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 9 of 11
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  1. Lake Macquarie

    My understanding is that a about 200 formal votes were found in an informal pile of votes. These tipped the vote to a Piper majority.

  2. Both the NSWEC and ABC websites still show Labor winning Lake Macquarie. Can someone post the actual 2-party result?

    Cut and paste from my spreadsheet:

    Final TCP Candidate name PIPER Greg HUNTER Jeff
    Party IND ALP
    Progressive TCP votes 18656 18550 37206 50.1%
    Win for IND by 106

  3. Fred and Disciples’ Discipline?

    I’m afraid Fred Followers are less disciplined than Greens. The average flow from CDP-LIB was 36.4%, as opposed to the GRN-ALP flow of 37.8%

    I’m now working with the list provided above to calculate the Deep Green discipline.

  4. So the Electoral Commission has more to do to provide a better service.

    But lets hope they are heading in the right direction.

    it just needs someone to fix all the “bugs”.

  5. GRN-ALP flows:

    In ticketed seats 42.8%
    In non-ticketed seats 29.5%

    So does this resolve the question????—- about 13% of Greens voters consult the HtV to help determine their preferences?

    But, remember that the Greens were usually last to be cut-up, so they were often carrying substantial numbers of ballots gathered from the minnows during the exclusions.

    From experience in TWS, handing out “specific” (differing-from-party) HtVs at State and Federal elections, my analysis is that about 2.3% of voters will follow a ticket that is slightly different from their natural inclination.

  6. Due to finding some 25 spelling errors in the NSWEC’s list of GRN and ALP candidates, I can now add some further data on GRN—>ALP flows, which now work out to be

    Total flow 39.1%
    In ticketed seats 44.6%
    In non-ticketed seats 34.9%

  7. Hypothetically, is it possible to devise a Coalition v Labor pendulum? I note that on Adam’s pendulum it has that a uniform swing of 3.8% would see Labor lose it’s majority. However, there are two sets under the 3.8% mark pendulum which are unlikely to be considered at-risk seats come the 2011 election, Maitland and Newcastle, in which case the uniform swing required would need to be higher.

    Just wondering if devising a Coalition v Labor pendulum for these seats, and others like them, is possible …

  8. It’s also worth noting that a lot of the Greens groups that didn’t preference Labor are outside Sydney, where I believe there is generally a tendency for more Greens voters to preference the Coalition than in Sydney. So that 13% might be exagerrated. What you need are two seats near each other with different preference recommendations, but I don’t know what those would be.

  9. It’s probably about time that all seats with 2PP contests not between the majors are removed from the list altogether, as they don’t fit any concept of uniform swing. I don’t believe a swing to the Liberals necessarily results in the Greens vote improving in Balmain and Marrickville.

  10. It would seem that some results are being declared this morning, because the Status fields are gradually changing to “Publish” on the ftp server.

    Meanwhile, back at the ranch, recounts appear to be underway in Lake Macquarie and Port Stephens….. these have now the status “Recount Enabled”. I suppose you can see this on the web pages

  11. Ben is of course correct. For Labor to lose its majority in the event it loses seats only to the Coalition would require a bigger swing than I have shown, but there is a limit to how many variables I can fit in one pendulum.

    The AEC does a notional 2-party distribution for all seats, but I don’t know if NSWEC does this. If they do, it would be possible to make a pendulum showing all seats as 2-party contests. It would presumably show the Nats winning the four rural indy seats and Labor winning Sydney and Lake Mac.

    I would think that even if Maitland had been a 2-party contest, the Labor majority wouldn’t have been very great.

    Incidentally, hands up all those who said that Black would hold Murray-Darling. Tsk tsk. Not only did he lose, he copped a very large swing, more than could be blamed on the redistribution. Maybe his lairish style didn’t go down well in Ruralia after all.

  12. The Country Labor candidate got (on my calculations) 4.35% of the first preference vote in Northern Tablelands.That is dangerously close to less than 4% – being the point at which candidates suffer the humiliation of losing their deposits.
    Is anyone aware of any major party candidate who lost their deposit, in NSW in say the last 75 years ?

  13. The Speaker rapped his gavel and said…”umm.. I dont suppose you could tell me how many exhaust and many flow to the Libs for ticketed/non-ticketed ?”

    for GRN—>LIB
    Ticketed 11.6%
    non-Ticketed 6.2%

    for GRN—>NAT
    Ticketed 1.9%
    non-Ticketed 2.9%

    Doing the exhausts may induce epilepsy, I’ll put it off for a while

  14. It’s only humiliating to poll 4.3% if you’re trying to win. Since Phil Usher was chosen precisely because of his total obscurity, in order to poll as low a vote as possible in order to help the Independent beat the Nationals, his vote should be seen as a great triumph Well done, Phil.

  15. Nevertheless, the ALP should be concerned about its performance in country and regional NSW. When the electoral contest in NSW between itself and the Coalition tightens (as inevitably, it must), it will need to win and hold seats in these areas.

  16. I really don’t think the ALP should be so depressed about not performing in Northern Tablelands.

    The Coalition can’t get at the ALP by doing any better in the country. They actually need to win seats off the ALP, and that means Western and Southern Sydney (ie. Penrith, Macarthur, Sutherland regions) as well as places up and down the coast.

  17. Thanks Geoff.

    Does “Ticketed” mean they followed the ticket as specified by the Greens ? (even when they didnt direct preferences).

    Or does it mean they followed the Greens HTV exactly, even when the greens didnt allocate preferences ?

    I’m a bit confused by your ‘ticketed’ liberal preference figure as I didn’t think the Greens preferenced the Coalition anywhere.

    ——————————————-

    Someone please correct me on this very rough analysis…

    In a seat where the Greens get 3000 votes
    If they direct preferences to Labor,
    Labor gets 1338 preference votes (44.6%)

    if the Greens dont preference
    Labor gets 1047 preference votes (34.9%)

    a difference of 291 votes ? in a seat with 42000 formal votes, thats.. 0.7%

    Most of those would exhaust rather than going to the liberals, so I’m not sure how much of a real effect it has..

    Anyway bodgey analysis done while I’m supposed to be working..

  18. it also needs to win and hold urban fringe seats – Macquarie, Lindsay and Dobell are standouts in NSW. Only one of those has a confirmed quality candidate.

  19. My hand is up, Adam. Note however my prescient election-eve escape clause:

    Charles (Richardson) notes I have tipped “Nationals in Tweed and Labor in Murray-Darling, but if incumbency is powerful enough to keep Murray-Darling Labor I don’t see why it wouldn’t work in Tweed as well, where the demographics are better”. The answer is that I think Peter Black might prove popular with the new voters brought into his electorate by the redistribution, but this might be due to my cartoon-ish view of rural life.

  20. Permission to make a statement Mr Speaker?

    GRN exhaust rate

    Ticketed seats: 39%
    non-Ticketed seats: 55%

    May I be excused now?

  21. “Ticketed” always means seats where the Greens issued a HtV preferencing the ALP. It came from the list provided (above) this morning, except I can’t find an electorate called “Toonga Bay” 🙂

  22. The peasant mentality is indeed difficult to fathom.

    Can anyone calculate what the 2-party majority in Maitland would have been if it had been a 2-party contest?

  23. The web-site doesn’t say so, but the ftp server now shows 86 seats with “Publish Results” status. I assume this probably means they have been declared and the writs are on their way to Prof Bashir?

  24. North Shore results have just been released, it’s now LIB vs GRN along with Vaucluse, both with margins of 16%. With my by-now traditional Green optimism that’s not insurmountable! That takes Greens in the 2CP candidates to four, with a difference of 24 votes at the crucial cut-up taking them out of a fifth in Ku-Ring-Gai, of all places.

  25. Pardon my cynicism, Josh, but so what? You think the Greens are going to win Ku-ring-gai or Vaucluse next time? You think the ultra-rich are going to compost their Volvos and start eating tofu? These results prove nothing except that Labor is very weak in super-wealthy areas, so that a fringe party gets to come a very distant second behind the Libs. Whoopy-do.

  26. “Adam Says:

    ….The peasant mentality is indeed difficult to fathom.”

    and

    “Pardon my cynicism, Josh, but so what? You think the Greens are going to win Ku-ring-gai or Vaucluse next time? You think the ultra-rich are going to compost their Volvos and start eating tofu? These results prove nothing except that Labor is very weak in super-wealthy areas, so that a fringe party gets to come a very distant second behind the Libs. Whoopy-do.”

    Mate, how many chips do you have on your shoulders?

    Putting aside my political inclinations, you appear blessed with the capacity to make derogatory comments without making any constructive contribution to the debate.

    As best as I can tell most people on this site are attempting to analyse what has happened in the elction, and keeping their political views generally in check…you seem to be the exception to the rule.

    How about a little more insight, and less of the cynicism.

    Trev

  27. The LC count has basically now caught up with all the election night counts, and looks very strongly as being 9 Labor, 8 Coalition, 2 Greens, 1 Christian Democrat and 1 Shooters Party. What’s to come is all the postal, absent, pre-poll votes. It seems highly unlikely that any of the minor parties can catch the 8th Coalition candidate or the Shooter candidate on preferences.

    Labor polled single figure pcts in 5 lower house districts. I think that explains why Labor looks on-track to again get a slightly higher vote in the upper house. The Greens look set for the same vote in both houses, while the Coalition vote looks likely to be lower in the LC than the lower house. That’s because of votes lost to the Christian Democrats and Shooters by the look of it.

    ABC website update will have to wait for next week. Final preference counts aren’t delivered in the media feed, so it will have to be done by hand, once the final figures are official. I’m not coming in over Easter to do that!

  28. “Antony Green Says:

    April 4th, 2007 at 6:35 pm

    ….

    ….

    ABC website update will have to wait for next week. Final preference counts aren’t delivered in the media feed, so it will have to be done by hand, once the final figures are official. I’m not coming in over Easter to do that!”

    Why not?

    I need some sleep!!!!

    Trev

  29. “Adam Says:

    April 4th, 2007 at 8:32 pm
    Memo to self: do not attempt irony with the Nationals.”

    Mate, good idea, us bushies obviously can’t keep up with your intellectual superiority.

    Trev

  30. # Adam Says: Memo to self: do not attempt irony with the Nationals.

    Indeed no. I attempted same at a Nationals’ State Conference in Dubbo once.

    Wal Murray threw a tomato at me.

    He was very drunk.

    I think they are taking down the tents tonight. Come again in 2011

  31. Trevor, I don’t know anything about you apart from what I’ve read on pollbludger – and I hope, if you’re lucky enough to be elected, that you do your best in parliament and always try to contribute with a good heart. There is too much one-eyedness and too little open-mindedness in politics. Cheers.

  32. Isbella, I have no idea who you are, I have certainly never spoken to you here before, in fact I have no recollection of ever seeing you here before. Yet you feel entitled to make offensive remarks about me in a public forum (where unlike you I comment under my own name). If Trevor finds my remarks not to his liking that is a matter between him and me. Could I ever suggest that you mind your own business?

  33. Look, sorry, I’ve inject myself into the centre of things a bit here, and that was not my intention.

    I will return to the role of mere observer and keep my opinions to myself….in other words, truce.

    Trev

  34. I have a question for Geoff or Antony or really anyone who knows the answer.

    In calculating the percentage of the vote won in the LC, and I guess the LA too, is it correct procedure to include the informal votes in the grand total, or to exclude them?

    From my limited experience counting ballots I would have thought that they should be left out. But the SEO site downloads seem to imply that they are included. It makes a big difference to the Greens’ LC vote at this stage of the count – 8.6% vs 8.2%.

  35. Yeah Josh WK, I definitely can see it, the greens can definitely win those seat, see the Liberal Vote was 55%, if the Green get every one of the other vote ………….

    Maybe, if at the next distribution, they move part of Lakemba into the North Shore electorate ………

    Maybe on the date of polling in 2011, a tsunami hit Manly beach and wash away 20,000 Liberal voters ………

    Yeah and Hell will freeze over ……….. lets look at getting the Green’s first seat, before you think of World domination.

    I think there was a protest vote against Labor and Liberal in those electorate, and those vote went to the ind or Greens, I think they are very lose support and the Greens real base in those electorate is less than 10%, which will make it hard for them to win these type of electorate. I think Sydney, Balmain and Marrickville are still their best bet, and the keys for the greens is to get Liberal preference

  36. Hey Karno – it’s been a real treat to have you here and to read your comments. I hope that you stick around and let us have some more of your views and thoughts from the inside. And I say this as someone who is diametrically opposed to you on some matters.

    Geoff – thank you for all your terrific work on the pref flows

  37. Dovif is right about the need for the Libs to run dead (as they did in Cunningham) or preference the GRN candidates in electorates where it will cause grief to the ALP. In this election they did the reverse in Balmain where they had a candidate with very good enviro cred but who had no realistic chance of winning and if he had been put up in a real Lib-ALP marginal could have given it a real shake. But tactics is not what the NSW Libs are good at.

    To those confused about “Toonga Bay” this is how the residents of the third settlement deprecatingly refer to their suburb in the same way as some people say they got their clothes at “Tar Jay”. Otherwise known as Toonie the area was a wonderful rural place to grow up 40 years ago but with suburbanisation, being divided between 3 (count ’em) LGAs, and having areas renamed to satisfying the marketing aspirations of developers it entered a decades long period of decline. However recently its proximity to the health and ed campuses at Westmead and the redevelopment of the shopping centre has meant that house prices are rising and the future for the suburb and residents is buoyant.

  38. Andrew, I think you’re looking at the figures from election night. There’s actually a PDF update being posted every day from the actual count, which you can find here: http://vtr.elections.nsw.gov.au/LCProgressiveTotals/

    This count has individual BTL vote counts for each candidate.

    With the election night figures, BTL votes weren’t separated into separate piles, and the complexity in determining formality meant that they were kept in the one pile for the purposes of the %s on the website. However I wouldn’t count informals within the %s now that they’ve been sorted out from the BTL votes.

    I’ll post the %s and quotas from the Wednesday figures in a couple of minutes.

  39. Hi Ben

    No I am looking at the daily pdf downloads. I understand the election night figures issue, which was quite irritating because it artificially depressed everyone’s vote percentage, leading to lots of questions about how come our vote had fallen when in fact it hadn’t. I was in the tally room on the night & it came up a lot.

    But on the downloads, the Grand Total figure includes informals. There is no grand total given without them. It’s obviously very easy to work it out, but it implies to me that they are included in the grand total figure for the purpose of calculating the vote percentages.

    Possibly I’ve just spent too long looking at it and am over-thinking the whole thing.

  40. Yeah, considering there is actually no official role in the process for percentages, it’s just up to us, and I wouldn’t include informals.

    For everyone who’s interested, here is today’s positions:

    Christian Democratic Party 0.94
    The Greens 0.89
    Liberal/Nationals 0.7
    Labor 0.69
    The Shooters Party 0.6
    Australian Democrats 0.37
    AAFI 0.34
    The Fishing Party 0.32
    Unity 0.28

    There was quite a lot of extra votes this time, and Labor’s vote has clearly declined so they are now below the Libs/Nats, but it still doesn’t make a difference. The Dems have remained steady, the Greens have gone up a bit from 1.85 to 1.89. The Coalition has gone from 0.59 to 0.7.

  41. My apologies to William for breaking the rules of his site last night. However I have no apologies for Isabella, who has (I now discover) a history of personal abuse at this and other forums, and who will get as good as she gives from me.

  42. To the speaker on Greens prefs,

    You seem to have assumed that Green primary votes and Green votes at the point where they are cut up are the same. This was seldom the case. As Geoff noted, when the Green candidate was cut up they were usually carrying some votes from Democrats, Independents etc. Consequently, while your calculations are correct for a Green who finished on 3000 votes, such a typical candidate would probably have started on 2700 and picked up the rest on preferences.

    Given that under OPP the Green preferences that don’t go to the ALP exhaust, rather than resulting in an increased Green-Liberal vote as might be expected under compulsory preferential the loss of 0.7% Green preferences to ALP is equivalent to half of these votes going to Lib – ie 0.35%.

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