The boost to the Greens vote the party was expecting to see in the NSW election didn't come to pass in the Illawarra.
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Greens upper house MP Cate Faehrmann visited the Illawarra days before the election, where she expected to see growth in the party's vote.
Instead, only two of the five Illawarra seats saw an increase in primary votes with the others losing ground from the 2019 results.
The biggest seats for the party in the Illawarra were Wollongong - which saw a jump in primaries from 12.8 per cent to 16.48 per cent - and Heathcote, with a three per cent increase to 12.05 per cent.
Wollongong Greens candidate Cath Blakey felt her profile as a sitting local councillor contributed to her increase in votes.
"I'd like to think it was my track record and I think there's definitely some name recognition as well," Ms Blakey said.
"I was only pre-selected quite late so was a really short campaign. And there were federal issues that really came to the fore during the state election campaign with the leaked information about Port Kembla being a supposedly site for a potential nuclear submarine base."
The lowest Greens vote was in Shellharbour, where Jamie Dixon's vote fell from 9.41 per cent in 2019 to 5.7 per cent.
Mr Dixon felt the fact there were seven candidates running in the seat, including Shellharbour Mayor Chris Homer, had an effect on the Greens' low numbers.
He also suggested the performance of the Legalise Cannabis candidate Mia Willmott with 4.04 per cent may have taken votes away from the Greens.
"I think the amount of support for the Legalise Cannabis party is something that worth noting because there were probably people who were on board with that aspect of Greens policy but certainly chose to vote that way as their preference," Mr Dixon said.
Both Ms Blakey and Mr Dixon felt the support for the Labor party was also a factor in reducing the Greens' vote.
"There was such an appetite for a change of government that not quite as many votes was swung away from the major parties as we had hoped," Mr Dixon said.
Ms Blakey felt it was "hard" for the Greens to do well when there was a swing towards Labor.
"That won't be the case at the next state election - they will be an incumbent at the next state election," she said.
The secret to increasing the Greens' vote was more door-knocking, Ms Blakey said.
"Where the Greens have done really well, what they've done is build great field campaigns of people out door-knocking," she said.
"We did a bit of that but if we want to increase our vote we have to keep doing that."
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Glen Humphries
I'm an award-winning senior journalist with the Illawarra Mercury and have well over two decades' worth of experience in newspapers. I cover the three local councils in the Illawarra for the Mercury, state and federal politics, as well as writing for the TV guide. If I'm not writing, I'm reading.
I'm an award-winning senior journalist with the Illawarra Mercury and have well over two decades' worth of experience in newspapers. I cover the three local councils in the Illawarra for the Mercury, state and federal politics, as well as writing for the TV guide. If I'm not writing, I'm reading.
