Andrew Constance has been given a clear mandate from the Bega Valley with all but three small polling booths, Tanja, Towamba and Wallaga Lake Koori Village, giving him the majority of votes. At the time of going to press voting at Bega High had not been released.
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The biggest percentage could be seen at the Tura Beach polling centre where out of a total of 1157 formal votes Mr Constance received 716. He received a little over 50 per cent of the formal vote at Merimbula and Eden and a little under 50 per cent at Pambula.
Leanne Atkinson did well in Tathra where she had 394 votes compared with Mr Constance's 482, out of a total of 1155 formal votes.
The Greens polled well in Bermagui taking 233 (16.5 per cent of the formal vote) and in Brogo 22 per cent of the formal vote. Tanja had a 44 per cent vote to The Greens while Tathra had a 15 per cent vote and Merimbula a 10 per cent Greens vote.
The Greens were slightly down on the last election taking 9.50 per cent of the vote this time as opposed to 10.11 per cent in 2015.
According to first preference figures on Monday, Mr Constance took 49.39 per cent of the formal vote while Ms Atkinson took 30.64 per cent. At the last election Mr Constance had 53.4 per cent of the formal vote and Ms Atkinson had 32.83 per cent.
Both candidates appeared to suffer at the hands of the Shooters, Fishers and Farmers Party whose candidate Eric Thomas took 6.32 per cent of the formal vote. Mr Thomas took 13.1 per cent of the formal vote in Brogo, 12 per cent in Eden, 12.1 per cent in Wolumla. 9.4 per cent in Bermagui and 8.6 per cent in Pambula.
Volunteers at Tura Beach said that the booth had been fairly quiet and put it down to the high numbers of pre-poll votes. This election has seen 19,373 pre-poll votes taken for the electorate compared with 11,327 in 2015.
At the Merimbula pre-polling booth alone there were 3771 formal votes registered, a more than threefold increase on 2015. Overall more than 40 per cent of the electorate voted before election day.
The pre-polls were open for two weeks prior to the election and therefore politicians could only hope to influence a proportion of the voting public in the final days of the campaign.
Mr Constance said that the two week time scale for pre-polling was too long and put an enormous strain on volunteers who had to run the pre-poll booths.