Jonathan Sri (centre, with lord mayoral candidate Ben Pennings and Senator Larissa Waters) is on track to win The Gabba. Credit:Tony Moore "All up, there are about 3200 postal votes that went out and there's about 2000 that will be counted today," Mr Sri said on Sunday. "Then we have to wait up to 10 days for the last postal votes to trickle in." Still, Mr Sri said he expected the result to be clear by the end of Sunday. "We're so happy," he said.

"We're looking at a swing of upwards of 15 per cent after a campaign that had no budget – I think the contribution from the Queensland Greens was about 2½ thousand dollars all up. "We did this all on the back of small-scale donations and volunteer labour and it broadens our sense of what's possible in terms of other campaigns as well." Greens campaign secretary Andrew Bartlett said while things were looking good for his party, he did not want to get ahead of himself. "Both on practical and superstitious grounds I don't like claiming things before the last vote's counted, but clearly we're in a good position," he said. ... it broadens our sense of what's possible in terms of other campaigns as well.

"We're really happy across the board about how our vote's gone across the wards. "We have a crucial federal election coming up, so we barely spent a cent (on the council campaign) and it was really just people on the ground." Mr Bartlett, the former Democrats senator who was the Greens' lord mayoral candidate in 2012, said the election showed there was a new power in Brisbane local government. Ward results backed that up, with Greens voters shutting out several Labor candidates across the city. "We can put stuff on our how-to-votes as much as we like, but it's still the voter that decides and if a voter comes into a booth voting Green at the end of a fortnight of (federal) Labor slagging off the Greens pretty ferociously, of course they're going to be thinking 'why should we give these folks a hand?'," Mr Bartlett said.

"On the progressive side of things, it doesn't really help anyone when we have this kind of open warfare." Labor campaign director Jon Persley said he thought The Gabba was "still too close to call". The decision by the Greens not to preference Labor cost the ALP dearly in Coorparoo and Enoggera, where thousands of preferences were exhausted. Retiring Northgate councillor Kim Flesser said the lack of Greens preferences prevented his Labor successor, Reg Neill, from replacing him in the council chamber. "Running a zero Greens campaign with an absent candidate and no 'how to vote cards' ensured a LNP victory in Northgate ward," he said.

But his successor, the LNP's Adam Allan, said things had changed in Northgate. "The demographics there have certainly changed over the past four or five years and I'm looking forward to the challenge," he said. If Mr Sri did manage to pull it off, he would become the first Greens candidate elected to a Queensland government. Ronan Lee sat in the Queensland Parliament as a Green for a short time following his mid-term defection from the Labor Party, but he was never voted in under that ticket. If the count did go his way, Mr Sri, who has railed against politicians for years, would himself become a politician.

While that irony was not lost on him, Mr Sri said he was hopeful he could affect some change in the political culture. "I'm excited, because I think there's a lot of potential to steer politics in a more positive direction and I think our current political system is deeply flawed and tends to be unduly and excessively influenced by big business and large corporations," he said. "I think people are right to be cynical of mainstream party politics. "So, for me, getting involved in electoral politics is about finding weak points in the system where we can direct it to more positive outcomes and ultimately help build a bottom-up social movement."

Lord Mayor Graham Quirk, still basking from his convincing election victory on Sunday morning, said he welcomed democratic decisions in all their forms. "Brisbane's been full of history – we're a wonderful city in that sense," he said. "We had a minority council in 2004 and, if we do see a Greens representative on this occasion, then that'll be another piece of history. "But it's also history in the sense that this has been the biggest majority that's ever been afforded to an LNP administration, to a non-Labor administration, in this city." For independent news coverage, be sure to follow our Facebook feed.