YESTERDAY morning with 82.72 per cent of the vote counted for the seat of Gippsland, the Nationals’ Darren Chester led on two candidate preferred with 67.25 per cent compared to Labor’s Antoinette Holm with 32.75 per cent.
This represented a swing of slightly less than one per cent against Mr Chester from the 2016 result.
He was also ahead on primary votes with 54.91 per cent, a swing of minus 0.93 per cent, ahead of Ms Holm on 23.12 per cent with a swing of 2.91 percent towards Labor.
David Snelling of the Shooters, Fishers and Farmers had 6.90 per cent of the primary vote, Deb Foskey of The Greens (Vic) was on 5.58 per cent, a swing away of 2.25 per cent, followed by Kerri Brewer of the United Australia Party (4.36), independent Sonia Buckley (3.05) and Neville Tickner of Fraser Anning’s Conservative National Party (2.09).
There were 4489, or 4.49 per cent, informal votes among the 91,470 votes counted. Voter turnout was 82.72 per cent of 110,581 eligible voters.
Most booths in Gippsland had returned first preference and two candidate preferred results by 8.30pm, with some as early as 6.40pm.
