Photo finishes

I will use this post to provide ongoing commentary of late counting in doubtful seats over the coming days/weeks.

UPDATE (27/3/07): Christian Kerr points to a slow count in today’s Crikey:

The ever-protracted count for the NSW Legislative Council election is likely to be even slower this time, with the Australian Electoral Commission refusing to authorise any more overtime for the AEC staff engaged for the count. There have been unprecedented levels of cooperation between the AEC and the NSW electoral authorities this election, but after just two days of preparing for the Upper House count over the weekend, the AEC has gone into a panic about the likely level of overtime, and has literally ordered its workers to take a “rest”. Counting will now finish each day at 5pm, with no approval for overtime to complete the count. With Easter imminent, this delay is likely to push back the announcement of the Upper House results substantially. The NSW Electoral Commission is understood to have expected the AEC to finish the Legislative Council count by Wednesday. The AEC told staff that the Electoral Commissioner has been informed that he will have to adjust his timetable. No amended timeframe for the conclusion of the count was suggested. A major outcry from furious Government, opposition and minor parties about the delay in finalising the count for the Upper House count in 2003, marred by slow counting and a total meltdown in the computer software used for calculating the results, saw new procedures adopted for the 2007 election. Efficiency was supposed to have been increased by the use of AEC staff in the count.

Legislative Council

Roy Smith (Shooters) 83,320 0.61
Trevor Khan (Nationals) 57,727 0.43
Arthur Chesterfield-Evans (Democrats) 50,335 0.37
Janey Woodger (AAFI) 46,332 0.34
Robert Smith (Fishing) 45,460 0.34

Sunday 3pm. I’m not doing too well here – I now realise the Legislative Council Summary figures I was just getting excited about have been little changed in the past week. They tell us of 3.3 million votes out of roughly 4 million in total, including 293,240 "other" votes that include (I believe) both informals and below-the-lines. The progressive totals figures show us the destination of 13,566 out of a probable total of about 80,000 below-the-line votes; from these the Democrats have polled 5.6 per cent and the Coalition 17.2 per cent, bearing in mind that not all of these votes will stay within the party ticket. Using these figures to extrapolate the as-yet-uncounted votes, I have the Democrats with a fractional lead over the Nationals’ Trevor Khan, but the margin is far too close (and the method far too crude) for anything to be stated with confidence.

Saturday 11pm. Okay, turns out all that effort on the previous entry was wasted. Because as well as the daily PDF file update, the NSWEC also has on its main page a different count with 3,278,467 votes. This includes 293,240 "other" votes, which probably means about 200,000 informals plus yet-to-be-counted below-the-line votes. There would be about 700,000 further to come. These figures show that the Shooters Party are home, while the gap between the Coalition and the Democrats has narrowed considerably. If the Coalition’s share continues to decline at the same rate as it did between the 1.9 million count and the 3.3 million count, the outcome will be very close indeed.

Saturday 10pm. A further 765,023 votes have been added, bringing the total to 1,938,396 out of a likely 4 million. This has resulted in a significant shift in the aggregate vote from the Coalition (down from 35.4 per cent to 34.4 per cent) to Labor (up from 40.4 per cent to 41.4 per cent). If there was reason to think that trend would continue, Labor’s number 10 candidate Barry Calvert might still be out of the hunt. However, aggregate lower house figures (Labor 39.0 per cent, Coalition 37.0 per cent) suggest that won’t be the case, even when taking into account the Coalition’s traditionally lower vote in the upper house (33.0 per cent against 35.0 per cent in 2003). In the meantime, the drop in the Coalition vote has reduced their surplus over the seventh quota from 0.78 to 0.56, almost enough to return the Nationals’ Trevor Khan to twenty-first place, with the Shooters Party up from 0.53 to 0.55.

Friday 8pm. The NSWEC has published a group and candidate votes report, based on the results of 1,168,246 group votes and 5,127 below-the-lines. The totals in 2003 were 3,721,457 and a bit over 70,000. Ben Raue says the two combined suggest the Nationals’ Trevor Khan has moved up a spot from 20 to 21; if this continues, the final spot looms as a race between the Shooters Party (0.53 quotas), Unity (0.35), the Democrats (0.35) and AAFI (0.30), with the Fishing Party slowly but surely headed for the exit (don’t let the door hit your arse on the way out, Bob Smith).

Friday 3pm. Props to Upperhouse.info for pointing out the following message from the NSWEC: "Legislative Council progressive totals will be provided daily in this directory from the evening of Friday 30 March 2007".

Sunday 5pm. The raw numbers at present look straightforward enough: Labor 9, Coalition 8, Greens 2, CDP 1, Shooters Party 1. However, Stephen L in comments cautiously offers that the Democrats (and perhaps also AAFI and the Fishing Party) might do well enough on below-the-lines and preferences to stay in the hunt against the Nationals’ Trevor Khan, eighth Coalition candidate and Poll Bludger fan.

Lake Macquarie

Greg Piper 12,913 30.3 18,656 50.1
Jeff Hunter 17,294 40.6 18,550 49.9

Wednesday 2am. One more change of lead in the final strait has given Greg Piper a 106-vote win after the full distribution of preferences.

Monday 2.30pm. Another 940 absent votes have produced yet another change of lead, Jeff Hunter now ahead by 65 votes. Antony Green notes in comments that the closest outcome in modern times was the Liberals’ eight-vote win in Coogee in 1973; this was overturned on a legal challenge, and Labor won the ensuing by-election by 54 votes.

Monday 1.30pm. The lead changes again after the addition of 496 further absent votes, which have put Greg Piper 44 votes in front.

Friday 5pm. In an exciting late-count development, Greg Piper has done very poorly from the addition of 1,988 absent votes (23.7 per cent compared with 30.7 per cent overall), which have turned Labor incumbent Jeff Hunter’s 272-vote deficit into a 22-vote lead.

Thursday 10pm. More than 3000 postal votes and about 700 further pre-polls added; still no absent votes. Greg Piper’s lead has changed little, from 263 to 272.

Wednesday 9pm. Excellent account of today’s slow progress from Sally McEwan in comments, along with informed talk of deep Labor pessimism.

Tuesday 4.30pm. Very good call yesterday from Sally McEwan – the second batch of pre-polls has been very similar to the first, barring a slightly higher primary vote for the Liberals. This boosted Greg Piper’s lead by 243 votes; however, 122 "Dec Inst" votes have reeled him in slightly, going 59-15 in Labor’s favour. Piper’s lead is now 263, but with well over 5000 postal and absent votes pending, it’s still too close to call.

Monday 11.30pm. Sally McEwan corrects my previous description of Carey Bay as a conservative area: "Carey Bay pre-poll is different from Carey Bay conservative lakeside waterfront booth … The remainder of the pre-poll votes will favour Piper in the same proportion or greater".

Monday 10pm. Partial pre-poll results have been posted, 999 votes out of what scrutineer Sally McEwan says is about 2000. These votes are "a mix of Cooranbong and Carey Bay", which is to say they include the much touted Seventh Day Adventist community, along with another conservative area. As expected, these votes have strongly favoured Greg Piper, whose 158-vote deficit has turned into a lead of 64. This sounds a little disappointing from Piper’s perspective, because the remainder of the pre-polls will presumably be strong for Labor. Next comes about 3000 absent votes and 2250 postals – these differed only slightly from the polling booth results in 2003, though Labor’s vote was notably a little lower and the "others" a little higher.

Monday 2.30pm. Looks like those Dora Creek votes for Piper stayed missing – his tally there has gone from 533 to 508. No word yet on pre-polls.

Monday 4am. A scrutineer at the count, Sally McEwan, says in comments she can "confirm the expected advantage to Independent Piper from the pre-poll votes from Cooranbong". These votes "will be counted and distributed tomorrow". McEwan also reports that "24 or so Piper votes" from the Dora Creek booth are "missing", "leading to extra State Electoral officers being called from Sydney for a reconstruction of the Dora Creek booth tomorrow".

Sunday 5pm. Labor incumbent Jeff Hunter leads independent Greg Piper by 158 votes. That would normally be difficult to close, given Labor’s organisational efficiency with respect to pre-poll and postal voting. However, Lake Macquarie has the quirk of the Seventh Day Adventist community at Cooranbong, which produces a big flow of mostly conservative pre-poll votes due to its observation of the Sabbath on Saturday. In 2003, Labor polled 795 votes (34.2 per cent) to the Liberals’ 1173 (52.4 per cent) on pre-polls, compared with overall totals of 54.9 per cent and 30.7 per cent. Pre-polls accounted for 5.1 per cent of the total vote; also still to come are the less quirky absent (7.3 per cent) and postal (5.3 per cent) votes. The latter might go a little better for Labor than last time, as consciousness of their danger might have resulted in a better organised postal vote campaign.

Port Stephens

Craig Baumann 17,894 42.5 19,375 50.1
Jim Arneman 17,544 41.7 19,311 49.9

Wednesday 2am. The margin widened to 64 votes after completion of the full preference distribution.

Friday 3pm. The notional preference count has been completed, and it points to a 19-vote Liberal victory. However, a "proper" preference count will now follow, and these can turn up anomalies. For example, the primary vote recount cut Chris Baumann’s vote by five votes and Jim Arneman’s by six (UPDATE: And more pertinently, as Geoff Lambert points out in comments, there were variations of up to five votes at individual booths).

Thursday 10pm. Absent and postal votes are now coming in at a fair clip, and while it’s still extremely close, the trend has been with the Liberals. Antony Green‘s regular updates show how Labor candidate Jim Arneman’s lead narrowed and then disappeared in late afternoon counting, with the Liberals’ Chris Baumann currently ahead by 56 votes.

Tuesday 8pm. Not much progress today: polling booth re-check completed and 213 "Dec Inst" votes added, increasing the Labor lead from 76 to 86.

Monday 10pm. Either Port Stephens has had an extraordinarily high number of section votes, or the pre-polls have been entered on the wrong line – I will assume the latter. There are 1,244 of them and they have tipped the see-saw back towards the Liberals, whose deficit has narrowed from 153 votes to 76. However, the 2003 figures suggest Labor should do better on absent and postal votes. Slow progress on the polling booth re-check for some reason.

Monday 4am. The Daily Telegraph reports confident noises from a Liberal scrutineer, as "many votes were exhausting because of a decision by the Greens not to preference Labor". Conversely, the Australian Financial Review reports that "Labor strategists are sounding increasingly confident".

Sunday 5pm. Labor’s Jim Arneman was 153 votes behind the Liberals’ Chris Baumann at the close of counting last night, but is now 111 votes ahead. Pre-poll and postal figures from 2003 are probably no guide, as the seat was less fiercely contested last time.

Newcastle

Jodi McKay 12,951 31.2 13,793 50.7
John Tate 10,003 24.1 13,430 49.3
Bryce Gaudry 8,774 21.1

Friday 9.30pm. Those two-candidate figures quoted in the Herald have now been posted on the NSWEC site.

Thursday 10pm. Yesterday, the Newcastle Herald told us that "an Electoral Commission notional distribution showed Ms McKay on 13,793 votes and Cr Tate on 13,430". Today it reported that "preliminary counts show that Cr Tate would gain more than 2000 votes on McKay once preferences are distributed". On present indications, that would leave him about 700 votes in arrears.

Tuesday 2am. The NSWEC reveals nothing of the two-candidate preferred count that has evidently been conducted between Jodi McKay and John Tate, but the Sydney Morning Herald reports Tate conceding he is 700 votes behind. Morris Iemma is claiming victory.

Monday 4am. Yesterday’s recheck of first preferences from polling booths has increased Tate’s tally by 18 and reduced McKay’s by 12. The aforementioned Anthony Llewellyn says: "having reviewed the results in total now, my guess is a McKay win over Tate by around 500 … Gaudry will not pull ahead of Tate (of this I am now very confident)". The Sydney Morning Herald reports Labor "has become more confident".

Sunday 5pm. Still anybody’s guess as far as I can see. There is a 2.6 per cent gap between John Tate (24.1 per cent) and Bryce Gaudry (21.5 per cent), which might be closed with preferences from the Greens (11.2 per cent), who directed to Gaudry. Last night’s NSWEC notional preference count assumed Gaudry rather than Tate would finish second; if that is so, Labor’s Jodi McKay will win quite comfortably. If not, the race between McKay and Tate will come down to unpredictable preference flows. Last night, reader Anthony Llewellyn provided a preference breakdown from a booth at which he was scrutineering: if this is applied consistently, Tate emerges ahead with 12,792 votes to 12,327 (not counting preferences from the CDP and three other independents, who collectively account for 915 votes). However, Llewellyn also spoke of better preference flows for Labor at other less conservative booths.

Goulburn

Pru Goward 16,994 39.9 18,632 51.3
Paul Stephenson 10,544 25.3 17,657 48.7

Thursday 8pm. Paul Stephenson has conceded defeat after being buried by absent and postal votes, widening the lead to 975. This entry, and the figures above, will not be further updated.

Tuesday 2pm. A further 670 pre-polls have gone rather better for Goward than the previous two batches, increasing her lead by 10 votes. Even better for her are the 154 "Dec Inst Votes" (declaration and/or institution?), which have run 70-31 in her favour.

Monday 10pm. I was mistaken to say all the pre-polls were in – it was in fact only about half. The newly added second batch was not quite as bad for Goward as the first, but it still cost her another 40 votes or so.

Monday 2.30pm. Pre-polls are in (all of them, or almost all), and they are surprisingly poor for Goward – she has polled 35.7 per cent compared with her 39.8 per cent of ordinary votes, while Paul Stephenson has 30.6 per cent compared with 25.1 per cent. If preferences follow the same pattern, this will narrow the gap by 134 votes to a little over 300. In 2003, pre-polls were 5.6 per cent of the total – still to come are absents (8.8 per cent), postals (5.6 per cent) and a few others (0.7 per cent).

Monday 4am. Yesterday’s recheck of first preferences from polling booths appears to have unearthed 38 extra votes for Stephenson and only one for Goward. It appears that Goward is better placed than it seemed on election night due to an across-the-board increase in "plumped" voting (numbering one box and then exhausting) at this election.

Sunday 5pm. An updated count (polling booths only) has seen Pru Goward’s lead after preferences increase from 311 votes last night to a fairly handy 455. Talk of the Labor candidate beating Paul Stephenson into second place on preferences has faded.

Maitland

Frank Terenzini 14,819 39.7 16,741 50.9
Peter Blackmore 10,093 27.1 16,157 49.1

Friday 9.30pm. The NSWEC has finally unveiled its notional Labor-versus-independent two-candidate preferred, which shows Frank Terenzini a comfortable 584 votes ahead. That wraps it up for my coverage of this seat.

Thursday 10pm. This count has stayed on ice for some reason, at least as far as the NSWEC website is concerned, but the ABC reports Labor is more than 1,000 votes ahead.

Tuesday 2pm. Very slow progress in the count, but Morris Iemma has claimed victory for Labor.

Monday 4am. The Sydney Morning Herald reports Labor "has become more confident".

Sunday 5pm. As with Newcastle, this is one that will depend on preference flows we don’t know about yet because the notional count was Labor-versus-Liberal, rather than Labor-versus-Peter Blackmore. For what it’s worth, the primary vote figures (Blackmore 27.1 per cent, Labor 39.8 per cent, Liberal 20.1 per cent) are similar to those Pru Goward faces in Goulburn (Paul Stephenson 25.0 per cent, Liberal 39.9 per cent, Labor 22.4 per cent). The difference being that Blackmore will need a strong flow of preferences from the Liberals, while Stephenson will need them from Labor. Can anyone suggest if supporters of one party or the other are more dutiful with respect to how-to-vote instructions?

Dubbo

Dawn Fardell 17,158 41.9 19,270 50.9
Greg Matthews 17,518 42.8 18,590 49.1

Wednesday 8pm. With most postals and about 600 absent votes now in, any remaining doubt is now gone. Fardell’s lead has now widened to 680 votes, or 0.9 per cent. No further updates will be added to this entry.

Tuesday 4.30pm. Pre-poll figures are now up at the NSWEC site, and they tell a different story to the Financial Review – 2318 for Dawn Fardell and 2177 for the Nationals, widening Fardell’s lead to a surely unassailable 521.

Tuesday 2am. It falls to the Australian Financial Review to inform us that "two-thirds of the pre-poll votes have been counted, according to the returning officer. The results have favoured Nationals challenger Greg Matthews, who garnered 1495 of the pre-poll votes on offer while 1453 went to incumbent independent Dawn Fardell". These results are yet to appear on the NSWEC site. However, this makes only a modest dent in what had been a 401-vote lead.

Monday 2.30pm. Re-checking of polling booth first preferences has now been completed, giving a 42-vote boost to Dawn Fardell. Most notably, 37 votes have been deducted from the Nationals at the Forbes booth.

Sunday 5pm. Independent candidate Dawn Fardell leads Nationals candidate Greg Matthews by 401 votes. The precedent of 2003, when then-independent member Tony McGrane did somewhat less well on non-ordinary than polling booth votes (from a near identical vote total to Fardell’s), suggests this could yet narrow.

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.

542 comments on “Photo finishes”

Comments Page 2 of 11
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  1. Geoff Ash Says:
    “I have no time for right wing independents/parties, but most of the independents in the NSW parliament are/were moderate or progressive. We have two party dominance by two conservative parties, one less so than the other. Both are almost puppets of big business including commercial media interests, and that is not good for democracy”

    You might want to have a look at the campaign contribution of the Labor party and compare with contribution to the Liberals

    You might also note that Bob Carr in his final act, put out a tender for a desalination plant, which Macquarie Bank got 40 Million (?) for supplying one. About 2 weeks after he quit, he was on the board of Macquarie Bank. Guess who is the favorite to get the Desalination plant infrastructure project?

  2. Can the assembled commentariat let me know how long – approx – it will take to count the Town Hall, absent, postal etc votes? I understand the results won’t be officially declared for some time now, but can we expect the non-booth votes sometime today? Thanks

  3. Epping: All electoral commissions do indicative counts of preferences on election night. These are done entirely to assist analysis on the night. However, it requires each officer in charge of a polling place to be given a list of two candidates to whom the preferences will be thrown. All primary votes are tallied, then the votes for all but the nominated final two candidates are re-examined to determine which of the final two will get their preferences. This is not an official count, merely one done for information purposes. The real distribution of preferences is only done for the electorate as a whole once all primary vote counting is completed. In the case of Epping and Maitland, the Commissioner picked the wrong two candidates. In Newcastle, the Commissioner picked a pair that may or may not be the final pairing.

    Goulburn: Ms Goward is ahead by 455 votes, and given the difficulty Independents have with organising postal and absent votes, she should hold that seat. Her lead is over IND Stephenson. She will be even further ahead if Labor passes Stephenson.

    Port Stephens: Labor on 50.2%, if the decalaration votes flow as last time, Labor will lose with 49.9%. In other words, if the declaration votes go stronger for Labor this time, they could win. So, it’s a definate undecided.

    They start counting Postals and pre-polls today. Absent votes and the Sydney Town Hall booths get to the home district on Tuesday. The cut off for Postals is Thursday. The closer the seat, the greater the scrutineering effort, the longer it takes to get the final result.

  4. Well done to EdwardStJohn, whom my memory (never reliable) tells me predicted the 53-47 2PP vote to the ALP.

    However, that size swing (around 3.5%) can only be considered modest, given the circumstances. Labor should have been out on its ear, and it’s an indictment of the Libs that they did not even get close. They have made some gains in the marginals, so a win in 2011 is not out of the question, but they are going to have to run a damn sight better campaign that they did this time.

    But it’s clear that it wasn’t just Debnam’s ineptness that got Labor back. WorkChoices is clearly one Federal issue that had a big impact, as has been suggested by numerous oped pieces, exit polling, pre-polling and focus groups. Of course, Howard and Hockey have been trying to explain it all away, but they are fully kidding themselves. These IR laws are poison for the Libs. I sometimes wonder that the reason the Libs just don’t get why people are worried about these IR laws is due to its preponderance of pre-selecting small-business types and corporate lawyers. Clearly the Liberal Party needs to broaden its variety of candidates!

  5. So that’s 18 seats where an independent or Green came 1st or 2nd, with three others (Willoughby, North Shore, Myall Lakes) where there’s a chance.

  6. It was the hung parliament of 1991-95, that brought about the demise of Nick Greiner during the Metherill affair. Greiner was cleared of all charges by the Supreme Court but this was well and truly after the independents gave him the choice of resigning or handing the baton to Carr.
    If they had not done this, I am sure Greiner would have stayed leader till the 95 election and I will speculate that he could have easily won.
    Even though I was happy to see the end of Greiner, I will agree with Adam that a stable majority in the house that provides government is much better than a government dependent on sectional interests.
    I believe the system in NSW is very fair, with the LC you only need 2-3% public support to get a publically financed soap box on which you can broadcast your interests.

  7. Hi Barney

    I guess only time will tell if Jodi McKay is a “more capable member”. I think she can do it (but admit i am biased). The point is she could hardly be less capable than the now ousted member.

    I was puzzled by the campaign slogan – “Bryce Gaudry – Standing up for Newcastle”, when a lot of people felt “Bryce Gaudry – Sleeping on the Job” was probably closer to the mark.

    This became even more comical on election day when his campaign workers referred to him as the “Bryce Gaudry – the Sitting Member”.

    “Which one is it?”, I ventured to say. “Sitting or standing?”. I wondered if it was possible to do both at the same time and whether the candidate would be prepared to come to the booth and demonstrate the new pose?

    At which point one of Bryce’s campaign posters fell over with a puff of wind…

  8. Thank you Hugo,

    You may see the SMH analysis and indirectly Nielsen that WorkChoices is worth 1-2% swing to the ALP federally which I think is likely to be correct.
    Given that its not likely to be enough particularly as the outer west swings were equal to or better than the North Shore/ Sutherland swings suggest the outer Western Sydney Howard battlers wont change over WorkChoices (where it is needed)
    Where Labor did better than expected was in the Illawarra which suggests Labor voters swung towards Labor on WorkChoices.
    Bottom Line: Violent agreement from Labor voters. Heavy Kevvie aint going to become PM without root and branch reform of the ALP and new policies as Costello says if you want a Liberal government why wouldnt you vote for the real thing and not the imitation.

  9. oakshott, the current system maybe ok for you, but if your part of that large group that isn’t represented by the big two, then you can understand why we hate it.

  10. I was pretty sceptical about ESJ’s predictions, and the fact is that he was (significantly) over-optimistic on the LNP side, at one point listing 8 Labor seats and predicting 6 of them would fall.

    But, give the guy his due, he got 53:47 bang-on. I just don’t think that state/nationwide 2PPs are as informative as many people think they are, and the 2007 NSW state election result (contrasted with the 2003 result) is a good example of why.

    As for the whole WorkChoices thingie, the following was ESJ’s pre-poll take on assessing whether the NSW state election says anything about it as a vote-winner/loser:
    “the Howard battlers which in NSW are your outer western sydney tradesman type voter are the people who supposedly have been turned off the rodent by workchoices. If WChoices is the silver bullet election changer you would expect they would all vote ALP in a campaign which has run an almighty scare about W/Choices without a response from Team Debnam (ie swings to the ALP in Camden and Wollondilly or a lower than state wide Lib swing).”

    Surely Penrith would have to be included in the “outer western Sydney tradesman type voter” demographic. So, the evidence on the theory:
    Statewide 2PP swing- 3.2% to LNP (apparently– why is data so hard to come by on this one?)
    Wollondilly- 1.8% to Libs
    Camden- 5.0% to Libs
    Penrith- 2.6% to Labor (in its best half-dozen results in the state)

    So there may well be an effect, but if so, it’s very inconsistent. As a rule, I’m pretty darn sceptical about the influence of any federal issue on state campaigns (and vice versa). However, to say that working conditions is analogous to Tampa, Iraq etc (i.e. something that gets the political classes very excited but the average voter doesn’t care about), wouldn’t be borne out by chatting with the residents of the ‘burbs (nor, I expect, by the parties’ internal polling).

    More telling than number-crunching was Howard’s (in retrospect) somewhat foolish statement a few months back that he’d be mucking in to help Debnam win, which just served to underscore the fact that he was conspicuously missing from the Libs’ campaign.

    Today’s interesting poser, following on from mumble’s pertinent observation that Goward has a lot to thank Nifty Nev for (she would have clearly lost if not for OPV): would Greg Smith have lost Epping under a compulsory preferential system?

  11. In relation to Antony Green’s previous comments.

    I wonder if anyone would be prepared to venture an opinion as to why the Returning Officer cannot decide to change the 2 candidates for the Notional Distribution of Preferences.

    Given that all the ballots are recounted the next day it seems silly that in a situation such as Newcastle that the redistribution occurs again the same way. Situations where the 3rd placed candidate comes from behind to win are extremely rare. If the RO had been able to change his form guide we would probably be closer to knowing the result in Newcastle by now which would seem to be good for democracy.

  12. Re Epping: Martin Levine got 6% of the primary vote. Has there ever been a poorer choice of an indicative count candidate?

    And a big “wag of the finger” to the SMH not only for overemphasising this meaningless two candidate count, but also for referring to it as “two party preferred”. (link)

  13. The point about the 2-party swing is that it was coming off a rock-bottom base last time. All the Libs have done is restore their base vote, regaining Manly and getting big swings in their safe seats. They also cut Labor margins in middle-class marginal seats back to a level which reflects the actual class composition of those seats. So all they did was get back to a “normal” opposition level, rather than totally down the toilet as they were before. The work still lies ahead of them, and meanwhile Iemma has established himself as a legitimate and even modestly popular premier, which I for one didn’t think he could do when he took over.

    And now the Libs are going to have a leadership stoush without even waiting for the federal election. Howard will be thrilled.

  14. Today’s interesting poser … would Greg Smith have lost Epping under a compulsory preferential system?

    Quite simply, no.

    Smith got 42% of the primary vote. He also got HTV preferences from Unity (5%) and CDP (4%).

    Smith would probably also get the bulk of prefs from the far right Metlikovec (Ind, 2%) and AAFI (1%).

    Levine (6%) preferenced Labor in his HTV, but given he’s the centrist former Lib, you’d expect a fair amount of leakage there.

    So even under CPV, a comfortable win for the Liberal Party.

  15. O’barrell is challenging Dudham for the leadership

    Dudham might as well resign, if Bob Carr challenge him for the leadership, Bob would probably win as well!

  16. Simon,

    I agree I was a shade high on the seats – but there are 3 (Port Stephens, Dubbo and Miranda) that have less than a thousand votes in them and Port is rated an unknown by Antony Green so “significantly over-optimistic” is a bit harsh.

    Penrith had a swing to the ALP because it had a highly unusual swing against the ALP last time so it does not prove the point about the outer West.

    Maybe the Howard battlers are like poor white voters in the US South – people who vote against their economic interest because of their perceived social interest.

  17. On the stability vs ‘unstable governments held to ransom by loopy independents’ argument, I’m on the side of democracy, and I can’t understand why anyone on a psephological (sp?) website wouldn’t be. A system where all 4 point something million voters were confronted with a simple choice– Leader A or Leader B– put a cross next to the happy face they liked, and were then subject to absolute rule by them and their cronies for the next 4 years, would sure be ‘stable’.

    Life, happily, is more complex than that; and if the actual vote of the people, including those who are so foolish that they vote in ‘loopy’ candidates, means that a given party doesn’t win a majority of seats in the lower house, then– shock, horror!– for once in its life some actual meaningful debate may be held, and some actual policy made, in that house. And wouldn’t that be a shame?

    Under the current system, all Governments are wholly dependent on sectional interests. However, rather than those sectional interests being known, elected and having to put their cards on the table in the House and in Hansard in the way that independent and minor-party MPs do, these sectional interests set significant personnel and agendas secretly by trade-off deals done in backrooms. They are called factions.

  18. Quote from the EC’s website Media Release

    “In the following days

    In the week after the election, postal votes are received from New South Wales, interstate and overseas.

    Legislative Assembly Votes

    The first preferences of ordinary votes are re-counted. Then a notional distribution of preferences for the Legislative Assembly is conducted, in which preferences are distributed to the two candidates for each electoral district who are considered most likely to be in the lead.”

    This would seemingly imply that the RO can change his or her mind about which 2 candidates to redistribute to.

  19. The ‘stable government’ argument, to be frank, is a load of cr*p.

    It is true that in Australia hung parliaments tend to lead to less stability and more power in the hands of a few. But that is due to the fact that our system means that all crossbenchers come in the form of local independents who get all their votes from one area, rather than minor parties who have a relatively stable and well-known platform (even if they don’t have as much detail as major parties) and are accountable to a membership.

    It’s also due to the fact that major parties are used to a political system where all power is in the hands of one power, so generally are unwilling to genuinely share power. They expect a mandate because they beat the other major party, despite not winning a majority of the vote.

    Any country with a long-term multi-party system quickly adapts to such a system in a way that means stability is restored. Parties learn to negotiate and work with each other better. People get used to the idea that policies are presented as that party’s agenda, but then are compromised with other parties so that the government’s policy represents a majority. Minor parties develop as more stable organisations then they are in Australia and in some ways resemble the big parties more. Look at most of Europe, such as Germany, Austria, Ireland, the Norse countries.

  20. Anthony:

    The notional distribution of preferences is up to the RO, but that doesn’t have any impact on the result, as if this turns out to be incorrect it will be changed when the proper distribution takes place.

    Usually they’ll pick the two major candidates, unless the sitting member is not from either party. So that’s why, I guess, they put Gaudry in the count in Newcastle, likewise they did that for Michael Organ in Cunningham in 2004, which began to show a swing to the Greens, before they realised that we were being beaten by the Liberals and the notional 2PP was changed.

  21. Thanks Ben

    I was aware that the RO makes a best-guess prior to the close of the ballots.

    My question was more around whether they have the authority to change their minds based on new information or whether they have to wait till all the absentee and postal votes were in. The information from the ECs website seems to imply that they can change their minds.

    In some situations, I would also suggest that it would make sense to do a notional distribution of preferences to the 3 highest candidates before going on to a second cut-up of the 3rd placed candidate after that event e.g. if there were 3 candidates with each between 20% and 40% of the primary vote.

  22. Anthony Llewellyn, they can’t change on the night, because the votes are counted in individual booths. As to Newcastle, they would have to do two counts, because at this stage, it it not clear whether Tate or Gaudry would finish second. It is the Electoral Commission’s overwhelming job to get the result right, even if that causes a few days delay.

  23. Anthony,

    We will indeed see if she is any more capable. One of the reasons that the factional deal which replaced him was done was that he actually stood up to the Sydney cabal on the issues of electricity sell-off and the train line. On both occasions he put his constituency ahead of a factional powerplay.
    If Jodie does the same and stands up for the electorate what’s to stop the same thing happening to her?

  24. Fatty O’Barrel takes his tilt at the leadership. Won’t be that hard. All the pitchforks are already in place against Debnam. Now what’s left is to see whether Fatty can actually do any better than Debnam over the next 4 years [if he lasts that long]. Mind you, Debnam was the longest Liberal leader at state level lasting just over a 1 1/2 years. Says much for the state of the liberals.

  25. It might be easy to sit at the sidelines and barrack, but Malcolm Mackerras is just too fond of painting ‘hit me!’ targets on himself: there is “every reason to expect [Debnam] will become premier in March 2011” (today’s Australian). Put in the context of the whole article, it gets worse, not better.

    Mackerras obviously doesn’t know too much about the internal machinations of the NSW Liberal Party. I absolutely could not believe it when I heard that Debnam isn’t stepping down. He has obviously mistaken stubbornness for strength.

    He has presided over a result where his party, coming off a low base and against an unarguably unpopular government, has failed to win a single seat from Labor (or, at best, one– Port Stephens). Reduced margins don’t sit in the Parliament with you, Peter.

    Witness him having to hang around with Baird and Stokes, Liberals who won back Liberal heartland seats from indies, in order to look like a ‘winner’ by association yesterday. I have about as much chance of ever being Premier has he does. The anonymous LP insider Debnam supporter who said (in today’s Tele) that a challenge would be “an axe right through the heart of the party” had it completely arse-up; a proven failure should stand aside to avoid a pointless and acrimonious internal scrap. Give the Barrel a go.

  26. Here is a Wikipedia article which I took a malicious pleasure in compiling last year:

    The position of Leader of the New South Wales Liberal Party is one of the more senior positions in Australian state politics, but also the one with the highest failure rate and the highest turnover. The New South Wales branch of the Liberal Party of Australia was founded in 1945, but in the 60 years since its foundation the party has won only six state elections to the Australian Labor Party’s 13, and has spent only 18 years in office (1965 to 1976 and 1988 to 1995) to Labor’s 42. The majority of the 18 Liberal Leaders have been deposed, either after losing elections or when their colleagues determined they could not win an election. Their average tenure of office has been only 3.3 years. Only five have become Premier of New South Wales, and of those only two (Askin and Greiner) have actually won a state election.

    Leaders of the New South Wales Parliamentary Liberal Party
    Reginald Weaver: 1945 (died)
    Alexander Mair: 1945-1946 (resigned)
    Vernon Treatt: 1946-1954 (deposed)
    Murray Robson: 1954-1955 (deposed)
    Pat Morton: 1955-1959 (deposed)
    Robert Askin: 1959-1975 (Premier 1965-1975) (retired undefeated)
    Tom Lewis: 1975-1976 (Premier 1975-1976) (deposed)
    Eric Willis: 1976-1977 (Premier 1975-1976 (defeated, resigned)
    Peter Coleman: 1977-1978 (lost his seat)
    John Mason: 1978-1981 (deposed)
    Bruce McDonald: 1981 (lost his seat)
    John Dowd: 1981-1983 (deposed)
    Nick Greiner 1983-1992 (Premier 1988-1992) (forced to resign)
    John Fahey: 1992-1995 (Premier 1992-1995) (defeated, resigned)
    Peter Collins: 1995-1998 (deposed)
    Kerry Chikarovski: 1998-2002 (deposed)
    John Brogden: 2002-2005 (resigned)
    Peter Debnam: from 2005

  27. Word is that the Newcastle ballots will be redistributed notionally again today McKay vs Tate. I’m going to revise my prediction of 500 votes to greater than 1,000 McKay versus Tate.

  28. Nicely illustrated Adam – I think it helps sum up why the Libs have only been in power for 18 years in the 70 year period 1941-2011. Various commentators (including Antony Green) are talking up the Libs’ chances of winning in 2011. certainly it’s a smidgin easier than this year, but it still requires an 8+% swing to get a majority and a 6+% swing to get a hung parliament. Certainly if Iemma Labor looks like it does now in 2011, then the Libs should win easily, but one would expect the government to be in better shape by then (a big assumption, I know).

    And so now Fatty O’Barrell (not so cutting now he’s lost the gut and the beard) is asking for the poison chalice. While several psephs have argued that he (or Broggers) would have won on Saturday, I’m not so sure. Either probably would have done better than Dudman, but they’d still have been leading the NSW Liberal Party (weight in any saddlebags this year) and it still would’ve been too big a mountain to climb.

    And it’s still a long road back in what is clearly, in demographic terms, a Labor leaning State (at least at State level).

  29. I think it’s only 4.8% if independents win in both Lake Macquarie and Newcastle (at the moment it looks like Labor will win the latter but not the former). At any rate, it’s a little misleading, as any independents in Hunter territory could be expected to support a Labor government, assuming that the ALP don’t win those seats back next time anyway.

  30. Antony Green Says: Anthony Llewellyn, they can’t change on the night, because the votes are counted in individual booths.

    They seem to have done it in Cunningham at the 2004 Federal election. TCP votes were initially allocated wrongly, they suddenly stopped, cleared, and resumed later with the correct 2 candidates. Must have been a few frantic phone calls.

    But that was the AEC, not the NSWEC. I was chatting to a Booth RO on Saturday just before they shut the doors behind the scrutineers and asked about the technology. He said… “listen mate… this is NSW… we do everything with pencil and paper here” The Commissioner asserted in a Parliamentary hearing that NSWEC was much less mature on IT than were the other Electoral Commissions.

  31. I can confirm that there is a difference in NSWEC vs AEC Geoff. This was my first time scrutineering a NSW State poll but I have done it several times Federally.

    Everything went smoothly but there was a sense of the poor cousin, e.g yellow post-it-notes for candidates names (they have pre-printed cards in the Federal Election).

    At Federal elections everyone seemed to know what they were doing. At my booth only the two officers in charge seemed to have any past experience.

    I did notice one palm-pilot but it did not seem to be being used very much.

  32. Conceptually, the booths could count a 2PP vote between initially chosen candidates. After all the primary votes are in to the returning officer, the RO could ask (if there’s the time) the booths to do different 2PP votes.

  33. Hugo, I wouldn’t be so sure about Lake Macquarie. Ahead by only 0.4%, the Labor Party always gets thumped in that seat on the declaration vote, as most of the district’s large Seventh Day Adventist community vote pre-poll or postal. Labor polled 66% 2PP in the ordinary vote in 2003, but only 64.5% after the declaration votes were included. The Labor 2PP was only 41.8% in the pre-poll and 61.7% in the postal. That doesn’t mean Mr Piper will poll as well in 2007, but it does mean you can’t just assume because Labor is in front it will stay in front. All previous elections would indicate Labor’s vote in Lake Macquarie will decline with the counting of declaration votes. The question is by how much.

  34. Labor ahead in Lake Macquarie by 158 votes on election night. After the first batch of pre-poll votes in Lake Macquarie, the Independent is now ahead by 64 votes. Will be interesting to watch.

  35. Some pre-polls have been posted for Lake Macquarie, after preferences: Hunter 317 and Piper 539 exhausted 131. At approx 2.5% of the vote, I guess they are about half the pre polls – Coorenbong is one of the pre-poll centres, but I am not sure if these votes are from that box.

  36. Lake Macquarie: 1000 of about 2000 pre-poll votes were counted today, Piper now leads by 64 votes.

    Votes were a mix of Cooranbong and Carey Bay, mixture unknown.

    999 Distributed (1 missing): Hunter 317, Piper 539, Exhausted 131, Informal 12.

    ALP has asked for the approx 4000 postal vote signatures to be checked against postal vote application form signatures.

    At Dora Creek booth, 26 Informal votes were added to Piper in error on Saturday night.

  37. Max, you’ll note that 100 votes from the Stanmore booth have marched straight from the Greens to Labor. It’s possible that a bundle was put in the wrong pile on election night, although I must confess I don’t know as much about election count operations as I should. I do remember such a circumstance from the 1993 WA state election produced a dramatic last-minute reversal of fortune in the seat of Perth, which overturned a narrow Liberal lead and kept the seat with Labor.

  38. “Debnam was asked to climb Mount Everest at this election. He is now halfway to the pinnacle with every reason to expect he will become premier in March 2011.” Dear old Malcolm Mackerras, what a goose he is. This is what happens when a STATISTICIAN (which is what MM started out as), allows himself to be turned into a POLITICAL ANALYST (which he has never been and never will be). Psephologists beware: stick to what you know about.

  39. As I’ve said before, but I will say it again: why hasn’t Mad-Macks been put out to pasture? Once again, his predictions have been so far wide of the mark its utterly tragic.

    Adam has been kind to Mad Macks by picking the Debnam / Mount Everest comment as the one he chose to refer to in his post. If you have today’s edition of The Australian, take a look at the entire article and try not to laugh.

    Actually, its the best laugh I’ve had since Saturday night when a certain ABC election analyst put a bit of humour into the seat-by-seat summaries at the bottom of the screen at the expense of an alleged strangler (apparently the member for Coffs Harbour didn’t see the funny side of it!) Nice one Antony!

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