Labor's hopes of clawing back their once safe seat of Bathurst from the Nationals were dashed on Saturday as voters endorsed incumbent MP Paul Toole.
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While Labor's first preference count increased by almost seven per cent from 21.4 per cent in 2011 to 28 per cent on Saturday, the result was still less than half of what Mr Toole mustered.
Incidentally, Mr Toole's first preference vote count dropped by around seven per cent.
However, Mr Toole gained 17,489 votes - or 59.4 per cent of the first preference count - to secure a second term in state parliament as part of a Liberal and Nationals coalition government.
"I'm very pleased to be given the opportunity to be able to serve the people of the Bathurst electorate for another four years," Mr Toole told Fairfax Media on Saturday night.
Mr Toole won every polling booth in the Blayney Shire.
In Barry, he took 170 of the 229 votes cast and at Blayney Public, 1214 voters put Mr Toole first, compared to just 412 for Labor.
At the Mandurama polling booth, drawn into the seat of Bathurst after a redistribution of electoral boundaries, 287 voters chose Mr Toole compared to 85 for Labor, while at Millthorpe, Mr Toole gained 553 of the 812 votes counted.
The only polling booth where Labor got close to Mr Toole was in Carcoar, where the party campaigned heavily in response to resident anger at the state government over Carcoar Public School.
Mr Toole received 103 votes to Labor's 75 in Carcoar.
Across the electorate, the Greens picked up 9.14 per cent of the vote, a gain on their 6 per cent in 2011, while the Christian Democratic Party had 2.03 per cent and the No Land Tax party had 1.44 per cent.
On a two party preferred basis, with votes such as pre-poll still being counted, Mr Toole is sitting on 64.95 per cent, a swing against the Nationals of almost nine per cent.
Eighty-four informal votes were recorded across Blayney Shire polling booths.
bryant.hevesi@fairfaxmedia.com.au