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Thursday
As suggested here yesterday, today’s Queensland and Western Australian Senate distributions both produced results of two Labor, two Coalition, one Greens and one One Nation – predictably in Queensland’s case, less so in Western Australia’s. It was noted that my model based on 2022 election preference flows got the One Nation candidate in WA to a winning margin over the third Labor candidate of 0.013 quotas, and that the party had over-performed this in similar circumstances by 0.046 quotas in South Australia and 0.032 in Victoria. In the case of WA the improvement was 0.023 quotas, the margin at the final count being 0.895 to 0.859. That just leaves the New South Wales count to be finalised, which is scheduled for 9:30am tomorrow, and looks like a clear-cut result of three Labor, two Coalition and one Greens.
In the Bradfield recount, Nicolette Boele’s momentum yesterday failed to carry over to today: she began proceedings two votes behind and ended three votes behind, with a net 22 votes being knocked out for Kapterian and 23 for Boele. Much of today’s effort was seemingly spent on the 9589 votes of the Willoughby pre-poll centre, which disappointed for Boele in yielding only a net gain of one vote, despite the high Liberal vote there. Another part of today’s recounting was postals, which I presume wasn’t all of them given the modest scale of the changes, with two primary votes knocked out for both leading candidates. This unknown factor means it’s no longer possible to precisely calculate how much of the recount has been completed: ordinary votes amounting 41.1% have been accounted for, together with however many of the 12.3% of the total that were postals have been accounted for. The Liberal favourability deficit out of what’s been counted will also have narrowed, though not closed (remembering that the relative Liberal strength out of what’s been counted will likely be to their disadvantage, since it means more opportunities for their votes to be knocked out).
It seems clear now that the Goldstein recount will not pull any rabbits out of the hat for Zoe Daniel: Tim Wilson’s lead remains unchanged from yesterday at 263.
Wednesday
The Victorian Senate result was finalised today, producing the anticipated result of Labor three, Liberal two and Greens one: in order, Raff Ciccone (Labor), James Paterson (Liberal), Jess Walsh (Labor), Jane Hume (Liberal), Steph Hodgins-May (Greens) and Michelle Ananda-Rajah (Labor). Ananda-Rajah won at the final count with 0.869 quotas to the One Nation candidate’s 0.814, which was 0.032 quotas narrower than anticipated by my model based on preference flows from 2022. Something similar was observed in South Australia, where the final count likewise pitted One Nation against Labor’s successful third candidate, the final result being 0.046 quotas narrower than anticipated by my model.
This is encouraging for Tyron Whitten, One Nation’s candidate in Western Australia, where the count will be finalised tomorrow at 3pm eastern time. My earlier modelling of the result gave the third Labor candidate a narrow win over Whitten of 0.869 quotas to 0.852, but this was before Labor’s vote share fell back on late counting – re-running it with the final results, I get Whitten winning by 0.862 to 0.849. Half an hour later, the Queensland result will be finalised – here a result of two Labor, two Liberal National, one Greens and one One Nation looks assured.
Gisele Kapterian’s lead in Bradfield was slashed today from 14 to two, as proceedings went more as I expected them to go initially: votes for both candidates knocked out as informal, but the process favouring Nicolette Boele by virtue of the recount mostly affecting first preference votes for the two leading candidates, of which Kapterian has more to lose. On Monday and Tuesday, when as many previously informal votes were being deemed formal as vice-versa, Kapterian’s lead climbed from eight to 14 – today, Kapterian had a net loss of 29 votes compared with 17 for Boele.
The process has now resulted in the recounting of 30,357 votes out of 118,856, or 25.5%, encompassing 16 out of 52 election day booths and four out of 14 pre-poll voting centres. Non-ordinary vote types, including over 14,500 postals, are yet to be examined. Out of the votes examined so far, 33.5% were first preferences for Kapterian and 28.2% for Boele, compared with 38.1% and 27.0% out of the total count, with the two-candidate count being 53.9-46.1 in Boele’s favour compared with 50.0-50.0 overall. For reasons noted in yesterday’s update, this indicates the votes to be rechecked lean to Kapterian.
If today’s dynamic holds, with votes being knocked out as informal providing most of the changes, it seems very likely that Boele will soon pull ahead and stay there. However, I have no reason to be sure that we won’t see a re-emergence of the earlier dynamic of as many votes doing the reverse, in which case Kapterian may still be a show. Either way, the margin looks like being fine enough to raise the strong possibility of a legal challenge. Ben Raue of The Tally Room has done us all a fine service in attending the count as a scrutineer and recording his observations.
The partial recount in Goldstein began today, and got about 15% through without bringing any joy for Zoe Daniel, whose deficit against Tim Wilson is out from 260 to 263.
Finally, the AEC is now well into finalising two-party Labor-versus-Coalition counts for “non-classic” contests, which will ultimately allow for a national two-party preferred result. This will settle somewhere between 55-45 and 55.4-44.5, indicating that pollsters who were revising preference models based on the 2022 result to make them less favourable to Labor would have done better to have let them be. This under-estimation of Labor extends to the estimates I was using for non-classic contests to produce the national two-party preferred on my results page – I have revised these upwards, though probably not far enough.
Tuesday
End of day update: In the second day of the Bradfield recount, Gisele Kapterian again widened her lead over Nicolette Boele, which has gone from eight to ten to fourteen. Substantial revisions have been made in the Artarmon Central (17 informal votes reclassified as formal) and Gorton (14 votes going the other way) without appreciably advantaging one candidate or the other – the changes arise from another 13 booths that have been rechecked, five producing revisions in favour of Kapterian against one for Boele. Boele can take at least some comfort in the fact that these booths recorded a relatively narrow 29.6% to 27.6% advantage for Kapterian on the primary vote, compared with 38.1% to 27.0% overall, on the principle that opportunities await for challenges to the formality of Kapterian votes. So far though, it seems that as many informal votes are being deemed formal as the other way round, contrary to the experience of the preference distribution.
Earlier: The Senate distribution for Tasmania produced a result of two Labor, two Liberal, one Greens and Jacqui Lambie, in the order of Carol Brown (Labor), Claire Chandler (Liberal), Nick McKim (Greens), Richard Dowling (Labor), Jacqui Lambie (Jacqui Lambie Network) and Richard Colbeck (Liberal). With four candidates chasing two seats at the second last exclusion, Lambie had 0.82 quotas, Colbeck 0.80, third Labor candidate Bailey Falls 0.73 and Lee Hanson 0.57. Hanson’s exclusion put both Lambie (1.05) and Colbeck (1.01) over the line for a full quota, leaving Falls holding the bag with 0.80. I should have had more faith in my model based on 2022 preference flows in last night’s update, as Lambie got more preferences this time from lower order and mostly right-wing candidates, outperforming my model’s projection of 1.00 quotas for her. Colbeck outperformed his projected 0.92, while Falls did weaker than the anticipated 0.87, again contrary to what I suggested might happen last night.
The distribution for the South Australian count was published today, showing that Labor’s third candidate, Charlotte Walker, recorded 1.00 quotas at the final count ahead of 0.80 for the One Nation candidate, against which my model’s projection of 1.00 to 0.75 stacks up quite well. Also finalised today was the Northern Territory Senate count, confirming the formality of Malarndirri McCarthy (Labor) and Jacinta Price (Country Liberal) winning the two seats. The button-press for the Victorian Senate count is scheduled for 9:30am tomorrow – the evidence so far offers no encouragement for One Nation that they will be able to close what my model projects as a deficit of 0.85 to 0.76 in the race for the final seat against the third Labor candidate. This will shortly be followed by the foregone conclusion of the Australian Capital Territory count.
The preference distribution has been finalised in Calwell, Labor’s Basem Abdo emerging a comfortable winner with 49,481 votes (55.1%) to independent Carly Moore’s 40,350 (44.9%).
Monday
Today’s developments:
• The preference distribution in Calwell has all but confirmed a win for Labor, who received more than two-thirds from the exclusion of Greens, putting Basem Abdo on 48.0%, independent Carly Moore on 29.7% and the Liberal candidate on 22.3%. This leaves Moore needing an all-but-impossible 91% share of the preferences with the imminent exclusion of the Liberal.
• The button was pressed on the South Australian election Senate count, confirming the anticipated result of Labor three (Marielle Smith, Karen Grogan and Charlotte Walker), Liberal two (Alex Antic and Anne Ruston) and Greens one (Sarah Hanson-Young). We must await publication of the preference distribution for further detail.
• The Australian Electoral Commission advises that we can expect the buttons to be pressed tomorrow morning for Tasmania and the Northern Territory. The latter is a foregone conclusion, but the former is likely to find a three-way battle for the last two seats between Jacqui Lambie, the third Labor candidate and the second Liberal candidate. My earlier modelling suggested Lambie was very likely to be re-elected, since substantially different preference flows from the last election would be needed for her to fall behind both Liberal and Labor. On reflection though, the former seems more plausible than I was allowing, given the observable impact of Lambie’s opposition to salmon farming on the geographic distribution of her primary vote, and the fact that most of the preferences being distributed are from right-wing parties. The latter might arise as a corollary of Labor’s stronger performance overall.
• The AEC announced today responded to Zoe Daniel’s request for a recount in Goldstein by announcing a partial recount that would consider first preference votes only, which in fact account for about three-quarters of the total. Substantial revisions were made to the totals during the course of the preference distribution, a process which examined only the remaining one-quarter of the vote, ultimately with the effect of increasing Tim Wilson’s margin from 129 to 270. The recount will begin on Wednesday and is expected to take about four days.
• The first day of the Bradfield recount, which may take as long as two weeks, increased Liberal candidate Gisele Kapterian’s lead over independent Nicolette Boele from eight votes to ten.