Gordon Bradbery has increased his lead over Tania Brown in the race for Wollongong's Lord Mayoralty, with the latest counting adding several hundred votes to his slender lead from Monday.
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The incumbent mayor, Cr Bradbery has tallied 37,435 first-preference votes, (30.8 per cent), a lead of 2,761 over Labor's Tania Brown on 34,820 (28.65 per cent).
Liberal John Dorahy has 19.28 per cent of the first preference votes and the Greens' Mithra Cox 12.65.
A large drop of ballots brought Cr Brown back close late in the day on Wednesday, after Cr Bradbery had been steadily edging further ahead with each update at the NSW Electoral Commission's virtual tally room..
The race remains too close to call.
Meanwhile, Chris Homer has continued to build his lead over Marianne Saliba for the Shellharbour mayoralty. At the latest count Mr Homer had edged further ahead to 18,984 first preference votes - 53.87 per cent - which would be a troubling sign for the incumbent mayor Saliba, who with 16,259 first preference votes has 46.13 per cent in the two-horse race.
Late on Wednesday Mr Homer said he saw no reason not to be confident.
"It seems that the three pre-polling booths have come in, and I've done really well - I've won all three of them," he said.
"It's quite a healthy lead so I'm kind of remaining confident.
"There's a real big element of surprise, for sure, but I'm an ex-competitive surfer as well so whenever I go into an event like this it's a very similar thing for me - I do go in to win. I don't go in it to come second.
"So I have remained in a real confident headspace. I've worked extremely hard and ... I don't see any area where I could have done more, given the resources I had.
"I feel I've done the best I can, so that's held me in good stead to remain confident."
In Wollongong, preferences appear likely to favour Cr Bradbery over Cr Brown. While the Greens directed their preferences to Labor over the independent Cr Bradbery, Liberal candidate John Dorahy preferenced Cr Bradbery, and Cr Dorahy's primary vote of 19.6 per cent would deliver more preferences than the Greens' Mithra Cox with 12.7 per cent at latest counting.
The flow of preferences may be harder to predict this year, given how-to-vote cards were not handed out at polling booths because of Covid protocols.
While parties had their how-to-vote information on signs outside polling places, inviting voters to take a picture or scan a QR code, the high informal vote count - particularly in Ward 3 - indicates many people did not do this.