Regional south coast seat Bega is shaping as the one to watch in today's NSW by-elections, with both major party candidates and Labor leader Chris Minns making last-ditch pitches to voters at quiet polling booths.
The seat is one of four up for grabs today following the resignation of high profile former Liberal MP Andrew Constance.
Voters in neighbouring Monaro and the two Sydney seats of Willoughby and Strathfield are also casting their ballot today to fill vacancies left respectively by the former deputy premier, premier and opposition leader.
Premier Dominic Perrottet stayed away today, instead leaving Mr Constance to support Liberal candidate Fiona Kotvojs on the ground.
The former member, who has been preselected to contest the seat of Gilmore in this year's federal election, congratulated the Liberal and Labor candidates for running a "good positive campaign".
He said local issues, including fallout from the Black Summer bushfires, were at the front of voters' minds.
"The big thing is that people are exhausted, they're tired, they're sick of politics-as-usual and, you know, they're looking for something different," Mr Constance said.
"Those issues (plus) housing, naturally. Over 1,000 homes lost in bushfires.
"It's hard to rebuild and provide supply very quickly, so that's been a challenge."
Mr Perrottet made two visits to the electorate during the campaign, leaving it to other ministers to make announcements such as making the Eurobodalla hospital an emergency operations centre.
The hospital was something Labor candidate and local doctor Michael Holland had called for, but Labor has promised an additional $10 million for the emergency centre.
Analysts are predicting an across-the-board swing against the government, something typical in a by-election no matter which party is in charge.
Held by a margin of 6.9 per cent, Bega is considered a safe Liberal seat but is the most marginal of the three Coalition seats being contested, making it the most likely to change hands and fall to Labor.
"In a number of federal elections recently, if you look at the voting patterns in [the Bega] area, [people] vote Labor, but it's never done it at the state level," the ABC's election analyst Antony Green said.
If that eventuates, the Perrottet government will be plunged even further into minority.
Mr Constance agrees the result is "going to be tight" and says there has been "too many postal votes", which will delay the outcome beyond tonight.
"One thing I would say is that there does need to be a review into the postal votes, I do believe the electoral commissioner will have to go back and reviews postals," he said.
"It's opened up too much fraud, potentially. Too many people have made errors with the way that they've signed off on the forms and witnessing the forms.
"It will be an interesting thing at the end of this process. I suspect it will be an issue."
By yesterday afternoon in Bega, 29.4 per cent of enrolled voters had cast a pre-poll vote and 21.3 per cent had returned a postal votes.
In Monaro, 23.1 per cent had cast a pre-poll and 15.3 per cent of postal votes had been returned.
In Strathfield, these numbers were 16.3 per cent and 26.4 per cent respectively.
And in Willoughby they were 9.6 per cent and 28.1 per cent respectively.
Quiet at the booths
Bega is also where the highest portion of voters have already cast their ballot, with 30 per cent going to a pre-poll centre before today and 21 per cent of postal votes returned so far.
With the deadline of postal votes extended to February 25 due to the pandemic, it won't be known until voting closes at 6:00pm how many votes are to be counted tonight.
But the impact was evident at polling booths. At one booth in Moruya where almost 2,000 people have voted in previous elections, ballots cast by lunchtime were only in the hundreds.
Health worker Carlos Roberts-Elgueta recently moved from Canberra to the region for work and said he was supporting Dr Holland due to his policies on health.
“He’s an incredible doctor …I think he’ll do great for the community if elected,” he said.
"I do think Fiona is a good candidate as well but it’s a coin flip I reckon.”
Stacey Kelly, a mother-of-three from the Batemans Bay region, said she was worried about COVID-19 exposure at polling booths but had to vote in person because she'd run out of time.
"It was not the place you’d like to be, really," she said.
"I would have much preferred to [use a postal vote] but I missed my opportunity because we were just running late.”
