The Illawarra has long been known as a Labor stronghold, and when it comes to two-party preferred votes this election was no different.
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As of Monday, Australian Electoral Commission data showed Labor MP Stephen Jones held Whitlam with a safe margin of 9.88 per cent.
In Cunningham, fresh face Alison Byrnes managed to improve on outgoing MP Sharon Bird's already very safe margin to 14.43 per cent, up from 13.41 per cent at the 2019 election.
However, drilling down into first preference votes for each booth tells a different story - and gives an insight into the shifting demographics of the Illawarra region.
Looking at the two-party booth-by-booth breakdown, Austinmer looks like the strongest Labor suburb in the Cunningham electorate, with 76.7 per cent of votes.
Bulli was the only Cunningham booth to go Liberal after preferences were distributed.
But at that same Bulli booth, low-key Liberal Marcus Uren (21.46%) received a much lower first preference vote than both Labor (38.2%) and the Greens (29.44%).
And in Austinmer, Ms Byrnes has The Greens to thank for her strong two-party preferred vote.
There, right in the middle of the affluent and environmentally conscious northern suburbs, the Greens received more than 41 per cent of the primary vote - their highest in the region. This was up about nine percentage points on the Greens vote of 32 per cent in that booth in 2019.
The only other booth in Cunningham where the Greens won on first preferences was Wombarra, where they got 36.23 per cent of the vote (up significantly from 22 per cent in 2019).
In environmentally conscious Thirroul, Labor just edged out the Greens, receiving 35.65 per cent of the primary vote to the Greens 35.3 per cent (up about 10 percentage points from 2019).
The Greens also did well - getting around a third of the primary vote and close to Labor's share of first preferences - in Keiraville, Coledale, Gwynneville, Wollongong East (Wollongong Public School) and Stanwell Park.
Labor continued to perform the strongest in the traditional working class parts of the region.
At the Warrawong Central booth, Ms Byrnes got 49.76 per cent of the vote, and it was a similar story at Warrawong pre-polls (49.73 per cent) and at Warrawong Public School (45.53 per cent).
Other Labor strongholds included Port Kembla Central, Lake Heights and Russell Vale.
The Helensburgh booth - incidentally the place where low-key candidate Marcus Uren was rumoured to have showed his face on election day - was the only place in Cunningham where the Liberals got the most primary votes (36.29 per cent).
New Labor MP Alison Byrnes said she believed some of the shift in votes was due to the Liberal candidate not campaigning in the region, which left many voters in the north "nowhere to go".
"I got a lot of Liberal voters comments on the day to say people were disappointed," she said.
There's also a bit of backlash against the major parties after the last parliament, but Anthony Albanese has already been speaking about bringing that respect and trust back."
She said Labor has a number of strong environmental policies which would appeal to the almost 20,000 Cunningham residents who voted Green.
Read more: Alison Byrnes wins Cunningham for Labor
"We've got a very strong platform to address climate change and all of our goals are achievable," she said.
She said some of the local commitments included $12.5 million for training the graduates of the future needed to build an electricity network powered by renewable energy, with $10 million to the University of Wollongong and $2.5 million to Wollongong TAFE, and community batteries for Dapto and Warrawong.
In Stephen Jones Whitlam electorate, the two-party preferred votes were split in a similar way to previous years, with the Illawarra booths voting Labor and the Southern Highlands ones voting Liberal (instead of Nationals in the 2019 election).
The Cringila Community Centre booth, surrounded by the Port Kembla Steelworks, was the strongest for Labor on first preferences and two-party preferred votes in Whitlam, and the party also performed well in Barrack Heights, Koonawarra, Berkeley West and Berkeley South.
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Kate McIlwain
For more than a decade, I've helped the Illawarra Mercury set the news agenda across the region. Currently I'm the paper's health reporter - covering the stories of Illawarra workers and residents in the wake of a global pandemic and at a time where our health systems are stretched to the limit.
For more than a decade, I've helped the Illawarra Mercury set the news agenda across the region. Currently I'm the paper's health reporter - covering the stories of Illawarra workers and residents in the wake of a global pandemic and at a time where our health systems are stretched to the limit.
