Booths show trend

There was a clear voting trend across Monash polling booths on Saturday with swings against Liberal and Labor candidates seeing votes redirected to the strong presence of third party challengers.

Even in booths where sitting member Russell Broadbent recorded his strongest vote, it was still marred by swings against him that averaged eight per cent across the electorate.

The Liberal vote remained strong in the small booths of Nerren, Leongatha South and Welshpool where Mr Broadbent’s primary vote was as high as 60, 57 and 53 per cent respectively.

In Baw Baw Shire booths, Mr Broadbent’s strongest performance was in Drouin South (51.8 per cent), Labertouche (49 per cent) and Ellinbank (48.7 per cent).

At the Mt Eccles booth, the 7.8 per cent swing against Mr Broadbent was converted to a 6.4 per cent swing to the ALP’s Jessica O’Donnell.

As expected, Ms O’Donnell’s strongest vote was in the three Moe booths where she attracted between 31.7 and 32.7 per cent of the primary vote. However, these booths also were where she suffered above average primary vote hits of about eight per cent.

Ms O’Donnell also was strong in Grantville, Inverloch and Kilcunda where the primary vote was 29.9, 30.2 and 31 per cent respectively.

Independent Deb Leonard polled strongly at her local booths across Newhaven, Cowes, Rhyll and San Remo.

Ms Leonard’s strongest polling was in Newhaven where she polled 26 per cent of the primary vote and Ms O’Donnell recorded one of the more significant hits with a 16 per cent swing against the ALP.

In Cowes, she fell just short of matching the Liberal vote where she recorded 24.4 per cent of the primary vote - on a par with Mr Broadbent’s 24.6 per cent and Ms O’Donnell’s 22.6 per cent.

One Nation candidate Allan Hicken held status quo across the electorate, increasing the party’s primary vote just 0.28 per cent to 7.6 per cent. The strongest One Nation vote in the electorate was 16.4 per cent in Newborough East, almost 15 per cent in Willow Grove and Erica, 12.3 per cent at both Thorpdale and Narracan booths and 11.6 per cent in Longwarry.