SANDY BAY, Hanover — The Jamaica Labour Party’s Dave Brown knew that it would not be easy but he but up a brave fight against his opponent of the People’s National Party (PNP), the Mayor of Lucea Wynter McIntosh, to take Hanover Eastern.

Preliminary results showed that Brown, an attorney-at-law, won the seat by 414 votes. He received 6488 votes, while Mayor McIntosh received 6,074 votes.

In the 2011 General Election, the PNP’s Dr D K Duncan received 8,583 votes to the JLP’s Paula Kerr Jarrette 6,602.

The current voters’ list for the constituency has 23,618 electors, 1,919 more than that used in 2011.

“I am feeling extremely excited,” Brown told the media outside the Sandy Bay Courthouse where the votes were counted on Thursday night.

McIntosh was nowhere near the centre when preliminary results came in. However, his supporters stayed during the counting and were at one time celebrating although it appeared they were trailing.

On the other hand, Brown supporters who arrived at the counting centre late, began celebrating when it became clear that they were leading.

Earlier in the day, a confident McIntosh said, “We have done our groundwork. The team is out there. They have done a wonderful job despite some form of intimidation, which we have no proof to. When I have proved it, that is another matter that I will deal with.”

The allegations were about vote-buying during the day.

In other sections of the parish, some of polling stations visited only had voters trickling in during the morning but this picked up later and these stations were incident-free.

The polling station at the Knockalva Basic School had to be relocated to a shop in the area because of an early morning fire at the facility. Polling division 06 polling station, which was relocated to the shop, saw a low voter turnout as just more than 30 of the 226 persons registered came out to vote up to 12:30 in the afternoon.