Thanks for joining our live coverage. We will be bringing you live updates throughout the night. Keep refreshing this page for the latest information.
10.20PM: What can we expect from a hung parliament? Read all about what it means here.
10PM:
KING’S LANDING
Catherine King has told The Courier she has worked hard this campaign to keep the seat and has picked – no surprises here – health as the winning issue.
She also recognised the other candidates for their commitment to the seat.
It’s still unclear whether Ms King will be back in opposition or part of the effort to form another minority government.
She backed Labor leader Bill Shorten after he has brought on an estimated 3.1 per cent swing towards his party.
That’s all from us tonight, you can keep an eye on the national results below.
9.50PM: You can follow the national results live here.
9PM: Watch below as we cross live to King and Liberal candidate Sarah Wade. King has won again, for her sixth term in parliament. We’ll looking at what’s got her there and what might have happened to the Liberal Party.
8.50PM: We’ll be going live around 9PM to look at the result and hopefully talk to the candidates.
8.40PM: Hi Ballarat, hope your night is going well- whether you’re watching Don’s Party and Antony Green or glimpsing at us while the footy’s on TV.
Labor in Ballarat is looking strong – with almost half the votes counted King is projected to win with 56 per cent of the two-party-preferred vote. The Greens are going well too, with almost 12 per cent of the early vote.
The micros and Independent Bren Eckel are currently all on between 1-2 per cent, so will end up taking a fair few votes.
We’re still waiting on some bigger votes from Bacchus Marsh and Ballarat North and the mammoth number of pre-poll ballots.
UPDATE: The ABC has called Ballarat for Catherine King.
8PM: We’re away!
7.35PM: Here’s a quick video update from our office.
We will be going live at 8pm and crossing down to both parties. So stay tuned!
7.25PM: Were you confused by some of the obscure parties on the senate list today? You’ll love taking this quiz about parties that may, or may not, be real.
7.16PM: We’ve now had 15 of 56 polling places counted. Labor has received 42 per cent of first preferences and the Liberals are on just under 30 per cent. Nats are on around five per cent, although we are yet to see anything from the major Moorabool Shire polling centres where Paul Tatchell will surely pick up a few. Greens on a strong 11 per cent so far.
The AEC’s projected two-party-preferred is 55/45 to Labor, although it is still very early in the game.
These numbers are changing quickly so keep an eye on our inforgraphic above for the latest.
Our editor Eugene Duffy and I will be chatting about this and more on a live Facebook video at 7.30. Go to facebook.com/ballaratcourier/ then for the good oil.
6.40 We have our first results!
Yandoit, at the far north of the electorate, has 196 voters.
They backed Catherine King (37%). Sarah Wade took 26% and Alice Barnes 24%. Others in single figure percentages. Seven people donkey voted or stuffed up their ballots.
6.15PM: Lets’s have a look at the issues our major party candidates have campaigned on.
Catherine King (ALP)
- Health funding and Medicare. As Shadow Health MInister, Ms King has been the deputy prosecutor of Labor’s line that a re-elected Turnbull government will privatise Medicare, which has been continually refuted by the Libs.
- Funding for one major local project – $5 million for a Ballarat Sports and Events Centre in Wendouree.
- Restored Gonski funding
- National suicide prevention plan, with pilot programs in hot spots. Ms King said she would push for this to come to Ballarat
Sarah Wade (Lib)
- Small business tax cuts (outlined in the 2016/17 budget)
- Says a Turnbull government would help solve the CFA EBA crisis by changing the Fair Work Act. Neither Ms Wade nor party leaders have detailed how this would actually work.
- $192 milion for mental health and suicide prevention
6PM: Welcome to the blog, it’s Alex Hamer here.
Polls have closed and our good old AEC workers will have locked the doors so they can crack over those ballot boxes.
We’re a few hours away from a result in the seat of Ballarat, after a day in which thousands of snags were consumed, thousands of how-to-vote cards handed out (or ignored) and hundreds of kilometres covered by the candidates.
There were long waits at some Ballarat polling booths as the Australian Electoral Commission overestimated how many people would turn up. One voter was told by an official they thought most people in some areas would have voted early, so cut down on workers and ballot papers. More on that in Monday’s paper, to be sure.
Nationally, Malcolm Turnbull and Bill Shorten visited plenty of polling stations in a last-ditch effort to take or hold some marginal seats.
Polls have sentiment on a knife-edge but it’ll take a big swing to knock the Liberal-National coalition out of power.
While we wait for results to feed through, why not check out our profile series we did on the candidates in the lead-up to the election.
You can click on the link to take you to the stories.
