Saturday evening. This post will be used to follow the final stages of the count for the Senate in Victoria, where at the close of election night counting the third Liberal candidate Scott Ryan has a 1.3 per cent lead over Greens candidate Richard di Natale. Of the remaining five seats, three have been won by Labor and two by Liberal.
Sunday evening. I don’t believe any votes were counted today. What we have so far is all polling booth votes counted for above-the-lines and first preferences from below-the-lines. Hopefully someone will correct me in comments if I’m wrong on either count.
Tuesday 5pm. Still nothing doing. Recent activity as consisted of breaking booth votes down into above-the-line and below-the-line voters. Counting of postal, pre-poll and absent votes will begin shortly. Strong performance by the Liberals here in lower house voting does not bode well for the Greens.
Wednesday 5/12 8pm. Counting of nearly 200,000 pre-polls and 100,000 absent votes have dashed any hope of a late-count upset here, boosting the Coalition vote from 38.9 per cent to 39.2 per cent and cutting the Greens from 8.4 per cent to 8.2 per cent, increasing the Greens’ deficit to an insurmountable 2.1 per cent.
Richard should do very well in the BTL count, but this may be counter-balanced by the Libs doing well in postal votes.The Greens need to be scrutineering the recount of the senate ATL votes out in the divisional offices, as minor party votes often get miscounted in the senate – and they have a bad position on the ballot paper here in Vic. I know we (the Dems) managed to catch a lot of our ATL votes in 2001 that had initially been counted as informal in outer metro seats in Melbourne, so it’s well worth them doing this.
I agree.
In the Victorian State election candidates in positions on election night like Richard di Natale is this morning, ended up elected. I’d suspect he’s a better than 50% chance.
If there is a notably higher BTL than last time, he’s probably in.
This is going to excruciating – does anyone know if the counting continues today (Sunday)?
What about a thread for the Queensland senate as well? The Greens have had someone elected on BTL Pauline preferences before, remember!
Well, this is not a particularly groundbreaking insight: but a higher % of Greens’ supporter vote BTL, compared with other parties supporters.
I find it really surprising that the Greens haven’t been a shoo-in for the 6th spot in Victoria. For that matter as well – that the Coalition has performed equal to Labor in the Senate overall.
this seems to be 2 elections in a row now where the Greens have got a really good vote in Victoria for no result.
i am slightly surprised that the Lib senate vote held up here.
disappointing
ACT Senate Analysis
For the Greens to take power in the ACT the libs need to lose a OVERALL swing of 1% which is very unlikely. This is due to some ALP votes heading towards the Liberals before the greens (under 10% of them) But there still is a chance with 27% of the vote still be counted.
Current votes with 73.19 counted:
Australian Labor Party 40.72%
Liberal Party 34.07%
The Greens 21.91%
Australian Democrats 1.74%
What Women Want 0.58%
Climate Change Coalition 0.53%
Liberty and Democracy Party 0.23%
Nuclear Disarmament Party 0.20%
Needed for Greens to get in: (this assumes that all the swing goes to Labor, if some goes to the greens the libs don’t need to lose as much)
Australian Labor Party 41.71%
Liberal Party 33.10%
The Greens 21.91%
Australian Democrats 1.74%
What Women Want 0.58%
Climate Change Coalition 0.53%
Liberty and Democracy Party 0.23%
Nuclear Disarmament Party 0.20%
Using Anthony Greens Calculator.
73.19% counted so far.
Its going to be very close.
I think Kevin Rudd is the happiest man in Australia this morning.
I think he got everything he wanted from this election.
First, he got a comfortable but not hugely excessive majority in the House.
Second, Howard is gone completely. He doesn’t linger. It is now the Rudd era.
Third, he got exactly what he wanted in the Senate. I think the likely split power in the Senate is perfect for Rudds 2 and 3 term strategy. He (unlike many of us) is in no hurry to change anything.
I think he is rapt that he can now play Labor,Liberal,National,Green,FFP and X all off each other in the Senate.
The Senate is a disappointing result. It is exactly the numbers i hoped wouldn’t occur.
I voted BTL and my vote goes to the Greens long before the majors, so never fear, Greens, di Natale will get in.
I mean, as long as it’s already close. I haven’t actually looked at the figures.
I agree with the 37-32-5-1-1 analysis at this stage; the 6th Vic seat of course assumes immense importance because Di Natale would knock off a Liberal, and thereby change the Senate balance significantly.
HarryH, I’m not sure that Rudd would be so rapt. I agree that he will welcome an opportunity/excuse for caution, and that he would like to be able to play off Greens/FF/X against each other.
But it’s actually more difficult than that – Labor will have to get every one of Greens, FF & X to pass legislation (assuming the Coalition votes against.) If any one of them sides with the Opposition then the Bill will fail, remembering that in the Senate 38-all means the motion fails.
So Labor’s going to have to negotiate very well. Expect a lot of favours and pork for Fielding and Mr X.
Remember that BTL First preferences were counted last night and are included in the AEC (and ABC) figures. What we don’t know yet is:
1. how many votes were BTL
2. where the BTL prefs are going
3. how many of the counted BTLs are actually informal
d
12 The other strategy is working with the Coalition, or wooing National votes with FFP.
Sounding as if Victoria or South Australia will be the place to live – but while they are still counting there is still hope
Not sure about how the btl stuff works, but I’m guessing they’ve only counted above it so far??? That’s probably ok here in the ACT as there’s only 16 boxes below the line so i’m guessing people would be more likely to vote there here.
Anyways i guess we just keep waiting and hoping – hopefully any horse trading won’t involve giving way on moral issues like abortion, stem cell research, banning big brother uncut 😉
Interesting that, going by the senate results on the abc website, when the Democrats are excluded, all of the minor party votes that had been sitting with the Dems are transfered to the Greens leaving the Greens on 0.9529 of a quota before Family First is knocked out giving the Libs their 3rd quota.
It seems with over a 1/4 of the votes to be counted there is a possibility we may see the Greens getting in with the Liberals left stranded, the greens only need a total of 0.0471 quotas from 6 minor parties’ votes that sit with the Dems before exclusion.
Still a very satisfying election result, the greens getting a fourth senate seat would be icing on top of a layer of Bennelong icing on a very large and delicious cake.
Correction: The Dems are sitting on the preferences of 4 minor parties not 6.
With McEwan and Latrobe now trending Labor on absentees and prepolls (after looking like staying Lib on the night), that implies the absentees and prepolls are favouring the ALP.
That in turn suggests they’ll get closer to three quotas in their own right, thus chewing up fewer microparty preferences to get their third guy over the line. They may even have a half-percentage point or so of surplus to help Di Natale along.
A bit of leakage from the DLP should help too.
william is there something wrong with this thread?
it says 18 posts on the front page but i can only see nine. been like this for hours
william forget post 19. it updated as i posted.
I agree that we should see a thread in Queensland. Obviously it’s more significant in Victoria because it’s a closer race between Richard and Liberal #3 than Larissa vs. Labor #3 in Queensland, and because the loss of a Liberal seat would be more significant for the balance in the Senate, but still.
Labor negotiating with Family First… reaping what they sowed in the 2004 election!
Is ther any way of following the progress count in the VIC senate online?
Went to the AEC Virtual Tally room – but all seems a bit static. No change all day.
yeah same here Lefty E.
how and when do we know the likely final result of Vic and ACT?
I read somewhere it takes two weeks for the postal votes to come in and then they can calculate the final results for the senate.
Actually, what about the ACT Senate race too? Only a 1% swing to Labor/Greens from the Liberals on postals and absentees (which generally favour Labor/Greens) would be enough to overturn the result.
Ive been playing around with the senate calculator on the abc site and it seems that the greens are 0.79% of primary votes below what they need.
If you take the senate results, plug it into the abc senate calculator, add 0.79 to the greens, automatically adjust votes, recalculate, then Greens win the last one at the expense of Libs.
The key seems to be ALP staying in there until FF is excluded.
In the booth I worked in California Gully in Bendigo, I think all the below the line votes were for Richard Ni Natalie, the Greens share of the below the line votes is pretty high.
Postals will be allowed in until Fri 7 Dec, so it’ll take a long time to get them all the votes in. After they’re in, the AEC needs to manually enter all BTL votes into a computer; once that’s done, results can be very quickly processed. The Greens did very well on the absentee votes at the last Vic state election, and also at the last Fed election, but postals always favour the Tories.
After 2004, a lot of Victorian Labor voters (myself included) vowed never to vote above the line again. Assuming that those preferences go to the Greens ahead of the Liberals, Di Natale may be in with a chance. It’ll be interesting to see if the proportion of BTL votes has increased.
MC,
You might also consider using the Victorian Senate calculator to calculate the Senate figures for Victoria.
Sorry your right I cut an dpsted from the wrong State… I have closed the window…
The result is mopre or less the same. Three Labor and three Liberals who top the Greens who are left once again being the wasted quota.
It is very hard to come form a margion of 1.5% and teh Liberal vote will increase with postals.
What the Calculator says
http://www2b.abc.net.au/Elections/View/SenateCalculator.aspx?e=1&ca=vic
SNIP – Melbcity, please don’t use up space like this – thanks, PB.
What you have to remember is that it is not the order of election that counts in a multi-member proportional ballot but the order of elimination. The order is just so we can logically arrive at a result.
Oh and there is a distortion in the proportionality of the vote.
Under the current AEC system one vote does not equal one value. The calculation of the Surplus transfer is based on the number of ballot papers not the value of the vote. This favours the major parties. The other issue is the order of segmentation. I wont get into this here suffice to say that the ballot should be based on the value of the vote and there should be one transaction per candidate. If we adopt optional preferential there should also be a reiterative counting process (You start the calculation again every time you exclude a candidate) All this is possible and desirable under a computer assisted counting system. (This is my best chance to advocate some of these ideas in the hope that someone will change the system used so it is more fair and standardised.)
The PR society has gone to sleep on this one. Sadly…
A Margin of 1.5% is to much to catch up on The postal vote states do not indicate any hope of a turn around. Maybe the Absentee votes is all the Great Victorian Bike Rode vote Green. some how I do not see this happening.
Bob Brown lives in a state of false dreams. (And over representation).
Melbcity, where are you getting postal figures from? I look at http://vtr.aec.gov.au/SenateStateFirstPrefsByVoteType-13745-VIC.htm and see nothing but ordinary unapportioned votes.
Looking at the election calculator, in the final stages its FF votes flowing to libs that gets them across the line.
I doubt many FF votes would vote below the line, sorry FF, but i think your voters are more likely to behave like sheep and all turn up on the day and do what their religious instincts tell them to.
So my hope is that FF vote is down, Labour and Greens vote is up.
Glenn, from what I can tell, BTL first preferences are already counted. What the Greens are hoping for with BTL votes is people who’ve given their first preference to Family First or the DLP or one of the other parties that are preferencing the Liberals ahead of the Greens. So really, if you’re after a Greens senator, you want to be hoping that FF voters have gone below the line and been a little independent.
Ok, my needs are not being met by the VIC Senate coverage!
Where do I go?
At Antony’s ABC site, it says 72% counted. What does that mean? I thought all primaries were counted, even BTLs.
http://vtr.aec.gov.au/SenateStateFirstPrefsByGroup-13745-VIC.htm
Here is the data… It records the first preferences allocated to the group (Including any below the line votes — Most people voting below the line remain within the group of their fist choice) The stats show a consolidation of the vote to the major players. Labor is set to win three seats on its quota with minimal surplus. That leaves a battle for the last place between the liberals and the greens. The other minor parties that normally feed the Green machine just are not there… The liberal Party is expected to increase its position come postals See the AEC postal Votes issued states) Unknown of course is the absentee, provisional and pre-poll (Why the SEC does not publish stats on these votes is anyone’s guess. This information forms part of the pollingplace returns which should be in by now. The number of postals votes to be returned of course takes a couple of weeks BUT we should know how many postals and absentee’s votes have been issued and who many are polls were lodged.
I had asked William to remove posts 31, 32 and 34 which were posted by mistake. He removed the other post which was the correct one.
Plug in the values shown on the AEC stats into Antony Green’s Calc and you see Three Labor and Three Liberals and the Greens fall short by 1.5% I do to expect this will change much. Had the ALP not polled so well then maybe they would have been elected. The ALP surplus does not help the Greens much and there just is no minor party vote showing up to bolster their fortunes.
um melbcity, must we have pages and pages of your bias? what a waste of space.
There are still to be counted votes. The Liberal trend has been going down all the time. Labor and Greens have been going up. If Labor jumps the 3rd quota, the Greens are in with a real chance.
By the way, These are the events that were on election day.
Great Vic Bike ride
Earthcore
Queenscliffe Music Festival
Schoolies…
and on and on….
now can you see many of these people voting in great numbers for the Libs?
Lefty,
the missing 28 per cent are absentees, declarations, pre polls, postals and no shows. Greens do about 40% better from absents and 30% worse from postals. I agree with melbcity that the aec should at least tell up how many of the damn things there are
Cool, so some hope lives on. Thanks Darryl.
It’d be great if the ALP + Greens + Xenophon = 39, rather than 38.
I’d point out that the AEC figures are being fed directly into the ABC calculator at http://www.abc.net.au/elections/federal/2007/results/senate/vic.htm. The figures are updated every 15 minutes, though whether the figures change depends entirely on how the AEC counts.
Just a note on what is meant by ‘Unapportioned below the line’ on the AEC site. The total of votes in each group (both ATL and BTL) counted on the night are retained for each booth as a batch total in the AEC system. Post election, all the ATL votes are tallied, entered into the AEC system as a total, while the BTL votes are forwarded to the data entry centre.
The ‘Unapportioned below the line votes’ is the difference between the original booth total and the ATL votes. Once the BTL votes in each booth are entered, the ‘Unapportioned’ value becomes zero in that booth, replaced by the actual total of ATL votes and entered BTL votes.
The ABC calculator simply adds all the votes to a group total, which means the calculator is an approximate of the result only. The closer the count, the more BTL votes have to be taken into consideration.
Antony, or anyone else: where are we at here exactly? Am I right in thinking that ATLs plus BTL first preferences were counted at the booths on Saturday night, and they’re the only figures we have at this point? Will the next step be counting of ATLs plus BTL first preferences for pre-polls etc?
Hi Antony, im still a bit confused, can we look at this example from the AEC site
U TICKET VOTES Australian Greens 4,081 0.17 0.0120
[removed list of candidates]
Unapportioned Australian Greens 236,551 9.93 0.6949
Group Total Australian Greens 240,632 10.10 0.7069
So…
‘Group Total’ on the AEC site of 240,632 is what you said is the ‘batch total’ of ATL and BTL.
‘Unapportioned’ on the AEC site looks like it must be still BTL and ABL because of its size.
TICKET VOTES of 4081 means the AEC has processed that many ‘Unapportioned’ votes, its the number thats going to increase as ‘Unapportioned’ decrease ?
I guess ‘Unapportioned below the line votes’ must be on a different page…
Lisa,
If Labor jumps the 3rd quota, the Greens are in with a real chance.
This isn’t quite true. At the moment Labor gets past its quota using preferences from parties which would otherwise be going to the Liberals (1/3 Socialist Equality, LDP and Shooters). If they close the 0.78% they need to get a third quota in their own right, all they will effectively do is transfer 0.78% to the Liberals.
However, it is an uneven distribution getting there. Because the Labor vote completely overwhelms the minor parties, anything over a quota after an exclusion is transferred to the Greens (minus a hundred votes or so). Therefore every vote Labor gets up to the point where they don’t need the Shooters Party (another 0.39%) is good for the Greens, but any extra sets the Greens back 0.23% on where they are now. Given the margin could be somewhat smaller than that, this makes estimating things much more difficult.
For what its worth, Labor can lose another 0.24% before they need One Nation (0.38% – another Liberals before Greens vote), but if they slip further than 0.62% they will potentially miss out.
A note too, on BTL preferences. As they are already counted for the ticket, unless there are substantial numbers of Labor or Liberal BTL votes not distributing to their third candidate, we can safely assume that the votes counted for the ticket are an accurate representation of the numbers before the exclusions start. Further, since they are currently counted as ticket votes, they will only affect the final result if a preference expected to pass to one of the three main parties goes to the other. With that in mind, the relevant percentages of possible changes are:
Liberals: 3.99
Labor: 1.20
Greens: 3.34
The Liberals have the most to lose, but the chance of swinging more than 0.1% on BTL tickets in this contest is pretty minimal.
William,
I don’t think that btl 1st preferences were counted on Saturday night, but I stand to be corrected. Here in Victoria, the various divisional offices counted atl on the night, and separated out btl for entering into the computer (as I understand it, the computer entry takes the form of double entry by two separate computer operators). The count recommences today at the divisional offices, and staff are checking to see if btl are valid and then bundling them up and sending them to the central office in Hawthorn. The postal/absentee and declaration votes are yet to be counted, and that too begins today at the Hawthorn office.
William, the returning officers will slowly be breaking all booth votes into ATL and BTL votes. So the Unapportioned total will decline. Postal, pre-poll and absent votes will now also be added. By the end of this week, or maybe next week, the total will get past 90%, and then the BTL data entry will begin.
Antony
As always a timely injection of information . . . Thank you!
I know a couple of people scrutineering for the Greens at the Senate count, from today in Hawthorn through till at least Friday, so hopefully I’ll be able to get an update at the end of the day.