Tasmanian election: July 19

Following last week’s no confidence motion in Premier Jeremy Rockliff, Tasmania’s Governor grants the state’s second election in 15 months.

Tasmania faces its second state election in 15 months after Governor Barbara Baker today granted the dissolution and July 19 election requested by Liberal Premier Jeremy Rockliff after his defeat last week in a parliamentary no-confidence motion. Rockliff made his request yesterday, but was told by Baker she would spend the next few days considering all options. However, it appears she heard enough when Labor leader Dean Winter ruled out trying to form a new government, the announcement of the fresh election being made late this afternoon. I will now set to work on getting a guide to the election place as quick as humanly possible, and will as usual be publishing live results and projections on election night and beyond.

The election held in March last year, which was likewise held early in a vain bid by Rockliff to strengthen his position in parliament, returned 14 Liberal, ten Labor, five Greens, three Jacqui Lambie Network and three independent members, with the Liberals forming a minority government after obtaining guarantees from the JLN members (two of whom quit the party in very short order) and more qualified support from two of the independents. The most contentious issue in Tasmanian politics of recent times has been a plan to contribute $615 million to construction of a stadium presently budgeted at $945 million that will house a new AFL team to enter the competition in 2028. As dearly as Tasmanians would love their own team in the competition, there is a distinctive sense that the state is being fleeced by a rapacious AFL and that the imposition is more than the state can afford. However, the plan has the support of both major parties, prompting a sense within Labor that cross-benchers were stealing their thunder in leading the charge against the government on the issue.

When Treasurer Guy Barnett foreshadowed privatisations in bringing down a budget last week that forecast deficit and debt blowouts, Labor leader Dean Winter saw an opportunity to deal the party back in the game by moving a no confidence motion against Rockliff and challenging the cross-benchers to support it. As well as the state of the budget, Labor was also able to invoke the government’s disastrous failure to provide adequate berthing facilities for new Bass Strait ferries operating out of Devonport, prompting the resignation of Treasurer Michael Ferguson last October. Ignoring Rockliff’s threats of a fresh election, the Greens and two independents lent the motion their support, and it duly carried by a single vote last Thursday.

There were suggestions that Winter aimed to do no more than claim the scalp of Rockliff as Premier, but the Liberals have been resolute in their determination to maintain him as leader, in the teeth of criticism from the business community and conservative Liberal Senator Jonathan Duniam. Matthew Denholm of The Australian reports a view that the party would do better at a prompt election with Rockliff than by “waiting for the next crisis and facing voters with a less popular alternative, such as Michael Ferguson”. For his part, Winter has rejected the notion of Labor taking over without an election in a government that would rely on the support of the Greens.

Tasmania’s Hare-Clark system involves five electoral divisions (the same ones that apply at federal level) electing seven members each (increased from five at the 2024 election), making it difficult for either major party to score a majority. The Greens won five seats last year, balancing a failure in the Braddon division by winning two seats in Clark. Jacqui Lambie says her party will not contest the election, and unless the members have done a better job ingratiating themselves locally than I am crediting them with, their seats in Bass, Braddon and Lyons (the latter being the only one remaining with the party) presumably represent low-hanging fruit for other parties. Presumably better placed are Kristie Johnston (Clark), David O’Byrne (Franklin) and Craig Garland (Braddon), who were elected as independents in 2024.

The most recent poll from the state, conducted by EMRS from May 13 to 17, had Labor in its strongest position since it last held office in 2010, albeit that this amounted to only 31% of the vote, compared with 29.0% last March. The Liberals were down from 36.7% to 29%, with the Greens holding steady on 14% compared with 13.9%. The poll continued to gauge support for the Jacqui Lambie Network, who were on 6%. Labor presumably has high hopes of improving off its low base of two seats in each of the five divisions, particularly after its 9.0% swing in the state at the federal election. However, it faces a major challenge in winning enough seats to meet its own pre-condition of governing without the support of the Greens, and with the Liberals also on the downswing after 11 years in government, there is a strong possibility that the election will fail in its presumed goal of breaking the parliamentary deadlock.

Mid-week miscellany: federal poll drought edition (open thread)

Some observations on when regular federal polling might be expected to resume, and the Tasmanian state election that could potentially give us something to chew on in the meantime.

The potential for a Liberal legal challenge to the result in Bradfield remains the only complication to a resolution of the federal election, with a 40-day period for the lodgement of such a challenge to commence when the Australian Electoral Commission returns the writs, which it must do by July 9. The impasse also stands in the way of a final resolution of the national two-party preferred result, with the AEC relating it is loath to disturb the ballot papers as required to complete its Labor-versus-Liberal count for the seat. The current progress result recorded for the seat on the AEC site is stuck at an early stage accounts for only about 10% of the total, and is evidently dominated by strong areas for the Liberals. With full results available for all other seats, the final result looks likely to land at 55.2-44.8 to Labor.

We remain in something of a limbo on the federal polling front. Roy Morgan had the first voting intention poll of the term last week, but has apparently not resumed its normal weekly schedule. Peter Lewis of Essential Research says his agency’s normally fortnightly poll is “on a post-election sabbatical/hiatus for a few months”. Experience suggests Newspoll in The Australian may be another month away, and Resolve Strategic for Nine Newspapers perhaps another month more.

Never fear though, for a snap Tasmanian election may shortly be upon us, just 14 months after an election at which the Liberals held on to power with the support of a now alienated cross-bench. The state’s Governor currently considering Premier Jeremy Rockliff’s request for a dissolution following last week’s parliamentary no confidence motion. I’ll have a post up on that when the situation becomes clearer, and if an election indeed ensues, will put together a guide for it as fast as humanly possible and set to work on live results. Local hero Kevin Bonham relates that the window for such an election is in the four weeks between July 19 and August 9.

South Korea and Poland elections wrap

The centre-left Democrats win the South Korean presidential election, while PiS wins in Poland. Also: Canada’s final seat numbers after recounts and the US Democratic deaths that helped pass Trump’s “big beautiful bill”.

11:51am Friday UK Labour has gained a single-member seat from the Scottish National Party at a Scottish parliamentary by-election. Labour’s vote share was down 2.0% since the 2021 Scottish election to 31.6%, but the SNP was down 16.8% to 29.4%. The far-right Reform came third with 26.1% (new) and the Conservatives were down 11.5% to 6.0%. Scotland uses a mixture of single-member seats and proportional representation to elect its 129 MPs. The SNP is in a minority government supported by the Greens. The next Scottish election is due by May 2026.

Guest post by Adrian Beaumont, who joins us from time to time to provide commentary on elections internationally. Adrian is a paid election analyst for The Conversation. His work for The Conversation can be found here.

The South Korean presidential election was held Tuesday using first past the post. The previous president of the right-wing People Power Party, Yoon Suk Yeol, had been impeached and removed for declaring martial law in December, so this election was held about two years early. The centre-left Democratic nominee, Lee Jae-myung, defeated PPP’s Kim Moon-soo by a 49.4-41.2 margin with 8.3% for a third party candidate. At the March 2022 election, Yoon had defeated Lee by a 0.7% margin.

Lee will be sworn in as president today, without a transition period. Democrats have a large parliamentary majority after they won April 2024 parliamentary elections. Democrats have gained unified control of government until at least the 2028 parliamentary elections.

At Sunday’s Polish presidential runoff election, Karol Nawrocki, the candidate of the economically left but socially conservative Law and Justice (PiS) defeated Rafał Trzaskowski, the candidate of the centrist and pro-Western Civic Coalition by a 50.9-49.1 margin. In the May 18 first round, Trzaskowski won 31.4%, Nawrocki 29.5% and the far-right Confederation 14.8%. Trzaskowski had been well ahead in polls before the first round, but polls taken after the first round showed a near-tie.

In October 2023 the Civic Coalition and allies won a parliamentary majority, but the PiS held the presidency, and a presidential veto on legislation can only be overcome with a 60% majority, which the government does not have. With PiS retaining the presidency, they will continue to have veto power over legislation.

Canada, the US, the Netherlands and Portugal

The final seat count from the April 28 Canadian federal election is 169 Liberals out of 343 (up nine from 160 out of 338 in 2021), 144 Conservatives (up 25), 22 Quebec Bloc (BQ) (down ten), seven New Democratic Party (down 18) and one Green (down one). The Liberals are three seats short of a majority.

In my May 20 article, I covered two of the four recounts, one where a Liberal overturned a 44-vote BQ lead to win by just one vote, and the other that confirmed a narrow Liberal win over the Conservatives. In the remaining two recounts, the Conservatives overturned a 12-vote Liberal lead in one seat to win by 12 votes, and the Conservatives won another seat by just four votes, with their margin reduced from 77 votes on the original count.

Donald Trump’s “big beautiful bill (BBB)” passed the US House of Representatives by just a 215-214 margin on May 22. At the November 2024 elections, Republicans won the House by 220-215. Since then, two Republicans who resigned were replaced in special elections on April 1. In March two Democrats died and another died on May 21. Special elections to replace them have not yet been held, with the earliest scheduled for September. Republicans thus currently have a 220-212 House majority. Had these three Democrats still been alive, the BBB may have failed.

Trump’s net approval in Nate Silver’s aggregate of US national polls has recovered from its low in late April. His net approval was -9.7 in late April, but is now -3.7, with 50.2% disapproving and 46.5% approving. The stock market’s recovery from Trump’s tariff chaos in early April has helped Trump.

The Dutch government collapsed on Tuesday after Geert Wilders’ far-right PVV withdrew from the governing coalition owing to disputes over immigration policy. A new election will probably be held in October. The Netherlands uses national proportional representation without a threshold to elect its MPs.

The Portuguese parliamentary election was held on May 18 using PR by region. Four of the 230 seats were reserved for expatriate Portuguese and were not counted on election night. With these seats now included, results were 91 seats for the conservative AD (up 11 since 2024), 60 for the far-right Chega (up 10) and 58 for the centre-left Socialists (down 20).

Morgan: 58.5-41.5 to Labor (open thread)

A large sample post-election poll confirms the obvious fact of Labor’s federal dominance.

The first federal poll since the election is what will presumably be the resumption of the regular weekly Roy Morgan series. This accumulates poling conducted over the month since the election, encompassing 5128 respondents from May 5 to June 1. The result is strong for Labor even by the standards of post-election honeymoons, with a two-party preferred reading of 58.5-41.5, presumably based on respondent-allocated preferences. This compares with what looks like being an election result of 55.3-44.7, based on the almost complete determination of the AEC. The primary votes from the poll are Labor 37% (34.6% at the election), Coalition 31% (31.8%), Greens 11.5% (12.2%) and One Nation 6% (6.4%). With its large sample, the accompanying release features breakdowns by state and age cohort.

Late counting: week five

The Bradfield recount remains as close as close gets, plus an upset One Nation win in the last Senate result.

Click here for full display of House of Representatives election results.

Wednesday

The Bradfield recount has been completed with Nicolette Boele 26 votes ahead. Importantly, the AEC reports that its investigation into cases of multiple marks against names on the electoral roll found that only two voters were “likely to have had a second vote admitted to the count”. Should the Liberals (or, in theory, any voter in Bradfield) wish to pursue a legal challenge, they will have to persuade the court that at least 23 errors were made, either to their disadvantage with respect to adjudication of ballot papers or with voters having been wrongly allowed or refused votes.

Tuesday

Nicolette Boele ended the day 27 votes ahead in Bradfield, one down on yesterday. A good result for Boele from the St Ives Chase booth at the start of the day, with six votes knocked out for Gisele Kapterian, was cancelled out later on when Kapterian gained six votes from the Warrawee booth, the first revision in her favour affecting more than one or two votes. That just leaves a handful of votes to be accounted for, which will assuredly be wrapped up at some point today. The largest booth outstanding is Wahroonga with 693 votes – I am told that this is in fact mostly done, with no indication that the result will be substantially revised. There are also the very small Ultimo and Wynyard booths, with 51 votes between them, along with around 185 postals, 160 provisionals and 150 absents.

In short, it seems likely that the present margin will undergo only minor change, in which case the AEC will shortly declare Boele the winner. The question will then arise as to whether the matter ends up in court. The AEC itself can refer the matter to the Court of Disputed Returns (meaning the High Court or the Federal Court if it chooses to delegate the matter), but a media briefing conducted yesterday suggested this was unlikely. The most obvious basis for it to do so involves the incidence of multiple voting being greater than the final margin. Typically the number per electorate has been around 15, but an AEC spokesperson suggested it would be lower than that due to the increased use of electronic certified voter lists, through which it can be determined in real time if a prospective voter has been marked off already.

If so, it will be a matter for the defeated candidate (or perhaps more to the point, their party) to determine if a challenge is worth pursuing. Doing so would almost certainly involve disputing formality rulings, as was done without success by Labor candidate Rob Mitchell in the seat of McEwen in 2007 (who went on to win the seat in 2010 and has held it ever since). After winning the initial count by six votes and losing the recount by 12 (seemingly the only time a recount has reversed the original result at a federal election), Mitchell argued there were 40 ballot papers ranking him higher than Liberal rival Fran Bailey that had been wrongly rejected, along with one where the opposite happened. After reaching its own conclusions concerning 643 ballot papers that had been reserved for the adjudication of the returning officer, the court revised Mitchell’s losing margin up to 27, and duly rejected his appeal.

The precedent of a court determining a declared result to have been out by 15 suggests the Liberal Party would be strongly tempted to pursue the matter further – although its Queensland equivalent chose not to do so after falling 37 votes short in Herbert in 2016. While the chances of a court declaring Kapterian the winner outright would seem rather slim, it might conclude the proper margin to be below than the number of observed irregularities, causing it to void the result and have the election held afresh.

Monday

Nicolette Boele had her best day yet in the Bradfield recount, the 12 vote lead she opened yesterday widening to 28. Rechecking of nine booths, four of them in the Liberal stronghold of St Ives (reflecting the fact that the recount has proceeded more-or-less alphabetically), knocked 14 votes from Gisele Kapterian’s tally and four from Boele’s, while batches of absents and postals cut five from Kapterian and added one for Boele. This leaves the recount nearly 80% done – the 12 booths remaining to be rechecked (only one of which is a pre-poll centre, and that a rather small one) account for 12,056 votes, on top of which I am told that about 3700 postals, 1500 declaration pre-polls and 500 absents are still outstanding.

Saturday

Good news and bad news for tealdom today, the former being a breakthrough for Nicolette Boele in the knife-edge Bradfield recount. After slowly slipping in counting through most of the day, her one-vote deficit at the start drifting out to seven, Boele’s situation was transformed by the Turramurra pre-poll centre, which knocked out 16 of Gisele Kapterian’s votes and none of her own, pushing her to a 12-vote lead. In total, the recount has cut 82 votes from Kapterian’s tally after preferences and 62 from Boele’s. Out of the grand total of 118,851 votes, still to be recounted are 20 out of 52 election day booths, accounting for 20,322 votes, and two out of 13 pre-poll booths, accounting for 975. It’s a lot harder to say where we are with non-ordinary vote types, except that all but the fairly insignificant provisionals category have been revised, postals apparently on six occasions (though I remain unclear if this encompasses the early and especially strong batches for Kapterian).

Proceedings in Goldstein are finally at an end after the partial recount ended with Tim Wilson 175 ahead, in from 270 at the start of the process, prompting Zoe Daniel to concede defeat. It turns out the 50-vote error alluded to yesterday related to a batch being double-counted (which wasn’t the only time such a thing was found to have happened in Goldstein), rather than the maximal scenario of votes for Daniel having been attributed to Wilson.

Friday

The resolution of the last Senate result today in New South Wales turned up the first genuine surprise, with One Nation’s Warwick Stacey winning a seat that I (and to my knowledge everyone else) had reckoned a sure thing for Labor’s third candidate, Emilija Beljic. After Labor (Tony Sheldon and Tim Ayres) and the Coalition (Andrew Bragg and Jessica Collins) elected their top two candidates with full quotas, the remainder of the pack was whittled away until Mehreen Faruqi of the Greens crossed the threshold to win the fifth seat leaving Stacey and Beljic competing for the sixth. At that point, Stacey led Beljic by 0.886 quotas to 0.823, which preferences from Faruqi’s 0.069 surplus were insufficient to close, Stacey winning at the last by 0.891 quotas to 0.867.

As this simplification of the distribution illustrates, Stacey passed Beljic with the exclusion of Legalise Cannabis one step before the election of the Greens (UPDATE: Kevin Bonham in comments notes it was actually two steps, the previous transfer from Family First’s exclusion having put him ahead), a transfer that included 0.2446 quotas worth of first preferences for Legalise Cannabis and 0.1510 in preferences picked up along the way. My model based on preference flows in 2022 had Labor, One Nation and the Greens gaining very similar shares of preferences with the exclusion of Legalise Cannabis: instead, One Nation gained 0.146 quotas, the Greens 0.123 and Labor only 0.066, the 0.0797 gap between the One Nation and Labor shares pushing One Nation to their 0.024 quota winning margin. However, that is only part of the story of how my model’s projection of a 0.112 quota winning margin for Labor proved out by 0.136 quotas: up to the point of Legalise Cannabis’s exclusion, Labor under-performed the model by 0.046 quotas and One Nation over-performed it by about the same amount. Further insights are available to be gleaned from the full ballot paper data that has already been published by the AEC, though this will have to wait for now.

In the Bradfield recount, Nicolette Boele hit the lead today – but not for long, her one-vote advantage being reversed in the last updates for the day. Debate rages as to whether there is any underlying pattern within changes that have collectively reduced her deficit so far from eight votes to one, with what I would guess to be about 40% of the recount remaining to be done, continuing into today. Updates that looked promising for Boele based on the theory that large numbers of first preferences for Gisele Kapterian meant opportunities for them to be knocked out as informal have in some cases failed to deliver, notably today’s revision for the St Ives pre-poll centre, which reduced both candidates’ totals by one. Thirty-seven of 66 ordinary booths have been recounted, plus I assume all of the absent votes and an unknowable but obviously significant share of the 14,666 postals, but none of the 3405 declaration pre-polls.

The theory of high primary vote disadvantage in recounts has looked good in other contexts, including the Bradfield preference distribution where it played to Boele’s disadvantage by harming her main sources of preferences – and also in the partial recount in Goldstein, which seems to be almost finsihed. Tim Wilson has lost a net 63 votes since the start of the recount to Zoe Daniel’s 36, reducing his lead to 233. The AEC advises we can expect a correction tomorrow involving, among other things, a “change of 50” in favour of Daniel – which could mean a reduction in her deficit to around 183, or a transfer from Wilson to Daniel that would get it all the way to 133. Neither would get her as far as the 100 vote threshold she would need for the AEC to determine if it will keep the ball in play by proceeding to a full recount, though the latter might just about get her within striking range if the tide kept flowing in her favour.

Federal election plus three-and-a-half weeks (open thread)

Some post-election polling on motivation and timing of vote choice, a Labor Senate vacancy filled in Tasmania, and talk already of a looming federal by-election.

With Labor’s win confirmed yesterday in Calwell, Labor can lay claim to 94 seats in the House of Representatives, shattering its previous record of 86 at the 1987 election. In seat terms, the only result that bears comparison for Labor is the wartime election of 1943, when Labor under John Curtin won 49 in what was them a chamber of 75 seats. As covered on the dedicated late counting thread, the only seat that remains seriously in doubt is Bradfield, where the Liberals hold a 14-vote lead over the independent in the early stages of a recount – a partial recount begins today in Goldstein, though something fairly extraordinary would have to turn up to overturn the 260-vote Liberal lead. If nothing changes from here, the Liberals will have 29 seats, the Nationals nine, independents nine, and the Greens, Katter’s Australian Party and the Centre Alliance one each.

Some further random points of note:

• JWS Research has produced a “post-federal election survey report” along the same lines of a similar effort after the 2022 election, but has been sparing with details thus far. The Financial Review reports it found 49% of Labor voters identified a favourable view of the party as the main motivation for their choice, followed by 23% for the leader, 18% for policies or issues and 7% for the local candidate. Among Coalition voters, 56% named the party, 20% policies or issues, 13% the local candidate and only 9% the leader. The pollster further relates a finding that 16% decided on the day they voted and another 39% during the campaign period, which didn’t differ greatly from the 2022 results. The poll was conducted Tuesday to Wednesday in the week after the election from a sample of 1000.

• Josh Dolega, an officer at the Australian Taxation Office in Burnie and organiser with the Left faction Community and Public Sector Union, has been preselected to fill the Labor Tasmanian Senate vacancy created by Anne Urquhart’s successful move to the lower house seat of Braddon. Sue Bailey of The Mercury reports the field also included Unions Tasmania secretary Jessica Munday, Meander Valley councillor Ben Dudman, former party state secretary Stuart Benson, Australian Education Union state president David Genford, and Burnie councillor and disabilities worker Chris Lynch. Dolega has a distinctly low profile, but had backing from Urquhart and her power base in the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union.

• By way of refuting suggestions that Labor’s low primary vote raised questions about Labor’s legitimacy or mandate, national secretary Paul Erickson noted in his National Press Club address last week that the party recorded a higher vote in the Senate than the House of Representatives, which he attributed to tactical voting in the lower house. While the distinction was fine – Labor recorded 34.6% of the vote in the House and 35.1% in the Senate – the last occasion I can identify where the two were matched at concurrent elections was in 1958.

• On the subject of Paul Erickson, Nine Newspapers reports on suggestions he could contest a by-election for the Melbourne seat of Isaacs should Mark Dreyfus react to his dumping as Attorney-General by quitting politics, the odds on which would seem rather short.

Late counting: week four

Latest developments in the final stages of the election count, specifically the resolution of the Senate counts and recounts in Bradfield and Goldstein.

Click here for full display of House of Representatives election results.

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.

Tasmanian upper house elections live

Live commentary on the count for the Tasmanian Legislative Council seats of Montgomery, Pembroke and Nelson.

8pm. With all booths counted now, Casey Hiscutt holds a small lead over Stephen Parry in Montgomery and looks set to win on preferences; Meg Webb is on over 50% in Nelson; and Labor’s Luke Edmunds is on 44.13%, still almost doubling the second-placed Greens and assured of a comfortable win.

7.06pm. Labor member Luke Edmunds has fallen below 40% after a less good result from the third and biggest booth to report so far, Lindisfarne. However, the third-placed Greens, on 26.37%, seem unlikely to do well enough on preferences to threaten him.

6.58pm. With thirteen booths in, Liberal candidate Stephen Parry has pulled ahead of independent Casey Hiscutt, by 1497 (31.46%) to 1486 (31.23%), but the latter still appears likely to win on preferences from the third-placed Greens on 1011 (21.24%), who are presumably soaking up a lot of the homeless vote. Independent incumbent Meg Webb has a majority on first preferences after four of the twelve booths have reported in Nelson, and looks safe. Two booths are in from Pembroke, where Labor member Luke Edmunds’ 302 votes (45.55%) are nearly double his nearest rival’s, suggesting he will be comfortably returned.

6.43pm. The first booth in Pembroke looks encouraging for Labor member Luke Edmunds, who has 216 votes (48.43%) with the rest scattered, the Greens coming second with 90 votes to independent Allison Ritchie’s 85.

6.41pm. Up to eight booths now in Montgomery, and Hiscutt looking good with a lead over Parry of 588 (32.83%) to 463 (25.85%).

6.38pm. Six booths in now from Montgomery, continuing to show independent Casey Hiscutt leading Stephen Parry of the Liberal Party, by 282 (31.58%) votes to 238 (26.65%), suggesting a likely win for Hiscutt given preferences will presumably favour him.

6.35pm. The first booth in Nelson, from Kingston West, has independent member Meg Webb on 119 votes (49.17%) to the Liberal candidate’s 87 (35.95%) and the Greens’ 36 (14.88%).

6.30pm. Three booths in from Montgomery, where independent Casey Hiscutt leads with 122 votes (33.15%) to Liberal candidate Stephen Parry’s 87 (23.64%), not far ahead of the Greens candidate’s 74 (20.11%) and Shooters’ 73 (19.84%). The voting system is preferential, but voters are only required to number a minimum of three boxes.

6pm. Polls have closed for the elections for three of the 15 Tasmanian Legislative Council seats, which are elected over a six-year cycle in which either two or three seats fall vacant each year. This year’s contests are for the northern coast seat of Montgomery, where the retirement of Liberal incumbent Leonie Hiscutt looks to have resulted in a contest between former Senator Stephen Parry as Liberal candidate and Casey Hiscutt, Central Coast councillor and the son of the outgoing member, who is running as an independent; the eastern Hobart seat of Pembroke, where Labor incumbent Luke Edmunds is being challenged by two notable independents in Allison Ritchie, a former Labor member for the seat, and Tony Mulder, a former independent member for the seat of Rumney who has in the past been a Liberal candidate; and the outer southern Hobart seat of Nelson, where independent Meg Webb faces opposition from Liberal and Greens candidates who appear unlikely to trouble her.

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