| ALBERT PARK | RAW | ADJUSTED | ||
| Vote | Swing | Vote | 2PP | |
| Martin Foley (Labor) | 47.3 | 5.1 | 46.1 | 59.0 |
| John Middleton (Greens) | 27.8 | 9.1 | 28.2 | 41.0 |
| Cameron Eastman (Family First) | 4.8 | 3.8 | ||
| Adrian Jackson (Independent) | 1.0 | -0.2 | ||
| Shane McCarthy (DLP) | 1.8 | |||
| Paul Kavanagh (Democrats) | 4.7 | |||
| Prodos Marinakis (Independent) | 5.4 | |||
| John Dobinson (Independent) | 0.8 | |||
| Nigel Strauss (Independent) | 6.5 | COUNT | 78 % | |
.
9.55pm. Long-delayed final two-party booth for Albert Park now in, Labor’s 2PP on 57.7 per cent.
9.12pm. Postal votes now added.
8.49pm. Turnout in Albert Park not too bad: 25,669 polling booth votes cast (including informal) compared with 26,804 last year.
8.44pm. Two-party count for all booths in Williamstown has Labor on 64.6 per cent.
8.42pm. Informal vote a rather high 7 per cent in each electorate.
8.39pm. We’ve also got a two-party count from five booths in Albert Park, with Labor on 59.05 per cent, suggesting my preference calculations did their job.
8.38pm. Labor’s vote has also continued to edge upwards in Williamstown.
8.37pm. All booths now in for Albert Park, producing a slight narrowing the margin, but still a clear win for Labor.
8.25pm. Bridport and St Kilda Park booths now in, producing little change.
8.20pm. Now we’re talking. Confusing the two St Kilda booths actually flattered the Greens slightly, not Labor.
8.19pm. Actually, scratch that – there’s something screwy with my new calculations. Working on it. Labor should be doing better than they are.
8.16pm. I was actually comparing the wrong St Kilda booths just now. The correction has made the result a little closer.
8.10pm. A big burst of figures in from Williamstown, lifting the count from 37 per cent to 60 per cent. This has pushed Labor’s vote up to a handsome 56.5 per cent. It’s starting to look like a pretty good night for John Brumby.
8.07pm. St Kilda South now in, but it doesn’t quite bear out what I said in the previous comment. Greens up a fairly typical 8.8 per cent, producing only a slight narrowing of the two-party vote.
8.01pm. The Greens picked up a handy 13.4 per cent in Middle Park, which is nearest the St Kilda booths that are still yet to come. If that’s indicative of a trend in the south of the electorate, the Greens could at least be confident of closing the gap a little.
7.55pm. The new booth results are from Middle Park Bowling Club (weak for Labor), Elwood Park and Sol Green Community Centre (about average for Labor). There’s also a new booth in from Williamstown which has produced little change.
7.50pm. Three more booths in at Albert Park, and Labor looking good.
7.44pm. Actually, the 40 per cent mark is probably not that dangerous in the context of this election. Their vote in 2006 was 41.0 per cent. I’m reasonably confident about my 2PP figure in the above table (unless the result in this booth is aberrant).
7.41pm. More than 30 per cent counted in Williamstown and Labor comfortably over 50 per cent.
7.36pm. The first booth in for Albert is the Sandridge/Fishermens Bend booth, which is Labor’s strongest and the Greens’ weakest. Labor’s primary vote is dangerously close to the 40 per cent mark.
7.33pm. More results in from both seats …
7.33pm. Slowest count ever.
7.12pm. Two booths in from Williamstown, Labor on just over 50 per cent of the primary vote (compared with 62 per cent in 2006).
6.56pm. Looks like my “half an hour” ETA on first results was a little optimstic.
6.15pm. Polls closed for the Albert Park and Williamstown by-elections 15 minutes ago, and we should be getting results in about half an hour. I will keep a lazy eye on Williamstown, but the focus here is Albert Park where the Greens have at least a theoretical chance of recording an upset. The table above will compare available booth results with those from last year’s state election to produce an estimated final result on the primary vote, which will then be converted to two-party preferred on the following basis: 70 per cent to the Greens from the Democrats, Nigel Strauss and Adrian Jackson, 50 per cent from John Dobinson and 30 per cent from the DLP, Family First and Prodos Marinakis (all of whom are recommending the Greens be put last). Anyone who doubts any of these assessments is invited to raise their voice in comments, and I will consider changing them.
So, informals running at 7%…Liberals voting with their pencils?
What percentage of booths (as opposed to total vote) counted?
1979 I seem to recall that its the seat (St Kilda) which keeped Hamer in office.
How can we say it will never again vote Liberal, the area is forever changing sure I can’t see the Liberals winning the area anytime soon
OK – I understand – different figures.
Has anyone ever tried changing their name by deed poll to Informal and running as a candidate?
I see you are post (104) maybe every Liberal MP needs to do just that it may add a few points.
Looks like a 10% 2PP swing away from ALP in Williamstown and about 1% in Albert Park. These are very good results for the ALP – particularly in Albert Park.
On Primaries it looks even better for the ALP in Albert Park, where the ALP has a swing to it and the greens haven’t even been able to pick up one third of the Liberal vote.
In Williamstown, the ALP primary has dropped by 5% and the greens have picked up about half of the Liberal party vote.
Considering that the turnout is not too bad for a by-election and the informal rate has not jumped dramatically, the result must really be seen as bad for the Greens.
Yes it’s a very good night for the ALP 🙂 🙂
BMW, I was refering to the suburb of St Kilda, not the seat of St Kilda. Yes the Libs won the seat of St Kilda in 1979, but the border ran along Barkly St, so all of western St Kilda wasn’t in the seat. The suburb as a whole hasn’t voted Liberal since the Whitlam years.
104: It has been tried in the past, but rejected at the deed poll stage. There was a clown in Tasmania who actually got his name changed to either Informal or No candidate or None of the above or something along those lines and there was a court case about it that ruled that it was direct attempt to confuse voters and the candiancy was rejected.
William do we have all the Albert Pk booths in?
104 – Yes. Someone did it in Tasmania in the 1990s, 1996 or 1998, can’t remember, but he took the electoral commisioner to court and won.
My fovourite is some one in the UK who changed his name to “None of the Above”. Much funnier.
Adam,
That’s interesting, I have never seen the boundaries so I presumed back in 79 (28 years ago) all of St Kilda was in the seat of St Kilda.
On that I tend to agree the suburb of St Kilda isn’t Liberal voting. but I guess that’s like the Liberals win the seat of Prahran but Prahran itself doesn’t vote for them.
It’s a good night when the ALP wins 2 byelections.
Woohoo!
Not as good as Tarquin Fintimlimbimlimbimwhinbimlin Bus Stop Ftang Ftang Olay Biscuit Barrel (Silly Party)
The result should be seen as equally extremely bad for Family First and DLP. To only get 5% and 2% respectively without a Liberal candidate suggests that something in their messages is not appealling to mainstream voters.
HH – it will be an even greater night when the ALP wins the Federal Election!!!
that will be a woohoo – particularly when the object of your disaffection has to concede in bennelong
For those of you not as old as Adam and I and have no idea what he’s talking about.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zUCP_MGrx0k
So where did the Liberal vote go? If turnout is not down, and the informal vote is only 7%, and the DLP and FF got only 7% between them, the rest of the Libs must have voted for the ALP or the Greens.
I’m touching wood but when I was reading Michael Proud post about Howard conceding Bennenlong I just pictured the ABC having a Technical hitch. backed with this site crashing!!
Anthony,
Thanks for the link LOL
[stamps foot impatiently at this silliness] do we have all the Albert Park booths or not?
Paul Kavanagh has gotten a solid 5.59% for the dems (according to the latest VEC figures which include postal and early voting results). The DLP ended up 1.74% and FF got 4.38%, and the dems have clearly out-polled them. There’s certainly the potential for Lyn Allison and Andrew Bartlett to attract disaffected Liberal voters in the senate in the federal campaign – it will be tough but they’re definitely in with a chance if the dems can put together good campaigns and get a good flow of preferences.
Re (116)
“that will be a woohoo – particularly when the object of your disaffection has to concede in bennelong”
Sure will be a good one to see – we know he doesn’t take defeat well, doesn’t take responsibility for anything, and has been known to take refuge in the bottle ….. so it is anyone’s guess what state he will be in that night 😉
The VEC doesn’t seem to have St Kilda booth – do Williams’s figures include it?
Remember Nixon in California “Well, you won’t have Nixon to kick around any more” Would that it had been true!
Adam, two booths from the state election weren’t in use today: St Kilda (Primary School) and Elwood (St Columbas Catholic Church Hall). For the purposes of my calculations I rolled St Kilda together with St Kilda South and Elwood with Elwood North.
So in belated answer to your earlier question, Adam: yes.
cheers antony for that link 😛 ha so in this election which on was the silly party – the greens or labor? 😛 mine you the act did have some crackers in its first election didnt it? with the ripe tomatoe party and the party party party
Thanx Wm, brilliant service as always.
There’s no doubt in this election we were the Sensible Party, and the others ranged from Slightly Silly (Dems, DLP) to Silly (Greens) to Extremely Silly (all the others).
I voted at St Kilda Park Primary this morning, and the FF HTV guy was so daggy and gormless my boyfriend and I were almost inclined not to give him our traditional voting day anti-FF mocking verbal abuse. Almost.
He was in fact bussed in from further afield than I imagined – he was an American (a missionary?). He seemed to be spending his time talking to the similarly dressed god-botherer from the DLP. I hope they’ll be very happy together.
I was in Canada for the 1997 General election and a candidate for one of the Vancouver area ridings had changed his name to Tan Sa, which would be listed on the ballot as Sa, Tan. He had a slogan along the lines of “why vote for the lesser of two evils” and his main campaign event was an orgy in a barn outside of town, advertised on just about every telephone pole in Vancouver.d
d
haha that’s gold darryl – in re: to the dems before – if they get back poor old upperhouse will have to change the democrats death calculator. Indeed a good result for them beating FFP and DLP, considering the DEMs didnt contest both seats at the election. Perhaps a last revival for the pending fed election before the curtain falls?
Pish – all the Dems got was a bit of Liberal slopover. If there had been a Lib candidate they would have got their usual 1%. The Dems are dead. All that remains is the last rites.
Slopover!? Are they the votes you get which make you feel just a little dirty?
97 Adam, “Where have all the Liberals gone?”
Long time passing!
I didn’t mind which party got up, but for the record voted Greens, Democrats, ALP.
The main reason for my vote was the dirty politics used by the ALP in this by election.
However, it was interesting that I received an avalanche of Labor pamphlets and none from any other party.
Bring on the Federal election!
These bi-elections prove that Greens vote goes backwards when their policies are subject to any scrutiny.
In Albert Park the ALP primary has increased by 6% following the disclosure of the Greens “School closure” policy. And, don’t the Greens squeel like stuck pigs!
This result would normally be cause for reflection by any political party. However, the Greens are likely to continue their disgraceful ways and vote with their new best friends the Libs whenever they can in the Upper House.
140: “Greens vote goes backwards when their policies are subject to any scrutiny.”
How do you figure that? The Greens recorded the biggest swing of all parties. Granted, the Libs weren’t there, and so their votes had to go somewhere, but it’s a little hard to argue that the Greens’ vote has gone backwards, no? Maybe if the ALP or FF or the Dems or DLP received a larger swing, you could argue that. And sure, you could argue that incumbents suffer at byelections. I’d suggest, though, that when the Greens’ policies are subject to reasonable scrutiny, that their vote actually increases.
As for the throwaway line about the Greens voting with the Libs so much, let me know when you actually want to have a reasonable discussion about voting…
Definition of a Green – a Labor voter with delusions of grandeur.
Intelligent enough to know what’s wrong with the Liberals , but with enough ego to want to differentiate himself from the working class without knowing exactly why.
For a comprehensive dissection of the Greens disastrous campaign in Albert Park, the following link has it all.
http://andrewlanderyou.blogspot.com/2007/09/smashed-sunday-greens-party-is-over-in.html
Just a note for Adam and all the other democrat haters out there:
In the last four lower house elections the Democrats have stood in:
Democrat vote in the 1999 Victorian election: 0.28%
Democrat vote in the 2002 Victorian election: 0.14%
Democrat vote in the 2002 East Yarra by-election: 3.00%
Democrat vote in the 2007 Albert Park by-election: 5.59%
Last night was a stand-out for the Democrats in Victoria.
GG @ 137
I’ve normally enjoyed your contributions, but find your current contributions no better than Glen’s or others who slide into invective and abuse. BTW if you believe everything Landeryou publishes you’ll believe in the tooth fairy too.
As to the policies of the Greens – yes bring on scrutiny, but do it a reasonable way, not as part of polemical attacks. The ALP squeals when the Libs deliberately misrepresents them, so why shouldn’t the Greens when the ALP does the same? Sadly, of course, politics is neither rational nor reasoned, as it all to often descends into a gutter brawl. But for your information, Australian Greens policy is argued over by a very wide cross-section of people, both inside and outside of the party. But like all policies, it is open to interpretation, misrepresentation, dispute and disagreement… but at least they are there, not secret, not hidden, and available for the electorate to see. The Democrats are also open about their policies. Too many others are not.
A pertinent question is why, even though they are not running a candidate, the Liberals are so disorganised?
Why wasn’t there a “Liberal” independent/ minor party or if there indeed there was one why was it made clear that is were the Liberal vote should be “parked” and the Liberal membership organised to hand out HTVs despite tha fact that as minor parties show this can be achieved with a tiny bit of organisation?
We know that historically this is what the Liberals have been able to do at both state and federal levels when they have either chosen not to run or not had a candidate eg. Cunningham and Gordon.
Greensborough Growler and jh,
It is perfectly legitimate for the ALP to point to the Greens’ voting record in the Legislative Council. I have no objection to the Greens voting with the Liberals on accountability matters such as the gambling enquiry, but the Greens can hardly expect the ALP not to mention the fact.
dembo,
The Democrat vote was inflated by the absence of a Liberal candidate, as were the votes of probably everybody else, including even the ALP, so neither the 4.7 per cent in the table at the top of this thread nor the 5.6 p per cent claimed by you are going to be repeated at the Senate election. A party has to have workers on the ground to gain votes and the Democrats cannot cover the booths for the whole state. I’d like to see a scenario presented under which the Democrats have any hope of a Senate seat.
Dembo dearest, I do not hate the Dems, in fact I used to vote for them on occasion, the last time being for Sid Spindler I think, and I have a high regard for Natasha SD. I think the Dems played a useful role as a centre party and an indepedent voice in the Senate. OK? But the fact is that the Dems are politically defunct. I’m not sure why, since the generally sour public attitude towards the major parties should benefit a moderate centre party. It seems to have begun with Lees’s deal with Howard over the GST, accelerated with the Kernot defection and NSD’s resignation as leader, and concluded with the Bartlett-Ferris incident. Unfair though it may seem, these petty events appear to have busted the Dem brand, just as the Gair affair busted the DLP brand. Bartlett and Allison have both been poor leaders, and the departure of NSD and Murray (another admirable person) will bring down the curtain. If you think the pathetic stats you cited earlier are evidence of a political viability, you are sillier than I thought. This is a party that can’t even win a seat in the SA upper house, its natural habitat. This is a dead parrot, it has ceased to be etc etc . http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GipFyAsYK1M Get over it.
Adam,
The Gair Affair did not help the DLP, but it was in long-term decline any way, and its failure to adjust to the Whitlam Government was its downfall. If it had not co-operated so often with the Opposition but worked with the ALP, if it had maintained the role it had establised for itself under the previous Liberal Government, it would have lasted longer. It should never have deferred Supply in 1974, because if there had been no double dissolution it would have had two senators still – Frank McManus and Jim Judge (the latter being Senator Gair’s replacement). Its basic problem was that it could not adjust to changes in society and it never developed a younger leadership to take over from the ’55 generation.
People often give the Democrats’ support for the GST as a reason for their demise. This may be true, but it is illogicall given that they went into the election promising to support a GST. It is true they made it a less efficient and less effective tax by getting food exempted, but they should not lose votes for supporting what they said they would support.
Voters don’t always behave rationally Chris. I thought at the time that the Lees-Howard deal was not unreasonable given that as the holder of the balance of power in the Senate she had to take a position. But the retrospective judgment seems to have been otherwise. What other explanation do you have for the Dems’ decline since 2001?
It is a bit misleading to report the greens showing a 9% swing. You really need to look where the traditional liberal vote (35%) went. 7% informal and only 9% to the Greens. A swing to the government in a by-election is very impressive. Normally by-elections show a 4-6% towards the opposition parties not the government.
MelbCity, correct. See Andrew Landeryou’s analysis linked to at #140 above. Although his rhetoric is a bit over-heated as always, his analysis is correct. The Greens swallowed Labor’s bait hook, line and sinker. They were vulnerable not on “green” issues as such – on which most Albert Park people including me would agree with them – but on their silly Old Left policies like abolishing selective schools. I ask again, why does an environmentalist party need a policy on selective schools at all? If they had campaigned on stopping bay dredging and the Grand Prix, ignored Labor’s baiting, and found a decent media-friendly candidate, they might well have won.
8.49pm. Turnout in Albert Park not too bad: 25,669 polling booth votes cast (including informal) compared with 26,804 last year
CORRECTION
Recheck votes
Total Enrolment: 43926
Formal Votes: 36025
Informal Votes: 1630 (4.33% of the total votes)
Total Votes: 37655 (85.72% of the total enrolment rechecked
Recheck first preference votesCandidate Party 1st Pref Votes % 1st Pref Votes
REECE, David CEC 269 0.75%
THWAITES, John ALP 14787 41.05%
JACKSON, Adrian 458 1.27%
MIDDLETON, John Greens 6871 19.07%
SMITH, Clive Liberal 12479 34.64%
ROBERTSON, Sam FAMILY FIRST 390 1.08%
PAVLIS, Stratos PEOPLE POWER 771 2.14%
Results after distribution of preferencesCandidate Party Votes after distribution % votes
THWAITES, John ALP 21502 59.69%
SMITH, Clive Liberal 14523 40.31%