Triple M by-elections live

9.50. Here they are – Labor’s two-party vote in Maroubra with all booths in is 68.2 per cent compared with my own estimate of 67.5 per cent, and the swing to the Greens 9.7 per cent rather than my estimate of 10.4 per cent.

9.41. Just waiting on notional preference results from Maroubra now. About a third of them are in, and presumably the rest will follow in one hit.

9.38. Randwick Girls School is on the board at last. It only has 2.8 per cent of the electorate’s voters, but I suppose there’s no harm in being thorough.

9.34. Typically, the majority of Macquarie Fields notional preference figures have come through in one rush. They have Labor’s two-party vote at 60.1 per cent compared with my own estimate of 59.2 per cent, which puts the swing just short of the psychological barrier of 10 per cent.

9.30. Randwick Girls School continues to hold out. The suspense is killing me.

9.23. Final primary vote booth results in from Macquarie Fields.

9.20. The last notional preference distribution from Marrickville is in, and Labor’s lead is still 4.2 per cent.

9.15. The SEO have corrected the Nagle Park booth error referred to earlier, which has lifted the swing to the Greens from 8.8 per cent to 10.2 per cent – but this measure is of limited value since the Greens came third to the Liberals in 2003.

9.06. The last booth in Marrickville is now in, so the results in the table above are final for the evening.

8.58. With more booths now in, the notional two-party preferred result in Marrickville is stable on 4.2 per cent – which is to say the discrepancy with my own figure has reduced.

8.55. The long-awaited Marrickville blurt has finally hit – the count goes from 27.4 per cent to 77.4 per cent and the swing to the Greens increases from 4.2 per cent to 6.0 per cent – not bad, but not enough. The Electoral Office could probably have done a better job of maintaining the suspense here. Tebbutt did will in the all-important Marrickville booth, winning 64.0 per cent of the primary vote and suffering only a 1.2 per cent swing.

8.44. Four more booths from Maroubra leave only Randwick Girls High to come. The meaningless swing to the Greens is up from 8.3 per cent to 8.8 per cent.

8.32. Marrickville continues to lag – 15 of 28 booths still to come, mostly the big ones, the grandaddy being the Marrickville booth which accounted for 8.6 per cent of the vote in 2003.

8.32. Seven new booths from Macquarie Fields lift the count from 39.9 per cent to 69.0 per cent, and reduce the swing to the Liberals from 12.1 per cent to 10.8 per cent.

8.25. Results continue to come through in occasional spurts – five or six large booths in Maroubra have lifted the count from 37.6 per cent to 62.6 per cent, with the swing to the Greens drifting out from 7.4 per cent to 8.3 per cent.

8.11. A flurry of notional preference results in Marrickville suggests my preference allocations might be flattering Labor – their lead is at 4.1 per cent rather than my own calculation of 6.5 per cent. Might get to work on that.

8.05. Things have got a lot more interesting in New Zealand while my back has been turned – both major parties around 40 per cent, the Greens fighting for their lives on 5.0 per cent, and the looming promise of some very intriguing coalition negotiations.

7.59. The drought breaks in Maroubra, lifting the count from 16.6 per cent to 37.6 per cent. Surely some mistake in the Nagle Park booth – 1009 votes for Labor, zero for the rest. For the time being the swing from Labor to the Greens is 7.4 per cent, but I think we can expect a correction on that one.

7.53. Only Macquarie Fields has made substantial progress on the notional distribution of preferences, which has Labor on 56.7 per cent compared with my own calculation of 57.8 per cent.

7.48. The trickle becomes a flood in Macquarie Fields – more booths than you can shake a stick at boosts the count from 12.3 per cent to 39.9 per cent. But the swing to the Liberals doesn’t change much – down from 12.3 per cent to 12.1 per cent.

7.41. A flurry of results in Marrickville boosts the count from 6.8 per cent to 27.4 per cent. The effect has been to pad the swing to the Greens out to 4.2 per cent, but unless there is something wrong with my calculation you would have be calling it for Tebbutt round about now.

7.26. Two more booths add 6.4 per cent to the total count in Maroubra and ease the swing to the Greens slightly, from 9.8 per cent to 9.6 per cent.

7.23. Two more booths from the Labor versus Liberal contest in Macquarie Fields – Glenfield East and The Grange – give the Liberals handsome swings of 12.8 per cent and 13.5 per cent, but nothing like enough to put Labor in danger.

7.20. They don’t muck about at Maroubra Junction – despite accounting for 9.9 per cent of the vote the booth is the second in Maroubra to post its results. There is a 10.2 per cent swing to the Greens, but still a 56.8 per cent primary vote for Labor.

7.12. In Marrickville, the swing to the Greens in Petersham North (worth 1.3 per cent of the total vote) barely registers; St Clemens (1.6 per cent) swings 3.2 per cent. I put the overall swing at a mere 1.0 per cent.

7.04. A third booth in from Marrickville – Prince Alfred Hospital – shows a further easing in the overall swing to the Greens, now 4.6 per cent.

7.04. First two small booths in Marrickville show a 5.0 per cent swing to the Greens, who need 10.7 per cent.

6.58. And they’re off! The West Hoxton booth swings 13.7 per cent to Liberal in Macquarie Fields; Randwick Hospital in Maroubra hardly budges in terms of the Labour versus Greens contest.

6.46. Still nothing.

6.15. Welcome to what I hope will be comprehensive live coverage of the NSW by-elections. It is not yet clear if the New South Wales Electoral Office will do the right thing by me and provide booth-by-booth results as they come through. If they don’t, I’m not sure that there will be very much to say. I might have to fall back on the New Zealand election, where Helen Clark looks to be in big trouble with 7 per cent of the vote counted.

Author: William Bowe

William Bowe is a Perth-based election analyst and occasional teacher of political science. His blog, The Poll Bludger, has existed in one form or another since 2004, and is one of the most heavily trafficked websites on Australian politics. View all posts by William Bowe