Hobart could be left with an all-male council, with four sitting councillors, including the former deputy lord mayor, on track to lose their seats in a Tasmanian Electoral Commission trial count.
The trial count, based on about 20% of the vote, projects first-time candidate Tiffany Ashdown as the only woman to win a seat.
It has Zelinda Sherlock, Ben Lohberger, Louise Elliot and Louise Bloomfield outside the projected nine. Each won between 3.7% and 4.3% of first preferences.
Nine sitting councillors are re-contesting, with the council shrinking from 12 to nine members.
Election analyst Kevin Bonham said several margins were “extremely close”, with Ashdown holding the final seat by only a handful of votes.
He said at least one result was very likely to change unless the count moved in Ashdown’s favour.
Bonham said Mike Dutta, projected seventh, was also “close to losing”, while Simon Behrakis outlasted Elliot by only 15 votes.
He said the trial result would mean a council split “5-4 for the right but not a majority for the cable car”.
He said Sherlock received only about a third of preferences when fellow Green Trenton Hoare was excluded, which he called “remarkably low”.
He said it was difficult to say how much was due to her recent arrival in the Greens and how much to the snack-gate controversy.
Elliot posted on Facebook that she was “looking likely to not be elected”.
The electoral commission trial count projects Charles Wooley, John Kelly, Bill Harvey, Ryan Posselt, Harvey Lennon, Marti Zucco, Dutta, Behrakis and Ashdown to be elected.
Electoral Commissioner Andrew Hawkey told Pulse trial counts were “usually fairly accurate, but I wouldn’t guarantee any of them as it currently stands”.
He said the final one or two seats had changed a handful of times since 2014.
He said 50% counts for larger councils were expected on Friday.
Sherlock, Elliot, Lohberger and Behrakis are also running for deputy lord mayor, but the winner must secure a councillor seat.
In the race to replace Lord Mayor Anna Reynolds, Wooley leads Kelly by 839 votes in the count as of Thursday morning, after Zucco’s exclusion.
