Robyn Lambley tipped by experts to keep Araluen

POLITICAL pundits have tipped Territory Alliance to narrowly retain the seat of Araluen

POLITICAL pundits have tipped Territory Alliance to narrowly retain the seat of Araluen in Alice Springs, with postal votes yet to be counted.

Territory Alliance incumbent Robyn Lambley holds 2138 votes and is slightly ahead of CLP candidate and former Alice Springs mayor Damien Ryan, who has 2125 votes.

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Election analyst Kevin Bonham wrote on his blog yesterday: “Robyn Lambley now leads in Araluen and, as postals continue to go slightly in her favour, I believe she has retained. I have upgraded this seat to an expected TAP win,” Dr Bonham said.

Alice Springs-based Charles Darwin University professor Rolf Gerritsen said there were two contrary trends with postal votes.

“Usually postal votes go towards conservatives,” Prof Gerritsen said.

“But the other trend, which is a bit more evident in the Territory than it is elsewhere, is that postal votes go to the incumbent member who organises them. Incumbent members do better with postal votes because it’s usually their office who organises them.

“If Robyn has a majority of the postal votes already counted, or even if she gets 50 per cent of the postal votes counted, then she will win the seat narrowly.”

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Mr Ryan and Ms Lambley on Thursday did not want to speculate on the outcome of the hotly contested seat.

Namatjira has also been a tight race between the CLP’s Bill Yan and Labor’s Sheralee Taylor.

Mr Yan currently leads the two-candidate preferred votes with 1751, while Ms Taylor is narrowly behind on 1745.