•Patrick Gorman and wife Jess cast their votes, while Leo (not of voting age) offers moral support.

WHILE the national election result shocked the pollsters, there were no surprises locally with Labor’s Patrick Gorman winning Perth and Liberal candidate Vince Connelly taking out Stirling. There’s a number of votes still to be counted as we go to print so the final results may vary slightly, but the overall outcome won’t change.

PERTH

With 35 per cent of the primary vote, preferences carried Mr Gorman over the line. He wound up with just over 55 per cent of the two-party preferred vote.

A smattering of smaller parties including United Australia Party, One Nation and the Western Australia Party likely nibbled away the conservative primary vote, which was down five per cent this year, with Liberal Jim Grayden picking up 37 per cent.

Caroline Perks got the best primary vote the Greens have ever had in Perth, up two per cent to 19. It was the highest Greens vote in the whole state, with even the barefoot division of Fremantle coming a distant second with 15.8 per cent.

Despite not much local campaigning from One Nation, 2.4 per cent of Perth voters lodged their number 1 vote with their candidate Mel Lownds.

In his post-election announcement Mr Gorman gave a “shout out to my Labor colleagues, especially the WA crew—I look forward to working on the rebuild with you. The job has already started”.

He acknowledged his opponents, “especially Jim Grayden and Caroline Perks. Both ran strong, values focussed campaigns”.

STIRLING

Mr Connelly won the seat for the Liberals with 47 per cent of the primary (56 per cent 2PP). Labor’s Melita Markey ran a high profile campaign, but only managed to slightly increase the Red’s primary vote to 32.7 per cent.

Greens were steady at 11 per cent, One Nation celeb candidate Angus Young got 3.33 per cent, and Stirling councillor Liz Re standing for the Western Australia Party got 1.77 per cent, slightly ahead of the other microparties–Australian Christians (1.73) and United Australia Party (1.69).

The day after the election, outgoing Liberal Stirling MP Michael Keenan said “It is a huge relief to know the seat I held for the past 15 years will be remaining in a safe and strong set of Liberal hands.”

by DAVID BELL