Tasmanian upper house (Elwick) election live

7.29pm. All booths now in: Taylor 48.5 per cent, Labor 38.3 per cent, Greens 13.2 per cent.

7.11pm. Three more booths have slightly increased the Greens vote to 12.9 per cent: Labor now unlikely to crack 40 per cent, Taylor unlikely to crack 50 per cent.

7.04pm. Kevin Bonham: “the bounce to (the Greens) operating in the 2010 state election is either no longer operating or else is being cancelled out by Taylor running as an independent and hence taking more of their votes than Martin did as a Labor candidate”.

7.01pm. Chigwell and Montrose booths leaves the situation unchanged: Taylor to probably come in a bit under 50 per cent, Labor around 40 per cent and remainder with the Greens. Whatever preferences from the latter do, Taylor will won comfortably.

6.52pm. Bonham confirms none of this is a surprise: last time Terry Martin as Labor candidate had exactly the same local strength that Labor does now as the sitting mayor.

6.48pm. Note that Kevin Bonham, who knows what’s going on much better than I do, is following the action in comments. He tells me Adriana Taylor who is “Terry Martin’s successor as Mayor of Glenorchy which more or less coincides with the Elwick boundaries”. So my presumption that this should be an easy recovery for Labor probably wasn’t the conventional wisdom.

6.47pm. Going off booth matching, Labor’s vote is down 16.9 per cent.

6.45pm. Seven booths out of 16 in now, and I don’t think there’s much doubt Taylor’s going to win. A shame I haven’t been following this, because this looks like a rebuff to the government.

6.40pm. Ooh! First figures are interesting. Independent Adriana Taylor wins both the Windermere and Collinsvale booths.

6.30pm. To my shame, I’d forgotten about the periodical election for the Tasmanian Legislative Council district of Elwick (located in northern Hobart) was this weekend. This post will be used for live reporting of the count, although I’m not sure how informative it will be. Here’s the quickest summary I can offer. There are 15 seats in the chamber: as of about two years ago Labor had five and the rest were independents. Then Labor’s member for Elwick, Terry Martin, quit the party and it became 4-11. Last year another Labor member, Allison Ritchie, quit parliament altogether, and the resulting by-election was won by Liberal candidate Vanessa Goodwin, who had previously been slated as the party’s challenger for a second seat in the lower house division of Franklin (which ended up going to Jacquie Petrusma). That made the numbers 3-1-11. Terry Martin meanwhile became embroiled in a very unpleasant scandal that has obliged him to not seek another term. Under the periodical election calendar the electorate of Aspley, covering the east coast and areas to the north-east of Hobart, was also due to be up for election, but nobody emerged to challenge sitting independent Tanya Rattray-Wagner and she has been elected unoppposed. Somewhat disappontingly given recent events, the Liberals have decided not to field a candidate, so the field is union organiser Tim Jacobson for Labor, “senior policy officer” Kartika Franks for the Greens, and “mayor” (of what I can’t say) Adriana Johnson as an independent. One would presume Jacobson will win very easily, putting the numbers at 4-1-10.

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.

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