Vote counting pauses in NT as five seats including Lambley’s Araluen remain incredibly doubtful

CANDIDATES in the five electorates still too close to call will have to wait with bated breath for at least another day as vote counting pauses

CANDIDATES in the five electorates still too close to call will have to wait with bated breath for at least another day as vote counting pauses in the Northern Territory.

The NT Electoral Commission added a few more votes in Araluen, Barkly and Namatjira on Wednesday but will not be counting at all on Thursday as it collates more postal votes and absentee votes for further counting on Friday.

MORE ELECTION NEWS

Vote recording stuff up hits Mulka, NT’s most marginal seat, as NTEC orders recheck of count

Long-term Blain MLA Terry Mills last NT politician to receive parliamentary pension

Gunner and Labor returned as size of majority remains unknown as six seats remain too close to call

It’s expected that the 1551 uncounted postals the NTEC has on hand, the 4815 postal votes still outstanding that need to arrive by next Friday and the 2127 declaration votes that still need to be validated, could swing the results in a number of seats.

The vote count begins in the 2020 Northern Territory Election. Picture: Che Chorley

This includes Araluen, where Territory Alliance’s Robyn Lambley is holding on by a projected two-party preferred margin of just 17 votes.

But only 65 per cent of all postal votes were returned in 2016 and as of Wednesday 52 per cent had been returned.

“When counting resumes in Darwin and Alice Springs (on Friday), votes being counted will include absentee votes, including COVID-19 quarantine centre votes, and returned postal votes that have arrived this week,” an NTEC spokesman said.

In the notionally CLP seat of Namatjira, CLP’s Bill Yan pulled ahead by a mere six votes against NT Labor’s Sheralee Taylor late on Wednesday.

Mr Yan, who on Sunday optimistically hoped for a result on Monday, said “it’s been a crazy few days” and it would be “a little while” before there is an outcome for Namatjira.

In Barkly the margin between Labor’s Sid Vashist and CLP’s Steven Edgington narrowed to just 23 votes.

The NTEC automatically does a recount on all seats where margins are under 100 votes, which is almost certain to happen in seats like Namatjira and Araluen.

Counting was marred on Wednesday by a couple of vote recording stuff ups in Mulka, though independent Yingiya Guyula, according to psephologists, is still expected to win.

There are still 353 declaration votes, or votes where people enrol on polling day itself, to be validated and then counted in Mulka, the highest proportion in any seat.

NT Labor frontbencher Dale Wakefield, who conceded defeat on Wednesday morning, caught up to CLP’s Joshua Burgoyne but with his lead still standing by 115 votes, ABC’s Antony Green does not believe Ms Wakefield can catch up.

Mr Green’s number crunching in 20 electorates that finished as two-party preferred contests revealed the swing against Labor this election was 2.1 per cent.

LIMITED TIME: New NT News subscription offer: $1 a week for the first 12 weeks

“For all the talk of recovery for the Country Liberals, its first preference vote is 31.3 per cent, down 0.4 percentage points since 2016,” he said.

“The CLP did not contest Mulka, and in the 24 electorates the party contested, it polled 32.6 per cent, up 0.1 percentage points on the same 24 electorates in 2016.”