Polls have closed in the Western Australia state election with the Labor Premier Mark McGowan expected to be returned with a resounding and increased majority.
The Premier told reporters on Saturday he wasn’t “getting ahead of himself” and would await the outcome after the polls closed at 6pm in the evening local time.
“I don’t take anything for granted, obviously we have to see how people vote. Our polls are notoriously inaccurate so we will see what happens tonight,” he said.
Mark McGowan’s seat of Rockingham has 87 per cent of votes in his favour with 901 votes counted as of 10pm AEDT.
More than 750,000 people voted prior to polling day.
With Labor expected to comfortably win a second term, the focus will be on how many seats the already-depleted Liberals manage to save.
Mr McGowan said Western Australians should continue to back his government as it had made the “tough decisions” during the coronavirus pandemic which had saved lives and protected the economy.
“We want to make sure Western Australia continues to be the strong exciting welcoming prosperous state that it is and we want to continue on that pathway,” Mr McGowan said.
A Newspoll published in The Weekend Australian newspaper has Labor leading the Liberals 66 to 34 per cent on a two-party preferred basis.
It would reduce the Liberals to as few as three seats if that result was replicated at the ballot box.
Opposition Leader Zak Kirkup is at risk of becoming the first WA Liberal leader to lose his seat since the 1930s.
The 34-year-old holds the seat of Dawesville by a margin of just 0.8 per cent and has vowed to quit politics if he is voted out.
Such a result would likely spell disaster for other Liberal MPs vying to save their seats.
It would also suggest Mr Kirkup’s decision to concede defeat a fortnight before polling day, and to warn against giving Labor “total control” was a tactical failure.
Mr Kirkup defended the strategy, saying he was simply levelling with voters.
“This is the most important election of our lifetime,” he said as he cast his vote at at Falcon Primary School.
“The risk of a Labor party landslide is a real one. We know that Labor – if they get too much power, if they get too much control – will go too far and make mistakes.”
