Election: The results so far ...
Disclaimer: I am no psephologist. I am very open to being corrected by those more expert than me :-)
Summary
Elections NSW have 124 council elections to count. At the moment only first preference votes have been counted - and not all of them at that. Final results will not be declared until a couple of days before Christmas.
However, some results either seem clear or have at least been claimed by the participants on the basis of results so far:
* Sitting councillor
There are no counts yet for a number of polling places, for pre-poll votes in some contests and locations, for declaration votes or for iVote and there will be more postal votes than have been counted so far.
Elections NSW have a published counting schedule that shows counting for The Hills scheduled for 20th and 22nd December - it is unclear to me whether we will have significantly greater clarity on the results before then.
Comparison to 2017 Results
These tables compare the percentages by party of final first-preference votes in 2017 with the current percentages for the incomplete counts for 2021.
* Informal percentages shown are of the total formal and informal votes, while the other percentages are of the formal votes only.
A variety of factors changed between the elections. For example the Building Australia Party fielded candidates in all contests in 2017 (included in others below) but none in 2021. Labor did not field candidates in North Ward this year, while Greens fielded candidates in all contests for the first time.
The figures from this election are incomplete, so it might be too early to draw too many conclusions. But here are a few observations to be going on with:
The Liberal vote for Mayor is down dramatically from 2017. Liberal votes in East and West ward are also down significantly, while Central and North wards showed small increases. The small increase in North ward is possibly connected with Labor not fielding a candidate there this year.
Labor have had a very good result with their vote up significantly except in West ward. But in that ward and in several other contests the Greens fielded candidates this year where they did not in 2017 and that very likely affected the Labor first-preference vote.
Greens fielded candidates in all contests this year and have had an outstanding result overall. In North ward, where Labor did not run, the Greens candidate, Mila Kasby, seems quite likely at this stage to be elected.
But perhaps the biggest single observation is the size of the informal vote in all but the Mayoral contests. There are many possible factors - disenchantment, the complexity of the councillor ballot papers, etc - we will leave further consideration of this for another time or place. But the magnitude of the informal vote is certainly cause for concern.
So what will the new council look like?
The existing council was heavily dominated by the Liberal party, with only two Labor councillors to keep them honest.
The most likely result at this stage seems to be:
Mayor: Liberal
Councillors: 8 Liberal, 3 Labor, 1 Greens
Of the nine Liberals, only three remain from the NSW Liberals purge. The two sitting Labor councillors seem likely to be re-elected, joined by one new Labor and, hopefully, one new Greens councillor.
And what does this mean for climate action locally?
If that picture ultimately holds true, representatives unabashedly for climate action will be doubled from two to four. That is great news!
Of the nine Liberals, six are new to council. Although the party (we assume) decided that they should not participate in our candidate survey, we should reserve judgement for now on where they stand on climate action.
The prospects for climate action in The Hills are most certainly improved with this outcome. We will have to wait to see whether real change can be realised through our new council.
More information
Elections NSW: The Hills Shire Virtual Tally Room
Elections NSW: The Hills Shire 2017 election results
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