Barbecues are being fired up as voters across New South Wales head to the polls for the 2023 State Election.
Voting booths across the state opened at 8am on Saturday, and millions are expected to cast their ballot.
Regardless of how residents choose who will snag their vote, there’s one thing that unifies everyone on election day and that’s a sausage.
And to ensure no one leaves empty-handed, a website has been set up to map out where democracy sausages are on offer.
The Democracy Sausage Website in an interactive map that shows all polling booth locations across NSW, with icons showing where sausages and cakes are available.
The website crowdsources real time data from Twitter, Instagram and Facebook.
Voters can use the hashtag #democracysausage or send a direct message to the site to help track the availability of food.
On Saturday morning there were 397 polling booths with sausage sizzles available, the bulk of which were in Sydney’s east.
More than one million people have already entered their vote after early polling opened a week ago.
Dominic Perrottet, who became premier 18 months ago following Gladys Berejiklian’s resignation, is hoping to defy the odds and lead the Liberal-Nationals coalition to a record fourth term.
But Labor’s Chris Minns is likely to be NSW’s next premier with The Australian Newspoll, released on Saturday, pointing to Labor securing a narrow majority government.
The Coalition government holds 45 seat – 33 for the Liberals and 12 for the Nationals, Labor 36, the Greens three, while there are nine independents, including two former Liberal MPs.
Labor went into Saturday’s election needing to win at least nine seats to claim government.
But Newspoll’s two-party-preferred result of 54.5-45.5 represents a 6.5 per cent swing against the Coalition, which would give Labor up to 10 extra seats.
That would give Labor the 47 seats for a majority without the support of the crossbench, but a uniform swing is doubtful.
In another boost for Labor, Mr Minns has scored a two-point leader as preferred premier over Mr Perrottet for the first time in this Newspoll.
Mr Minns, who was relatively unknown going into the campaign, scored a big win in the final debate of the campaign on Wednesday, when he and Mr Perrottet met head-to-head in the Sky News / The Daily Telegraph People’s Forum.
Out of 100 undecided voters, 48 said they had been swayed to vote for the Opposition, 32 chose the Coalition and 20 remained undecided.
Both leaders were campaigning hard right up to the end on Friday.
Voting on Saturday closes at 6pm.Counting will start immediately and finish at 10.30pm and resume on Monday.
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