Polls set to close soon in the ACT as Canberrans wait to learn the results of the 2024 election

Okay Charlie, there’s been chat in the newsroom about my use of acronyms already so you are not the only one…

Atm = at the moment.

As my colleague political reporter Patrick Bell wrote, a seventh consecutive Labor win would be unparalleled in Australia in the 21st century.

To give you an idea of how long it’s been — in the same year Labor came to power, 2001, the iPod had only just been unveiled and the Nokia 3310 mobile phone was widely in use.

That was the year Survivor by Destiny’s Child and No Angel by Dido were topping music charts, and the first Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings films were released.

While it’s clearly been a while, Chief Minister Andrew Barr insists his party is “fresh” and full of energy.

While we will be keeping you up to date here online, ABC election team is gearing up to bring you live coverage of the count this evening from its election centre at the National Museum.

James Glenday (with a cameo from the ABC’s election specialist Casey Briggs) had an early look.

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Described by some as a possible “forever government”, ACT Labor has been in office for 23 years.

It’s the longest-running current Labor government in Australia by a country mile (eg 20 years).

And, our election specialist Antony Green reckons it would take a pretty major upset to change that.

So, will this government truly be forever?

Will Chief Minister Andrew Barr lead Labor to re-election for a third time?

We are hoping this isn’t the first time you are finding out there’s an election on…

For these young Canberrans this week, they found out with just enough time before they headed to the polls.

Our reporter Jostina Basta asked them what they thought about the election, and politics in general.

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So you might have heard we do things a little differently in the ACT when it comes to our government setup.

I won’t bore you with the details on what a Hare-Clark system is (and I don’t want to embarrass myself by trying to do so correctly).

So here’s the TLDR.

We have five, five-member electorates.

And atm Labor makes up government with the help of the Greens.

The Greens have six seats, Labor has 10, and the Liberals have eight (they used to have nine until recently… we will get into that a bit later).

Thirteen seats are required to make up a majority government (which has only happened once in the ACT).

Here are our electorates, and how many candidates are in the running for them:

• Brindabella — 24 candidates

• Ginninderra — 33 candidates

• Kurrajong — 34 candidates

• Murrumbidgee — 27 candidates

• Yerrabi — 31 candidates

Hello, I’m Niki Burnside and I’ll be sharing the blogging duties with Georgia.

We’ll also be joined by some of our ABC colleagues, including political reporters and analysts, throughout the night.

Polls are due to close at 6pm, at which point the results will start to come in fairly quickly.

We’ll be providing you with regular updates here and on our live broadcast, which you can tune into on ABC TV.

Thanks to the wonders of electronic voting, the counting doesn’t take as long as it once did.

So settle in, rustle up some snacks, and get ready to learn the fate of the ACT!

Welcome to election night here in Australia’s capital, coming to you from Ngunnawal country, acknowledging others with a connection to the lands of the ACT. 

My name’s Georgia Roberts and I will be taking you through this evening’s events.

Let us know if you have any questions.

Ps. You have just under one hour to vote if it happened to have slipped your mind (and you’ve not seen the abundance of corflutes around the ACT)