COUNTING of votes in the Bass electorate just got a whole lot closer with the Liberals’ Aaron Brown cutting Jordan Crugnale’s lead to just 53 votes, on a two-candidate preferred basis.
At the end of counting on Saturday night, Ms Crugnale was leading by 225 votes, the third tightest margin of the 88 Lower House contests.
At that stage, just 67.4% of the votes had been counted.
Late in the day on Tuesday, November 29, a further 1680 votes were added to the count, with 843 going in favour of Mr Brown and 721 for Ms Crugnale.
According to the Victorian Electoral Commission, they’ve now counted 35,376 of a possible 49,984 votes in Bass, with as many as 8000 votes still to come mainly in the form of absentees and postal votes.
Bass is now the second closest contest in the state, behind neighbouring Pakenham where the ALP’s Emma Vulin leads David Farrelly (Liberals) by just 8 votes.
Mornington is also close, Kate Lardner (Ind) trailing Chris Crewther (Liberals) by a margin of 337, and in Hastings it's a 557 difference with Paul Mercurio (ALP) leading Briony Hutton (Liberals).
