Photo finish: Victorian Senate

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.

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.

129 comments on “Photo finish: Victorian Senate”

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  3. Hey Jen, Others,

    I was the person dropping in for the Green’s in Wang.

    The senate vote from Wang’s prepoll was counted for the first time today. The breakdown was as follows:

    Group A. 33
    b. 26
    c. 53
    d.23
    e. 5
    f (labor). 1017
    g. 36
    h. (lib/nat) 1674
    i. 11
    j. 3
    k. 69
    l. 6
    m. 6
    n. 37
    o. 9
    p. 2
    q. 1
    r. 0
    s 4
    t. 2
    u. 167
    v. 1
    w. 8

    If my basic math is correct, this means the Wang prepoll saw only a 5.23% Green senate vote, compared to 8.2% electorate wide. If we’re relying on an improved Green turnout in prepolling to get us over the line, it aint happening in places like Indi.

  4. Thanks Kieran – obviously,had much better results in some of the booths.
    shame!
    Do you know what the postal/absentee situation is? (i expect they will favour Mrs Mirraballa of course).
    Jen.

  5. nfi. I don’t have time to head back tomorrow, but Trisha might.

    Nothing terribly interesting in the informals (that being what I was instructed to watch). A couple of votes from the informal pile where declared formal for the greens, one vote from the green pile was declared formal, and one stray labor vote was rescued from the Liberal pile. Terribly exciting stuff.

    I wouldn’t write Richard off, but to offer an opinion in response to Pseph’s question, I think the Green’s chances are slim.

  6. I was observing the checking of the senate count this morning at Moonee Ponds on behalf of the Greens. The AEC team on there were thoroughly competent at their job, and I didn’t pick up anything that they didn’t. They were careful to check btl votes that were in the informal pile, and in the count for one booth they fished out 5 such valid votes for us, as well as a valid green group ticket vote that had been misfiled with the democrats. We had a minor increase for that booth from 67 to 73 valid votes cast.

    The predominant error was the misfiling of Liberal and Labor atl votes.
    The votes had been bundled into groups of 50 on Saturday night, and almost
    every bundle had one misfiled vote, and a lot had two. As a general
    comment, I would estimate that the amount of misfiling was easily 2%;
    almost all of that was Lib-Lab mix ups, with a surprising number of FFP
    caught up in the Lib lot. The false negatives (ie., votes incorrectly
    classified as informal) were running at 10%. I was impressed at how carefully the AEC staff were checking those.

  7. Hi folks,

    FYI – There’s an unofficial blog (with RSS feed) running at adambandt.com with comments about the count in Melb and the Senate.

    Any tips or comments (e.g. of the kind made by Kieran) greatly appreciated – email me at a DOT bandt AT mac DOT com

    Adam Bandt
    (Greens candidate for Melbourne)

  8. Here’s hoping Richard brings it home, Adam.

    Im im touch with some ALP senate staffers who are quietly hoping the same.

    No one fancies 3 years of dealing with Family First if it can be avoided.

  10. Adam B.
    firstly, well done.
    Secondly, I am waiting for further info from Greens website, but nothing new.
    Is Stephen Luntz putting up his stuff anywhere?
    Also, do you know how certain Scott and Sarah’s senate positions are as yet?
    Also – Just heard Kerrie Tucker is still in with a chance: not what the MSM are saying.
    Just tried your site but only got an email address.
    Cheers, Jen
    (no2 senateticket).

  12. jen,

    you’ve gotta be cautious when you hear Greens talk about “a chance”, I find we tend to wear the most insanely green tinted glasses, seeing ridiculous “chances” everywhere.

  14. I’m sorry to disappoint Greens, and I’d much prefer a Green BoP Senate after 30 June, as I hate the thought of dealing with Steve Fielding. However, the HoR count in Vic is going strongly to the Libs, with the Libs winning more than 51% of postals on primaries. This trend will no doubt be followed in the Senate, and is bad news for any hope of a 4-2 Left-Right split in Vic; it seems it’s now certain to be 3-3.

    ACT may give you Greens more of a chance actually, as the pre-polls counted there so far in the HoR are more pro-Labor/Greens than the ordinary votes. On pre-polls, Libs are at 29%, as compared with 33% on ordinary. No postals counted there, yet, though, but absentees should be more pro-Green.

  15. Lord D, I reckon the ground is too far to make up in ACT, with very little below the greens to be distributed, even if Libs do drop. Best chance (And this is probably what you mean, on reflection) is a strong ALP surplus

    VIC is a chance, as at least there’s the random generation of members factor there that comes with substantial small party prefs.

    Agree its slim though!

  16. No way. No chance. 3-3.

    There’s no bias here either.

    In VIC, Lib-Green = about 1.5% the difference.

    In ACT, Lib-Green = about 1.5% the difference.

    The libs ALWAYS gain from non-ordinary votes for the senate, about 0.3%. Why would this suddenly become a net loss of 1.5%?

    BTLs will make no difference, and in the ACT will exacerbate the difference (to about 3%, or 35% to Humphries), since the ABC calculator assumes 100% of ticket votes follow the GVT.

    Congratulations to Feeney and Ryan. I declare thee elected. You can officially start celebrating now! I said so.

  17. Lisa you hope spent on te Great victorian Bile ride and other events is misplaced.

    Look at the data … The SEC has counted all first preferences voets. (Including BTL preferences) The greens went backwards from 2004. The reported percentages are not going to change that much as the remaining votes to be counted are also for the Liberals and the ALP….. more or less in the same percentages as the polling place results. Do you think that Green voters are all vote postal and absentee and no one else.

    Again look at the postal vote application statistics…. you will see that the Liberal party has the lions share…

    Goven that all BTL voets for the Greens, the ALP and the Libs are locked in (Apart from the small ALP surplus value 5% of a quota) That leaves the others to feed the Greens. Sorry to disappoint you but if you read t6he data I published and understood it there is not enough minor party votes delivering preferences to the Greens.. They went down from 8.5% to 7% ….There was a major consolidation of votes for the major parties. and yes if having an opinion on the obvious (The numbers do not show a win for the Greens) is bias then yes I guess I am… It is no secret that I am a member of the Labor Party. But the election is over and its all about the count. Are you a Green supporter… they are the only ones that are holding out such hope as the eat Victorian Bike Ride… ALL GREEN VOTERS I AM SURE… lol

  18. BTL preferences will not make a difference . There is not enough BTL that do not get locking to the three main players. Lib. ALP and Greens. It would be quicker and cheaper to do a manual count.. Sort the votes into primaries and then do a three way distribution…

    Simple maths is all it takes.

    I published the data to sjow this BUT William removed it.

    LOOK AT THE NUMBER OF QUOTA PERCENTAGES. REMOVE THE INTEGER FROM THE ALP AND LIBERAL PARTY (Add the ALP surplus to the Greens) then add up all of the minor parties. You can distributes the Above-the0line votes as we know where they go. The Below the line votes for other minor parties (Excluding the Greens BTL which is locked in) can not change the result…

    First Preferences for Victoria Liberal / Nationals Australian Labor Party Australian Greens
    Quota: 341,434 Enrolment: 3,442,096
    Group Votes % Swing Quota
    Liberal/The Nationals 932,421 39.01 -5.09 2.7309 0.73
    Australian Labor Party 1,011,427 42.32 6.2 2.9623 0.96
    Australian Greens 241,117 10.09 1.29 0.7062 0.71 2.40 2.40
    D.L.P. – Democratic Labor Party 23,672 0.99 -0.95 0.0693 0.07
    Family First 62,499 2.61 0.73 0.183 0.18
    Australian Democrats 38,670 1.62 -0.24 0.1133 0.11
    One Nation 9,212 0.39 -0.33 0.027 0.03
    Citizens Electoral Council 1,296 0.05 -0.49 0.0038 0.00
    Christian Democratic Party (Fred Nile Group) 5,076 0.21 -0.13 0.0149 0.01
    Socialist Alliance 1,936 0.08 -0.08 0.0057 0.01
    Non-Custodial Parents Party (Equal Parenting) 1,039 0.04 -0.07 0.003 0.00
    The Australian Shooters Party 15,135 0.63 0.63 0.0443 0.04
    Carers Alliance 2,422 0.1 0.1 0.0071 0.01
    Climate Change Coalition 16,473 0.69 0.69 0.0482 0.05
    Conservatives for Climate and Environment 2,880 0.12 0.12 0.0084 0.01
    LDP 2,382 0.1 0.1 0.007 0.01
    Senator On-Line 2,201 0.09 0.09 0.0064 0.01
    Socialist Equality Party 3,287 0.14 0.14 0.0096 0.00 0.00 0.00
    What Women Want (Australia) 9,865 0.41 0.41 0.0289 0.03
    Group I 0.00
    Group P 0.0001 0.00 0.00
    Group T 0.00
    GroupV

    1.017 1.050 0.913

    0.29 0.09 0.21

  20. Ditto to above conclusions. I have had a look at the 2004 BTL proportions for various parties and I agree that the Greens have no chance whatsoever in Vic barring a very significant primary swing to them on non-ordinary votes (like the one that happened in Tas in 2004).

    By my calculations the absolute most the Greens could conceivably gain (if anything) relative to the Liberals as a result of anything stemming from the existence of BTLs is about .02 of a quota. That’s less than a quarter of what they need (and even that’s a very extreme estimate of what they might get) so it aint happening.

  21. Good point kev.

    But the Greens vote was up 0.43% (final was 0.43 more than ordinary) and the libs vote was down 0.45%.

    I don’t think there’d be any chance of this happening in Victoria this time.

    But let’s, for an instant, assume it does happen this time.

    This would take the “margin” from 1.25 to 0.38%.

    Factor in the 0.02 quota above and then it gets close.

    But, I dispute that will happen in Victoria, and I dispute that the BTLs will result in any narrowing. Even, for a split secod that both happen, the libs still get up.

  23. Across the nation, thousands of Australians are turning to the AEC’s website, vtr.aec.gov.au to check the counting progress of the recent election.

    But, what confidence can we have in the figures?

    Take the micro Socialist Equality Party (SEP) which allegedly, polled 1730 of their state’s tally of 3337 votes at the otherwise uninteresting Cairnlea booth at Deer Park Primary School in the seat of Gorton. A simple check reveals that this polling booth, which recorded a total of 2631 House of Reps votes also recorded a whopping 4393 Senate votes. Obviously, these numbers should be same. The difference is almost totally explained by the extra SEP votes. It looks as if this is a keying error by an AEC official, as the ALP vote was 1728 in the Senate and 1733 in the Reps.

    Now look at the vote for the micro Senator On-Line (SOL) party which allegedly clocked up a third of its total Victorian vote in the sleepy Frankston High School booth in Dunkley. Did the SOL party really get 1155, or 27.3% of the Frankston HS vote and poll almost the same as Labor and the Liberals? Again, there were 4313 Senate votes and 3154 House votes, the difference being almost totally explained by the extra SOL party votes.

    There are potentially errors across the board. Tony Klein’s Group V Independents vote appears confused with the Greens in Thomastown Meadows in Scullin and he SOL vote at the Eildon booth in McEwen looks inflated by about 250 votes too. Note that all of these errors have been made confusing one party with a larger party that is positioned near it on the tablecloth ballot paper.

    So, if I can, in an hour, find four genuine and easily observable errors in the AEC’s numbers with a combined discrepancy of over 3000 votes, why could the AEC not pick up these glaring errors before publishing on their website? When Antony Green’s fantastic senate calculator draws numbers from the raw AEC feeds, it makes an assumption that the AEC numbers are correct.

    My question for the AEC is simple. When will these errors be resolved? Australian democracy depends on us punters having faith in an independent and accurate election body like the AEC.

    Relevant links are:
    Cairnlea Reps: http://vtr.aec.gov.au/HousePollingPlaceFirstPrefs-13745-46536.htm
    Cairnlea Senate: http://vtr.aec.gov.au/SenatePollingPlaceFirstPrefs-13745-46536.htm
    Frankston South Reps: http://vtr.aec.gov.au/HousePollingPlaceFirstPrefs-13745-3600.htm
    Frankston South Senate: http://vtr.aec.gov.au/SenatePollingPlaceFirstPrefs-13745-3600.htm
    Thomastown Meadows Senate: http://vtr.aec.gov.au/SenatePollingPlaceFirstPrefs-13745-4864.htm
    Eildon Senate: http://vtr.aec.gov.au/SenatePollingPlaceFirstPrefs-13745-4320.htm

  25. The largest error (Cairnlea) has been fixed but the others have not. Funny what shining a torch in the dark corners does to democracy!

  26. Anyone who’s been keeping an eye on the Senate should be watching today, lots of counting going on around the country. No big surprises, though in Vic now the 3rd Lib is elected before 3rd Labor making the position worse for the Greens.
    None of the Senate races look close enough to me for there to be any deviations from the results given by Antony Green’s calculators anyway.

  28. I would be interested to see if the LDP in NSW can get eliminated later than round 15. Their pref deals in that state were pretty good, it would be interesting to see them “shoot up” if they can get 0.05% and over take Carers Alliance. Not my state or my party, but interesting!

  29. I haven’t paid too much attention to NSW, I figured that the primaries for the majors are close enough to 3 quotas each to shut out anyone else.
    It would be one hell of a preference harvest for the LDP to get elected on 0.2% of the vote! They are a couple of thousand behind the Carers Alliance when they get eliminated so I don’t think anything there will change. Even if they got ahead of the Carers there still wouldn’t be enough for them to get above the Greens (who get CCC and WWW preferences). Also the 1.25% from the DLP goes to the Libs.
    If everyone below the Greens preferenced LDP above GRN, LAB, LIB then it could be a different story (as it is they pick up preferences from a pretty diverse bunch!)

  33. Yes, that was a mistake on my part about Victoria. The order of election has been switching a bit but it doesn’t make too much difference.

  36. The order of election plays little. The fact is as we had expected the Liberal vote was going to increase was and when the declaration votes are counted. Problem is we and the AEC have no idea as to how many ballot papers have been issued and how many are outstanding or waiting to be counted. The AEC is still reporting more ballot papers received then issued. Without accurate statistics on how may ballot papers have been issued there is no way of properly determining the outcome of the election. it has become a hit and miss affair.

    How ever based on patch return data (The AEC has published three reports each one giving a different quantitative sum (More like Quantum physics then reality)

    The problem facing the Greens is that there is a significant drop in support for minor parties and of the minor parties that there are they do not fold up in favour of the Greens. the Greens can not expect to be the benefactor of surplus and preferences.

    The ALP looks set to either elect three straight up or fall 4% short of a quota. If they fall short then the Greens do not benefit from the ALP surplus. They sit there at around 92% of a quota. They are left standing on the dance floor without a partner.

    The Greens seem to expect that they are the natural alternative to the non major party vote. BEEP… Wrong.

    Family first will see home the Liberal party vote. The Liberal Party are better placed in terms of minor party preferences then the ALP as long as the ALP stays above the 41.6% of the vote they outcall the greens and are secured a third place. By my calculations there is not enough votes in the system (Difficult to determine due to the dodgy figures published by the AEC).

    If the liberal vote goes up then the ALP vote is expected to take a dip but the slide will not be enough to see the Greens overcome their current shortfall.

    All votes for Labor. Liberals or the Greens are accounted for and locked in. the only votes that are on the move will be the other minor parties,. Most of which are above the line voters so we know in what direction they will travel. Of the below the line minor party votes they tend to also follow the same general direction as the main ticket so I would not expect a vast unexpected swing to the Greens.

    It would be quicker and cheaper for the AEC to undertake a manual count as opposed to a data-entry count. below the line votes could be manually distributed into three piles. Labor’s #3 Liberal’s # 3 and The Greens #1. All other parties have no chance of surviving the count. So its a three horse race with the Greens missing out and once again becoming the wasted quota. Nothing has changed. I expect the greens to end up at 92% of a quota. With Labor beoing elecetd follwoing teh elimination of teh hsoorters party or One nation and the Liberals being elected with the exclusion of family first at which statge there is no more votes to be distributed. The ALP and Liberal surplus making up the remainder of the 92% of the Greens lost quota.

    At least this time teh count shoudl be staright forward and we will not see the didgy counting practices that existed in the Western Metropolictan count undertaken by the VEC where votes went missing between count A and Count B (the total number of votes – Not the allocation of preferences went down between count A and Count B). The VEC refused to publishs the detailed results of the first count in what is seen as a coverup of the disatserous counting practices adopted. The VEC uses a random sampleling qquailitive control (Seriously flawed system) where the AEC uses a double entry verifaction system of data-entry,. Without access to the datafile in western Victoria we were denied the right and opportunity to analysis the full exent of the VEC stuff up. It is rightly argued that there should have been a third count to verify that the VEC has not screwed up on the second count. Either way the VEC still has an oblgation to published the full statitsical data

    Although the AEC data does not show the correct number of ballot papers issued there counting practices are far more preferable then those adopted by the VEC.

  40. I would prefer the Greens to get the last slot than Labor or Liberals. But I have to say that I didn’t like it when after the last election when Greens supporters on the internet went around saying that Fielding had “stolen” “their” seat. It doesn’t matter if you get 90% of a quota. If the other 109.999% of the remaining quota want someone else then that someone else should get it. The result otherwise is a disaster (Bush v. Gore + Nader anyone?).

  41. I don’t think they said any such thing. They just made people aware of the fact that the ALP had gifted the last seat to Fielding instead of doing something more practical with their surplus. The greens have never had a senate seat in victoria and have never claimed any seat is “theirs”.

  42. Read the strangely title section “The effect of preference deals on Senate outcomes” in the 2004 Australian election wikipedia article. It’s clearly written by cranky Greens – every state is written from the perspective of the Green who nearly missed out or “just” got in…

  43. Assuming you are right, if it wasn’t written from a minor party perspective then what would be the point of writing it at all? Obviously the impact of minor party preferences in the past couple of elections has been to impact of the ability of the Greens to attain, or just miss attaining, a seat.
    It is hardly interesting or useful to write a piece on the effect of preference deals on senate outcomes from the perspective of the Liberal party or Citizens Electoral Council.

  45. It’s hard to see Richard getting a seat this time; I was holding out to see just how many btl votes Jacinta Collins gets, but she’s not getting anywhere near enough to help Richard. If 50,000-odd unapportioned Labor votes suddenly transmute into btl votes for JC we might be in with a chance. Barring that, I’m calling it as over for Richard too.

  49. Currently, 1.2 million voters are recorded as expressing their first preference for Labor. As Jacinta Collins is the lead candidate and has far exceeded the quota (approx 435,000 votes) she will duly be elected. Her surplus vote thus flows to the 2nd preference of those 1.2 million voters, albeit with a lowered transfer value. In the event that all these electors voted above the line, it would be reasonable to assume that Labor would elect its second senator easily. If instead a substantial portion of the electorate voted below the line for Jacinta, then the likelihood that the 2nd preference lies outside the Labor party increases. This favors the Greens in two ways:

    (1) Increased chance that a Jacinta voters 2nd (or subsequent) preference ends up at the Greens earlier;
    (2) Decreases the Labor opportunity to attain a quota.

    Hence my earlier post. In the absence of a large btl vote for Jacinta, it’s hard to see how Richard is going to get up. I find it equally hard to fathom that the Labor party (with 2.92 quotas) won’t get 3 seats.

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