Liberal candidate Jaymes Diaz – whose failure to remember his party’s six-point plan to “stop the boats” became one of the most notorious moments of the election campaign – has refused to concede defeat, despite his opponent, Michelle Rowland, being 5.7% ahead with more than 80% of the vote counted.

Rowland bucked the national trend on Saturday in recording a 3% swing away from the Coalition and towards Labor. She was defending the seat of Greenway in western Sydney with a tiny 0.88% margin.

Diaz made world headlines during the election campaign when he failed to name more than one point of the Coalition’s six-point plan to “stop the boats” during a TV interview.

He then went underground, avoiding the media for the rest of the campaign, and earning himself the dubious nickname “Where’s Wally”. Other candidates took a cardboard cutout of him to a local debate when he failed to show up. Nevertheless he had been expected to win the seat.

Little was seen of Diaz on election day until he arrived at his campaign party late on.

"We'll have to wait for the votes to come in, and wait until we have more information. It's election night, so we'll just have to wait and see," he told reporters.

On Sunday Rowland refused to speculate on whether Diaz’s poor campaign performance had led to her win, but she told AAP that it provided a lesson on the importance of winning the respect of the electorate when running for public office.

"It was a surprise ... to have a swing that was opposite to what appeared to be the average swing against people," said Rowland.

"I'm still recovering from the fact that I've still got a job as the member for Greenway."

A spokesman for Rowland said on Sunday that Diaz was still yet to concede, and had not called Rowland to congratulate her.