Tuesday, December 2, 2014

Victorian election 2014: Incumbents in Melbourne, Shepparton concede defeat ... - ABC Online


Updated December 02, 2014 18:55:33


Ellen Sandell and Suzanna Sheed have been confirmed as the winners in the seats of Melbourne and Shepparton after their opponents conceded defeat in the Victorian election.


Labor is on track to win 48 seats in the 88-seat Parliament, while the Coalition is predicted to win 39 seats.


Ms Sandell will become the first Greens representative in Victoria's lower house.


She was always confident of winning, even when her lead narrowed to just 300 votes.


"We always knew with early voting doing so well, our lead just got stronger and stronger, so I was excited and pretty confident," she said.


The Nationals had held the seat of Shepparton for 47 years but the Nationals candidate Greg Barr today conceded defeat after a swing of almost 30 per cent to independent Suzanna Sheed.


Ms Sheed said it was a fantastic result.


"It's such a big thing to have done what we did in such a short time," she said.


"We wanted to win and we thought if we made it marginal we'd have done a great job. I think Shepparton stood up and they've been heard and I will do my very best to serve the community."


Mr Barr said he just did not have enough preferences to get across the line.


"Even though I won more of the primary, I didn't get enough of the preferences," he said.


Mr Barr said the party would sit down in a few weeks and assess what went wrong in the campaign. He was unsure about whether or not he had a future in politics.


"It's a bit too raw at the moment," he said. "It might be time to take a bit of breath and take a little family time and then assess the options."


The count continues in a number of other seats that are still too close to call.


The Liberal-held seat of Bentleigh is in doubt, with the ALP ahead, while ALP candidate is also out in front in Frankston.


In Prahran, Labor candidate Neil Pharaoh is ahead of the Liberal incumbent, Clem Newton-Brown, by just 14 votes.


The Liberal candidate is ahead in Ripon and the Nationals are struggling to hold onto the seat of Morwell.


Topics: elections, state-parliament, greens, shepparton-3630, melbourne-3000


First posted December 02, 2014 18:12:26



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