Monday.
At the close of counting on election night, Moore had an early lead, securing almost 37 per cent of the vote, followed by Labor on 17 per cent and the Greens on 13 per cent.
Despite what appeared to be a small swing against her, election and political analyst Ben Raue said the gap between Moore and the second-place candidate was likely too big to cross.
“Unless those numbers change a lot — right now at a quarter of the way through and probably not everyone votes — I think she’ll get re-elected,” the founder of the Tally Room election website told AAP.
Moore is among the 37 mayors up for election with the Ryde City Council voters, in Sydney’s northwest, likely appointing a Liberal as their first directly elected mayor.
In a dramatic election campaign, , accusations arose of election material tampering, and voters got to have their say in a highly publicised spat between a mayor and the state government.
Several councils face an unavoidable shift to the left after the Liberals’ headline-grabbing blunder in which 140-odd endorsed candidates were not nominated.
The absence of the Liberals will likely result in the Penrith, Camden, Northern Beaches, Lane Cove, Wollongong, and Blue Mountains councils shifting left, although the Liberals could win seats in Parramatta.
Voters across NSW headed to the polls on Saturday for their local government elections. Source: AAP / Bianca De Marchi
Labor has a clear majority in Penrith with the Libertarian Party picking up enough votes to secure up to two seats in the absence of the Liberals.
“If those numbers stay steady, Labor’s going to get a clear majority, but there’s going be just as many Libertarians on the council as Liberals,” Raue said.
Early counting in Parramatta indicated the Liberals could pick up at least five seats and Our Local Community had been wiped out, he said.
In Sydney’s fast-growing southwest, voters in the Liverpool council looked to have backed incumbent Liberal mayor Ned Mannoun following a well-publicised fight with the state Labor government.
Labor had attempted to address alleged serious maladministration and dysfunction in the council and defer elections, only to run out of time due to the mayor’s legal challenges.
Moore apologised on Saturday after independent candidate Yvonne Weldon alleged one of the mayor’s volunteers had taken her corflutes away and replaced them with the 78-year-old’s signage.
Almost a third of eligible voters had cast their votes ahead of time as more than five million people made their choice across 128 councils.
