Juliana Addison, who returned a strong result in Wendouree with a four percent swing in her favour making it a very safe Labor seat, said Ballarat and the regions were a key part of Labor's path to victory.

"You need 45 seats. Regional Victoria plays such an important part in Labor's story, we cannot get to 45 without Ballarat without Bendigo without Geelong," she said.

With 72 per cent of the vote counted, Ms Addison has 49.81 per cent of first preference votes.

AS IT HAPPENED: Read how the night developed

"We have so many incredible strong regional voices in our caucus, we govern for the whole state and regional Victoria is an important part of that story."

Michaela Settle was able to navigate the new electoral boundaries and held her seat, connecting to voters in Ballarat East and Bacchus Marsh in the new seat of Eureka, although there was a five percent swing against her.

"For me standing is about making a difference," she said..

"People want to know that we are listening to them and we are there for them."

Ms Settle and Ms Addison were elected in 2018, their first time as members of parliament.

They hope Martha Haylett will be able to join their team of strong women standing up for Ballarat in Spring Street.

READ MORE: Labor wins third term in state election

Ms Haylett, who at close of count still had a three percent margin in her favour, said her whole evening has felt completely surreal as she watched the numbers come in.

"I think it reflected the hard work we put in," she said.

"Everyone wanted this ... people have been wanting this for so long and I am just so happy we are almost there."

While Ms Haylett remained optimistic about the results, and the Labor faithfulls at Trades Hall were certainly ready to welcome her as member for Ripon, she said she wanted to see how the rest of the numbers panned out.

"I am holding my breath, I don't want to get ahead of myself," she said.

"I know that four years ago, it was called by the ABC then and then obviously we lost by 15 votes. So we don't want to get ahead of ourselves."

After a number of high profile promises in the region while on the state election campaign, the Liberal candidates in Ballarat did not see the smaller margins they were hoping for.

"It is looking like we are not going to see the success that we'd love Without that, we won't see the delivery of those transformational projects, they weren't matched," Samantha McIntosh candidate for Wendouree said.

In Ballan, Paul Tatchel said he thought he might to do a bit better than what the results showed.

"I have to say, whoever the next person is that comes in, stick to what's important to the region you're in, be a representative and stop trying to be a politician," he said.

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