I did my small bit for Maxine in the last week, letterboxing in Ermington and Epping.

It was funny latter that day, because one of the couples we met at a kids birthday party had been at your booth to vote, and the rodent and minders rolled up. Howard grabbed anyone’s hand (drowning man??), took the wife’s (they’ve never voted for him!), and the hubby’s next, who quickly shot off “enjoy your retirement”! The minders hissed at him, as one could have expected!

AEC site shows, as at: 28/11/2007 7:45:59 PM:

16,732 envelopes issued
3,278 envelopes recieved

And a total of 3,938 counted from Pre-poll and Absent.

Also, McKew’s swing is slightly down to 5.76%, (it was 5.9% yesterday, or thereabouts).

So there appears to be 12,794 possible votes to count, 5,062 are postal, but only 163 have yet been recieved (according to the website!)

5,387 Pre-poll, of which 2,889 have been counted.

http://www.smh.com.au/news/federal-election-2007/mckew-claims-pms-seat/2007/11/26/1196036777768.html

He was not mobbed, in fact few people noticed him and fewer went over and shook his hand. If I had had a camera, I could have got plenty of shots of him standing on his own in the midst of the hubbub.

The best one might have been when he was having a sausage sandwich. I would have captioned it:

Bennelong voters decide that Howard has to eat his lunch all by himself.

People were polite and acted with respect for the office, but there was no mobbing.

Later I scrutineered for Maxine in a booth that has solidly returned Howard for years. Result: Maxine won on primaries.

The party afterwards was triumphant. Now for the hard work of restoring social justice.

Had a walk around Epping and vistited 2 polling places near the station. A lot of people carrying (only) the Liberal how-to-vote cards. Maxine’s gonna need every one of those Green preferences.

There’s many reasons to think Maxine will win, but of course being a long-standing prime minister will mitigate these.

It’s going to be cloudy in Sydney, with a few showers. While the link is by no means certain, there is evidence to suggest that weather affects voting — e.g. http://www.mja.com.au/public/issues/181_11_061204/ald10721_fm.html

It certainly affects mood for many people, kind of important when someone has to get themselves to a booth to stand is a queue for the wonderful reward of … ticking some boxed and inserting them in a box.

So many Chinese voters there now! — I really struggle to see why they wouldn’t prefer a guy who is fluent in Mandarin. I mean, really, this is kind of a plus.

So right now, I think it’s looking rather promising for Maxine, enough so to place a reasonable bet. Maybe that will turn out to be a silly thing to do, we’ll see. Whatever the case, I very much doubt it’s going to be a pleasant day for Howard tomorrow … what a dreadful pity.