Despite the Liberals losing the 2022 Federal Election, Member for Farrer Sussan Ley continued her dominance in the area to retain her seat which is the second largest electorate in New South Wales.
Photo courtesy Narrandera Argus.
The number of Farrer’s eligible voters totalled 119,364 and the majority chose to keep Farrer a safe Coalition seat.
There was almost a 80 percent turnout across the 87 polling booths for the seat.
At the time of going to print, 86 of 87 polling places returned and 98.89% of the ballot papers had been counted.
The eight candidates contesting the seat of Farrer included the current Member for Farrer Sussan Ley (Liberal), Darren Cameron (Labor), Eli Davern (Greens), Amanda Duncan-Strelec (Independent), Julie Ramos (United Australia Party), Richard Francis (One Nation) Paul Britton (Shooters, Fishers, Farmers Party) and Ian Roworth (Liberal Democrats).
Ms Ley’s popularity remained stable when locals chose her to represent them after the votes were tallied on Saturday.
Her first preference votes numbered 46,966 (53.4 percent) while Labor candidate Darren Cameron received 16,683 first preference votes (19 percent).
Ian Roworth (Liberal Democrats) received the least amount of first preference votes with a total of 1358 (1.5 percent).
In the two candidate preferred vote count, Ms Ley attracted 58,492 votes – almost 30,000 more than her nearest rival, Mr Cameron, who received 28,542 votes.
Adjusted to a percentage rate, Ms Ley recorded 67.21 percent of the vote while Mr Cameron collected 32.79 percent.
Ms Ley experienced a slight swing of -2.62 percent against her from the previous federal election.
She attracted 49,316 votes in the previous federal election in 2019 – again, about 30,000 more votes than her nearest rival at that time, Independent Kevin Mack.
On Saturday Ms Ley was re-elected for the seventh time since she first won the seat 21 years ago with a margin of just 0.1 percent.
She attracted votes throughout the electorate including some of the smaller polling booths to enable Farrer to remain a Coalition stronghold.
In Barellan, Ms Ley received almost 70 percent of the votes with 168 of the 275 votes cast.
In Narrandera’s three polling booths Ms Ley received 1486 of the 3138 votes cast.
Since Farrer was created in 1949 it has been held by the Liberals except when the late Tim Fischer from the Nationals won in 1984.
This article appeared in the Narrandera Argus, 26 May 2022.
