Federal Election 2019: Julie Owens in box seat for Parramatta win

Labor’s Julie Owens is set to retain the seat of Parramatta, despite a swing of more than twice the national average to her Liberal opponent.

Labor candidate Julie Owens with some of her supporters at Rosehill Bowling Club as she emerged as the likely winner of the seat of Parramatta last night.

Labor stalwart Julie Owens is in the box seat to retain the seat of Parramatta, despite a swing of more than twice the national average to her Liberal opponent, Charles Camenzuli.

With 71.9 per cent of the ballots counted, Ms Owens, who first won the seat in 2004, had secured 53.7 per cent of the two-party preferred vote to Mr Camenzuli’s 46.3 per cent.

Mr Camenzuli has achieved a 4 per cent swing to the Liberals, but it’s short of the 7.7 per cent margin which Ms Owens was sitting on.

Liberal candidate Charles Camenzuli has eaten into the margin of long-time Labor MP Julie Owens, but he’s likely to fall short of causing an upset.

“There are prepolls and postal votes still coming in so I’m always cautious in times like this,” Ms Owens said last night.

“I’d rather be (in my position) than the other side’s, but let’s give it a few more days for the count to come through.”

She said that federally, she was surprised the pollsters and bookmakers “both got it so terribly wrong” as Labor lost what appeared to be an unlosable election.

“The word was that some bookmakers were already paying out (on Friday) on a Labor win,” Ms Owens said.

Julie Owens at Parramatta prepoll during the week.

“I went into this campaign hoping we would win, but also thinking it would be 50-50.

“There’ll be a lot of analysis of what we did right and what we might have done wrong, and what else was going on in the community that perhaps shouldn’t have … through the capacity of social media to turn our policies into something they are not.”

Mr Camenzuli said he was “not giving up” on the possibility of winning the seat, but conceded it was “unlikely”.

“I only had five weeks to run a campaign (after preselection was delayed till early last month) so we were up against it, yet I had a swing to me of more than double the 1.5 per cent national average to the Liberal Party,” he said.

“It’s unlikely that I’ll win, but we’ll see.”