The Nationals look to have emerged victorious from the latest round of New South Wales byelections and retained the seats of Cootamundra and Murray.

Despite holding margins of more than 20% in both regional seats, the Nationals watched on nervously as the Shooters, Fishers and Farmers party closed in on them during Saturday’s poll.



With lingering voter anger over the aborted greyhound racing ban and forced council amalgamations, the Shooters hoped to claim another rural scalp after last year’s shock win in the Orange byelection.

Looking past the massive swing against his party, the NSW Nationals leader, John Barilaro, celebrated victory in the seat of Cootamundra on Saturday night with candidate Steph Cook, who will replace Katrina Hodgkinson after 18 years in parliament. Barilaro declared a win in Cootamundra was evidence of the party’s worth in regional NSW.

“It was a hard campaign, there was a protest vote against the government, we always knew it was going to be tight and tough, but in politics you just want to get over the line,” Barilaro said on Saturday night.



“Look, there are lessons for the government and lessons for us. There’s been a significant swing, so we have to accept that, but we don’t claim to be a perfect government and in our imperfection we strive to do better and that’s our job,” Barilaro said on Saturday night.



While the Nationals were still waiting on more votes to be counted in Murray before declaring victory, Barilaro said he was quietly confident.



Late on Saturday night, the Nationals were ahead with more than 40% of the vote in Murray and about 45% in Cootamundra.



While the Shooters were a close second in Murray, with more than 30% of the vote, Country Labor were narrowly ahead of them in Cootamundra, with the parties splitting the opposition to the Nationals at just less than a quarter each.

The NSW premier, Gladys Berejiklian, said she was relieved the Nationals hung on to two once-safe seats despite the huge swings.

“Absolutely relieved, whenever there’s a byelection there is a major, major swing against the government,” she told reporters on Sunday morning.

Berejiklian insisted Labor had no right to “chest beat” after equally poor showings in the regional seats.

But Labor stormed to victory in the third byelection in Blacktown, with candidate Stephen Bali receiving more than 70% of the vote in the western Sydney seat where the Liberals failed to field a candidate.

The Labor leader, Luke Foley, said he took great pleasure from the result. “A big message was sent to Ms Berejiklian’s government by the people of western Sydney yesterday,” he said on Sunday.

He said regional voters were turning their back on the Coalition. “The government has to change direction, listen to the people”.

On Saturday, the Nationals were accused of playing dirty tricks at country NSW voting polls with party members allegedly distributing pamphlets and signs disguised as Electoral Commission material.

Both Labor and the Shooters have accused the Nationals of trying to deceive voters by handing out Electoral Commission-themed material urging people to “just vote once” to stem preferences flowing to their opposition.

Nationals supporters were also accused of handing out letters co-signed by John Howard urging people not to vote for the Shooters that had not been registered with the Electoral Commisison.

Barilaro said while he was aware a Nationals supporter had been found with one of the letters, he stated they had not been distributing them.

“We believe that there has been nothing improper done, often people make these claims,” Barilaro said. “I’m confident everything we’ve done is right.”

The byelections were brought on by the resignations of former Nationals ministers Adrian Piccoli and Katrina Hodgkinson, and former Labor leader John Robertson.