The Maitland Mayoral election could not be closer. Current Mayor Baker had been ahead by just 366 votes when counting finished on Saturday night. As counting continued today, Penfold now leads by 233 votes in the first preference votes.
So far 39,990 formal votes have been counted with an additional 1,661 informal votes. This leaves around 22,00 votes to be counted.
However the Ivote count has been swamped this year, as the majority of voters voted online this election.
Once all first preference votes are counted, then the preference votes will be counted. When this happens, the vote count landscape will look totally different. Preferences most likely will favor Labor’s candidate Lorreta Baker.
In the last election, Baker received around 5,000 additional votes in preferences whilst Penfold only received around 3,000 preference votes. If preferences were to be around the same as the last election, Penfold would need to lead by around 2,500 votes to win.
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