October 16 2017

The voters in the seat of Murray spoke loudly on Saturday after the Nationals lost almost almost 20% of their voters to the Shooters, Fishers and Farmers Party (SFF).

As of 11:07am this morning, a total of 43,286 votes have been counted with 16,857 votes to the Nationals Austin Evans and 13,317 to the SFF’s Helen Dalton.

On the two candidate preferred count it is 53.1% to Austin Evans and 46.8% for Helen Dalton.

Michael Kidd from the Country Labor Party currently has a total of 8,630 votes which shows the main opposition in NSW still has a lot of work to do to secure rural seats if they want to overtake the Coalition in 2019.

The Greens are heading for last place with Deniliquin resident Pete Robinson staying 127 votes ahead in fifth whilst Brian Mills is sitting in fourth position but his vote count is down .8% on the previous election.

The Nationals have so far lost of those who voted for them in the last election and when factoring in preferences the total balloons out to 19.5%, a total that usually is fatal in most seats but not in the case of the seat of Murray.

Helen Dalton was the most popular candidate in Deniliquin after topping polling at Deniliquin North, Deniliquin High and the Deniliquin Dental Clinic, this is significant due to the Nationals traditionally being a Deniliquin favourite.

Whilst the Nationals were kicked around on Election Day, some experts believe that things are getting better for the Party and the local area may be the big winners as the Government now knows it must do more to keep the people of Murray interested in keeping them around.