NSW By-Elections 2024 Live

Pittwater (Lib vs IND 0.7%), Epping (Lib 4.8%), Hornsby (Lib 8.0%) - ALP not contesting any seats

Pittwater expected IND gain, Epping and Hornsby LIB retain.  

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Updates will appear here from 6 pm, scrolling to the top.

8:08 Very distracted by ACT but a very large prepoll has come in and there is nothing dangerous there for Scruby.  Scruby's lead is too large.  

7:37 The pattern in the booth voting is quite set in Pittwater and something very radical has to happen in prepolls or it's all over and Scruby has won.  

7:11 Several more booths as well as postals in in Pittwater and things are not getting any better now for the Liberals after that aberrant third booth.  

6:57 Uneven swing between booths in Pittwater, the third one in actually swung to Ryburn on projected 2CP.   

6:51 Whopping swings to Scruby in Pittwater in the early booths, coming out at around 10% 2CP!  If this continues it will be over pretty fast.  Nothing scary for Liberals to see in the other seats, the Greens a distant second in both of them.  

6 pm: This thing is on, there's even a results page.  No action expected for at least half an hour.  

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Intro (9:20 am)

Tonight as the ACT election count will be so fast I am going to try to do double duty and to also keep an eye on the NSW by-elections for Epping, Pittwater and Hornsby, at least until the results of all are beyond reasonable doubt.  The coverage could be brief in nature on the night and then if any of the seats are still alive I expect to follow the post-count in the usual level of nature.  Of these only Pittwater is expected to be competitive, between teal independent Jacqui Scruby (who nearly won in 2023) and the Liberals' Georgia Ryburn.  The previous Liberal winner resigned after being charged with child sex offences.  

Scruby stands to possibly benefit here from the absence of Labor, Greens and Sustainable Australia, 35% of whose votes (a total of 6.8% of the formal vote) exhausted in 2023 under optional preferential voting.  (By the way I am becoming more and more opposed to fully-fledged OPV and have an article challenging the commonest arguments for it in preparation).  Scruby lost by 606 votes with 3387 from the left exhausting.  The theory is that since these people who wasted their preferences will have to vote this time many of them will vote for Scruby - on the other hand a fair share of them may just not vote at all as by-elections tend to have lower turnouts, and some may vote informal.  Also, because this is a by-election in an Opposition seat the voters may be gentler on the Liberals, especially with a female Liberal candidate.  Pittwater is entirely within Sophie Scamps' seat of Mackellar and the result is likely to be taken as a big litmus test for the strength of the teal independent brand heading into the 2025 federal election (with the Liberals possibly being able to blame the Libertarians for spoiling if they lose narrowly).  

Pittwater has previously fallen from Liberal to independent while Labor was in office; this happened in 2005 and by some margin too.  That said that result was for John Brogden's vacancy after he resigned as leader and from parliament, and also that was while the Coalition was governing federally.  So it's not a strong precedent for today.  

The 2023 NSW elections saw very large differences between on the day voting and pre-day voting (especially postals) and Pittwater was no exception.  This is something to keep an eye on if Scruby has a solid but not massive lead in day booth voting.  

In the absence of a Labor candidate and given that OPV makes things especially hard for parties coming off a low primary vote to win, Epping and Hornsby are not expected to be at all competitive and I expect I'll only be following those to the extent of making sure that's the case.  Labor could have had a shot at Epping given that it was somewhat marginal and a vacancy for a Premier, but victory would have been unlikely even given that and the party seems to have decided it's better to save resources and avoid potential embarrassment.