Jennifer Yang and Gladys Liu in tight fight for Chisholm

The fight for the eastern suburbs seat of Chisholm continues with less than 400 votes separating the major party’s candidates, but the Liberals have now taken a marginal lead. READ UPDATES

It is still too close to call victory in the seat of Chisholm.

UPDATE: Almost 48 hours since voting wrapped up the marginal seat of Chisholm remains too close to call, but Liberal candidate Gladys Liu has now taken the marginal lead.

Liu was ahead of Labor candidate Jennifer Yang by 339 votes when the Australian Electoral Commission updated the tally at 2.07pm.

At the time 75 per cent of votes in the seat had been counted.

The hope for the Liberals came as the Coalition was on the verge of claiming majority government, sitting on 75 seats.

More to come.

EARLIER:

As many pundits expected, the fight for Chisholm is going to go down to the wire.

The results could even come down to a vote recount, with the margin between the Liberal and Labor candidates too close to call by Sunday evening.

Labor’s Jennifer Yang was in front of Liberal’s Gladys Liu by less than 140 votes with 72 per cent of the electorate’s votes counted.

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Understandably, neither candidate was willing to claim victory or speculate on the result.

Ms Yang told Whitehorse Leader: “It’s too close to call here in Chisholm, but we are very optimistic about our chances”.

Chisholm Liberal candidate Gladys Liu and Labor candidate Jennifer Yang delivered speeches and answer questions from Chinese voters at a function in Glen Waverley.

She declined to comment further on the situation in the electorate, but said she was “obviously disappointed” by the Coalition’s victory.

“Bill Shorten and his staff have contributed a great deal to our movement and for that I am grateful,” she said.

Gladys Liu did not respond to Whitehorse Leader’s request for comment.

Chisholm was always going to be hard to predict, with its former Liberal representative Julia Banks not contesting the seat, instead choosing to abandon the Liberal party to run as an independent in the seat of Flinders.

Her controversial move to the crossbench came after she was the only Liberal MP to take a seat from Labor in the 2016 election.

And it left two rookies to vie for the marginal seat following Chisholm’s 2.9 per cent swing to the Liberals.

Liberal Party candidate Gladys Liu speaking to pre-poll voters.

In their fight, the Chinese-Australians went on to mark what is believed to be a first Australian politics, conducting a public debate and answering questions in Mandarin.

Unsurprisingly, Greens candidate Luke Arthur has ranked third in the tally of Chisholm’s nine candidates.

As of Sunday evening he had claimed 8602 votes — 11.77 per cent of those counted.

Mr Arthur told Whitehorse Leader he was proud of the outcome.

“I was really happy with how the Greens went in Chisholm,” he said.

Considering the number of votes at the time, Mr Arthur said it was looking like the Greens had achieved “record numbers” in Chisholm.

The Australian Electoral Commission reported a swing of 0.23 per cent to the party.

Mr Arthur said the party had led a “good campaign” and had done its best with limited resources, offering a “great display of teamwork”.

“We really put our heads down,” he said.

More to come.