Nicolette Boele has been declared the provisional winner of Bradfield in Sydney’s north shore after a nail-biting count which saw her take a last-minute 40-vote lead over the Liberal candidate, Gisele Kapterian.
Counting continued on Monday as the final postal votes were processed in the former blue ribbon seat.
By Monday afternoon, Boele overtook Kapterian after a narrowing lead in recent days, and ABC’s chief elections analyst Antony Green declared Boele the provisional winner.
The Australian Electoral Commission had Boele on 50.02% to Kapterian at 49.98% – a difference of just 40 votes. It is expected the AEC will do a recount of the vote given the slim margin.
On Monday afternoon the commission’s site showed just a handful of postal ballots still need to be processed with preference distributions expected to take a few more days to finalise.
An AEC spokesperson said counting would begin on preference distributions from late Monday or early Tuesday.
The spokesperson added the counting could take most of the week with the final results expected to vary following the scrutineering process.
Scrutineers from each candidate’s team observe the tallying process to ensure preferences are distributed accurately and are able to challenge decisions made by AEC staff.
Bradfield had been called for the Liberals last Monday by the ABC and Sky News before an apparent late surge in votes counted fell in Boele’s favour.
The second-time challenger, Boele, was backed by Simon Holmes a Court’s Climate 200. A Court wrote on X on Monday afternoon it was still too early to “pop the champagne corks”.
“Hundreds of votes left to count, and then we can expect a recount,” a Court said.
Kapterian, a Salesforce executive and former Liberal staffer, was preselected to run for the Liberals in the seat in January after beating prominent no campaigner, Warren Mundine. The seat had previously been held shadow minister and moderate Liberal MP, Paul Fletcher, before he announced his retirement in late 2024.
The seat of Bradfield was established in 1949 and has only ever been held by Liberal MPs.
In Goldstein, Tim Wilson’s lead over Zoe Daniel remained at 206 votes on Monday.
The AEC’s site shows there are still 332 votes to be processed.
