Libs see large percentage vote swing against them at all local voting booths – Bilpin leads the way

There are many things the Hawkesbury is known for – near the top of the list must be our dreadful roads and solid Liberal vote, but like the pock-marked roads the blue vote crumbled on Saturday, with all our local voting booths seeing an often significant percentage swing away from Liberal Sarah Richards.

What’s remarkable about this result – Labor’s Susan Templeman has been re-elected MP – is that not one Hawkesbury voting booth saw a swing to the Liberal candidate on a two-party preferred basis.

Overall, the averaged swing against the Liberals across the Hawkesbury booths was 13.83%.

The national average swing against the Liberals was 4.34% and in adjoining seat Lindsay, the Liberals’ Melissa McIntosh actually saw a swing to her of 0.7%, so that does raise questions about what happened in the Hawkesbury.

Labor saw an averaged swing to them across the Hawkesbury booths of 5.97%.

When it comes to individual booths, Bilpin led the swing against the Liberals with a whopping 22.36% compared with the 2019 election, while Labor’s victorious Susan Templeman saw a Bilpin swing to her of 19.47%, again compared with the 2019 vote.

In Bligh Park – where Ms Richards promised up to $750,000 for a new BMX pump track which would have made it one of the country’s most expensive (two are being promised on the South Coast by the Liberal there at $150,000 a piece) – there was an 11.91% swing against her, while Labor also saw a vote drop, but only by 0.12%.

Bligh Park East saw a swing against the Liberals of 11.11%, while Labor had a positive swing of 4.19%.

The Grose Wold booth which typically includes wealthy landowners and battlers up the hill at Bowen Mountain, recorded a 15.37% swing against the Liberals, while Labor had a positive swing of 12.35% in that booth, where Labor’s Susan Templeman picked up 317 ordinary votes against Ms Richards’s 294.

Other notables are St Albans, which is a very small booth, but where the Libs dropped 17.05% and Ms Templeman had a swing of 12.14%, and at the other end of the scale the big booth of Richmond Macquarie which saw Richards get 4023 votes against Templeman’s 3332, but Ms Richards saw a hefty swing against her of 11.9%.

Kurrajong saw a swing against the Liberals of 16.39% with Labor seeing a swing to them of 6.95%.

Other booth numbers on first preference votes:

Cattai – 15.14% swing against Libs, 5.39% swing to Lab

Colo Heights – 8.18% swing against Libs, 4.82% swing to Lab

Ebenezer – 9.62% swing against Libs, 4.65% swing to Lab

Freemans Reach – 13.52% swing against Libs, 6.8% swing to Lab

Glossodia – 12.82% swing against Libs, 5.26% swing to Lab

Kurmond – 17.07% swing against Libs, 4.56% swing to Lab

Hobartville – 13.17% swing against Libs, 5.47% swing to Lab

Kurrajong East – 11.38% swing against the Libs, 0.48% swing to Lab

Kurrajong North – 16.14% swing against Libs, 10.88% swing to Lab

Maraylya – 9.92% swing against Libs, 4.78% swing to Lab

McGraths Hill – 16.2% swing against Libs, 7.89% swing to Lab

North Richmond – 15.39% swing against Libs, 8.18% swing to Lab

Oakville – 18.28% swing against Libs, 8.19% swing to Lab

Pitt Town – 13.6% swing against Libs, 6.36 swing to Lab

Richmond – 14.04% swing against Libs, 4.26% swing to Lab

Vineyard East – 19.72% swing against Libs, 1.82% swing against Lab

Wilberforce – 9.39% swing against Libs, 1.87% swing to Lab

Windsor – 14.34% swing against Libs, 5.95% swing to Lab

Windsor PPVC – 8.33% swing against Libs, 5.35% swing to Lab

Windsor South – 7.32% swing against Libs, 0.8% swing to Lab

Yarramundi – 17.43% swing against Libs, 5.57% swing to Lab

Out of interest, we’ve also taken a look at all booths west of the river and worked out the average swing there, again a swing against Ms Richards, this time of 14.25%, while Labor saw an average swing there to them of 6.99% on first preference votes.

Who will be the next Liberal candidate for Macquarie?

Will Sarah Richards be picked to run again for the Liberals? Never say never, but it seems unlikely.

She has lost twice to Susan Templeman now, in 2019 and 2022, and while it was close in 2019 – Richards was only 371 votes short – this time there is a much larger margin in the thousands, making the task to reclaim the seat for the Liberals an uphill struggle.

On Monday morning, Ms Templeman was on a preference count number of 49,327 against Ms Richards’s 36,199, so a 13,128 difference, with a 7.48% swing to Labor.

The Liberal candidate also ran for the seat of Reid in 2004 and lost, and tried unsuccessfully to be pre-selected for the ultra-safe Hawkesbury state seat, which Liberal Robyn Preston snared.

Ms Richards was a captain’s pick for the Macquarie seat after the State Executive of the Liberal Party used its “special powers” and overrode the local Liberal party members. It meant Ms Richards was not subjected to an endorsement meeting of local Liberal Party members, even though that is enshrined in their constitution.

The choice of Ms Richards without any call for other Liberal hopefuls, or for local party endorsement, caused some annoyance amongst local party members – many of whom we have spoken to. It’s hard to see that happening again if the Liberals hope to rebuild.

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