Over half of the votes had been counted as of 3:50pm on Tuesday with the pair of Mr Chowdhury and Mr Black sitting well in front of the other candidates in south ward.

Mr Black led the voting for the ward with 1490 votes coming in as part of his Labor group while 434 votes had been individually given to the candidate.

Mr Chowdhury, who is running as a solo independent candidate, was sitting on 1436 votes well ahead of current councillors Kevin Parker (1009) and Greg Mohr (935) on votes.

The race for the two seats in Wellington ward is also getting close with Richard Ivey in the lead with 939 votes.

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Current deputy mayor Anne Jones was in second with 718 votes narrowly ahead of Jess Gough (670) and Helen Swan (619).

In the last collection of votes there was also a big push for Lizzy George who has surged back into contention with 555 votes.

Matt Wright seems to all but secured himself a spot in north ward as he had 1259 votes to his name on Tuesday afternoon.

However, the second spot is up for grabs still with Pam Wells next best behind Wright with 819 votes.

The Ben Shields Team's Mick Cattelotti trailed the top two with 798 while former mayor of Dubbo Greg Matthews was on 624 votes.

Lewis Burns was leading east ward but there are two challengers right on his tail.

Mr Burns was sitting on 974 votes while Jeremy Ellis was in second spot with 869 votes.

However, Damien Mahon had caught up to Mr Ellis and sat on 815 votes with just over 2,400 votes left to count.

Former mayor Mathew Dickerson had built on his mammoth lead in central ward and was in first position with 2,353 votes.

Trailing Mr Dickerson was Vicki Etheridge, who had 952 votes while Ben Shields trailed her in third with 596 votes.

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