7:22 – Labor candidate Zeli Munjiza is leading in Liverpool South, with 39.31%. The Liberals are way behind on 22.5%. This is looking pretty good for Labor. That is with nine booths reporting.
7:19 – By my count, 25 of the election day booths have reported in Newcastle, out of 48 booths. Gavin Morris is on 50.6%, which is a swing of 18.5% compared to Ross Kerridge in 2024.
The Labor vote is down 14.3%, the Liberals are down 5.5%, and the Greens are up 1.5%.
7:03 – Meanwhile we have one booth in for Liverpool South and it is Hoxton Park Anglican. Labor has the lead, whereas the Liberal Party easily won the primary vote for mayor there in 2024. I don’t have council booth figures so I’m comparing to the mayoral results.
7:00 – Thirteen booths have reported in Newcastle, and Gavin Morris is just over 50% of the primary vote. A very good start for him.
6:17 – I will be comparing the new election results for Newcastle with those from 2024. I was hoping to do the same for Liverpool but I have discovered that the booth-level ward results are missing from my dataset. Presumably this was to do with the election being run by a private provider. I thought I had solved that problem but apparently not.
6:00 – Polls have just closed for three council by-elections in New South Wales. I wouldn’t normally cover council by-elections, but two of them are quite large.
In the City of Newcastle, there is a by-election for the Lord Mayor. Ross Kerridge resigned recently due to the tolls of his cancer treatment. I have written a guide for this by-election here. Ross Kerridge was elected at the head of an independent team called Our Newcastle in September 2024, defeating the Labor incumbent by a 1.7% margin.
Kerridge has endorsed independent Gavin Morris. His main opposition is Labor councillor Declan Clausen. The Greens and Liberal candidates are also sitting councillors. The twelve councillors split 5 Labor, 3 Greens, 2 Liberals and 2 independents elected on Kerridge’s ticket. If Labor gains the mayoralty, they will be just one vote short of a majority.
In the South Ward of Liverpool council, there is a by-election to replace Betty Green, who was won of four Labor councillors elected to the council in 2024. The council is split down the middle at the moment. In 2024, Liberal councillor Ned Mannoun returned to the directly-elected mayoralty, along with four other Liberals, four Labor and two independents. Betty Green was elected deputy mayor in September 2025 with the support of the Liberal councillors, putting her out of step with her own party. She resigned from council some time later.
Part of the interesting story here is that Liverpool chose not to use countbacks following the 2024 election. If countbacks were used, this seat would have been filled by countback shortly before the deadline for the last use of countbacks for this council term. Instead the by-election has apparently cost $900,000, and has been quite bitter between the major parties.
At the 2024 election, the Liberal Party polled 40.2% in the ward, and the ALP polled 30.2%. The right-wing Our Local Community also polled 9.4%. So it’s likely that a status quo result would see the Liberal Party gain a sixth seat of eleven, giving them a majority on the council.
There will also be a by-election for the A Ward of Uralla Council. I have no plans to cover this contest.
