Photo finishes: Hasluck

Friday, August 26

477 pre-polls go 252-225 to Liberal, lead out to 868.

Thursday, August 26

5pm. Another 806 postals go 447-359 to Liberal; the lead is now 820.

3pm. 1865 absent votes have favoured Liberal 946-919, increasing the lead to 721.

Wednesday, August 25

5pm. The Liberals have enjoyed a good batch of postals breaking 801-616 their way, increasing their postal vote share from 52.7 per cent to 54.1 per cent. They have also gained five votes from 667 pre-polls and 38 from further rechecking of ordinary votes. That increases the margin to 770 votes, though my projection is that outstanding absent votes will rein that in to 369.

2pm. Rechecking of ordinary votes have boosted Labor by 99 votes, while a further 955 absent pre-polls have followed the earlier trend in favouring the Liberals 505-450. Extrapolating current swings on pre-polls, postals and absents across uncounted votes, I project a Liberal margin of 269 before taking into account the small but unpredictable share of provisional votes, on which Labor could maybe hope to recover as much as 100 votes if they’re lucky.

Tuesday, August 24

7pm. The Liberals have gained another 131 votes through rechecking of ordinary votes, which have produced a net gain of 80, and a further 705 pre-polls, which have added 51. The margin is now 586.

4pm. 2546 postal votes have been added out of what will be a total of about 3500 and they haven’t delivered the miracle Labor had hoped for, favouring the Liberals 1775-1417 and pushing the lead out to 455. This is still quite a lot better for Labor than in 2007, when the Liberals’ postal two-party vote share was 7.1 per cent higher than for ordinary votes rather than 2.5 per cent. Funnily enough, the current Liberal lead is exactly what Labor were able to scrounge back on absent votes in 2007. However, that becomes 330 when you factor in the 1 per cent swing against Labor, and the remaining postals look likely to widen the gap by maybe another 100 votes. But could provisional votes hold an ace for Labor? Last time there were only 130 of them compared with 638 in 2004, because self-serving Howard government law changes made votes cast by people who had moved within the electorate without updating their address inadmissible. This time provisional votes will include the 600 or so late-enrolling voters who were enfranchised by the High Court ruling in favour of GetUp!, nearly every one of whom has been personally contacted not only by the AEC, but also the ALP who know such votes would heavily favour them. (UPDATE: Propmanoz in comments explains I was wrong about this: supplementary lists of affected voters were used to admit the voters on polling day. The only provisional vote dividend for Labor would be an increase in the number of voters who make the effort to follow up on providing the required identification if they had none on the day, which would be expected given the importance of the contest).

3pm. 704 absent votes have broken 376-328 Labor’s way – possible the Gosnells area I affect I alluded to two days ago – which has narrowed the Liberal lead from 363 to 317. That makes the current batch 3.7 per cent better for Labor than the ordinary votes compared with 2.2 per cent in 2010, so there’s a suspicion the rest of the absent count will come from different areas and thus not favour Labor to the same degree. There should be at least 2000 absent votes to go: if the trend from the first batch continued, Labor would claw back an extra 136 votes.

Monday, August 23

921 absent pre-polls, cast at centres outside the electorate an thus not counted on election night, have gone 477-444 in favour of the Liberals and widening the lead to 382. Contrary to what I foreshadowed yesterday, no polling day absent votes have been added.

Sunday, August 22

Tomorrow there will be about 1000 absent votes added, which Labor expects to be dominated by Gosnells area residents voting across the boundary at the Westfield Carousel megaplex – a Labor crowd. Absent votes from farther-flung locations will follow over coming days. A bagful are expected from Broome where, I am told, 50,000 people are attending a festival (I think it must be this one, notwithstanding that it does not actually start for a few days). I would presume its audience to be “blue-green”: resident of the prosperous hills suburbs around Kalamunda, but not entirely representative of them. Given there were 6500 absent votes in 2007, that still leaves a lot left over from various other locations.

Throughout and beyond, postal votes – perhaps as many as 4000 – will be added to the count, in addition to a smaller number of international votes as they arrive. This is where Labor may have an ace up its sleeve: it had 2420 applications processed compared with just 681 for the Liberals, dramatically reversing a 911-549 deficit in 2007. This gives them the advantage that they and not their opponents can target their residences with timely campaign and how-to-vote material (an area self-evidently crying out for reform).

Saturday, August 21

This post will be progressively updated to follow late counting in Hasluck, where Liberal candidate Ken Wyatt finishes the night with a lead of 369 votes (0.28 per cent) over Labor incumbent Sharryn Jackson. This turns into a 0.6 per cent lead on Antony Green’s projection.

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.

74 comments on “Photo finishes: Hasluck”

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  1. In 2004, Jackson was the sitting member but she was not part of the
    government side. Thus she did not get warned to get her postal
    application packs out when the election was called.

    If the Libs were tagetting her seat then they would have had a
    senator send postal vote application packs to Hasluck just
    as teh election was announced.

    Thus the people of Hasluck may have got Liberal invitations
    first.

    That is one factor.

    The other is that many very old people use postal votes
    so there may be some conservative leanings in any case.

    We are just not sure how it will work this time.

  2. The AEC site now has 1565 postals, breaking 53.8% to the Libs. Doesn’t look like the ALP has much of a chance here, assuming the opened postals are a random sample (?)

  3. AEC has counted 2/3 of postal votes received where ALP doesnt do well. But hardly any Absentee votes … ALP did well in the 10% counted so far.

  4. I don’t know about how the process went in Wa, but I was a polling official in Higgins and we received a supplementary roll which had the details of those voters affected by the high court decision, and ever voter that came in with the AEC notification letter was on that supp roll and was issued an ordinary vote – so I wouldn’t imagine the provisional votes being a overly large number.

  5. Now there are 2546 postals in. That could be as many as half of them.

    Lib is only about 500 ahead. (100 of that due to postals)

    So, if the other half of the postals come in the same then he will be 600 ahead.

    But then the absentees have to be counted as well. In 2007, there
    were 6000 absentee votes. They broke 54-46 to Sharryn. This
    time the few absentees counted are breaking 53-47 to Sharryn.

    Even with no increase in
    the absentees total number,
    they could therefore give Sharryn some 400 extra votes nett.

    That takes the margin down to 200 to the Lib.

    Then there might be a few more pre-polls and a very few
    provisionals.

    Hasluck will be close.

  6. Posted this on the D+2days thread. After having a look here, I agree with Dr Good’s numbers!

    In Hasluck, the Libs are ahead by 412 votes after ordinary vote count. If all 6057 postal votes sent out are returned and they continue to be in the Libs favor 52.71/47.29, they’ll have a gain of 333 votes, taking them to 745. If the absent votes (of which there are 7372!) continue 53.41 / 46.59 to ALP (as did the few ones counted thus far), the ALP can reduce the difference by 502 votes, leaving the liberals 240 votes ahead prior to provisionals. Again assuming 1,000 postal votes dont come back, that will be a difference of 200 votes before tackling the 1566 provisional votes.

    If you’re pro ALP, the good thing is that there are heaps of absent votes

  7. Dr Good,
    I put the following post on the D-Day Plus 2 thread, because you’d asked about the number of remaining votes there; so I’ve taken the liberty of copying it here (in response to your #56)
    Dr. Good,
    The AEC website indicates that for Hasluck, there are 1100 postals to be counted (if all are received by the deadline), 5,000 absentees, 1,700 pre-polls and just under 1,600 provisionals (presumably to be assessed, and counted if the elector’s claim is upheld).
    I don’t think I’ve seen any reference in the threads to the increased number of provisionals – there seemed a lot at the booth at which I scrutineered on Saturday. Is it reasonable to assume that this is significantly influenced by Get-up’s campaign to over-turn the “early” closing of the roll?

  8. Thanks very much Peter

    Are we sure about the number of absentees? I agree the number 5745 is there
    but might more come in from booths around Australia in the coming days?

    The postals might also grow.

    On the provisionals, I think that many end up not being validated.

    Also others have suggested that the clearly ok get-up ones
    are already in the ordinary vote counts.

    Anyway, I guess that we have to wait and see how these
    categories pan out.

  9. Add further to stats above … there’s some 3000 early votes left to count and they seem to go 53/47 to the Libs, pushing the seat further into Lib territory.

  10. For absent votes, is “Envelopes Issued” the number of absent votes they expect to count for the electorate? Or is it the number of envelopes issued in Hasluck booths for other electorates?

    Also, how many of the provisional votes should we expect to see approved and how many of the 1120 unreceived postal votes should we expect to be received?

  11. eddie270 there will be very few of the provisional votes actually admitted to the count. Last election there were only 24,000 admitted nationally – an average of about 160 per electorate. The ‘envelopes issued’ for absent votes are the number issued in other electorates for Hasluck voters. Unlike postal votes, which may not all be returned, you would expect the absent votes to all be received back from other divisional offices.

  12. Calculation based on the Issued and Recieved reported data and percentage of each Declartion Voter Type to LNP and ALP 2PP

    Split Absentee Provsional Pre-Poll Postal Total
    LNP 0.4659 0.5258 0.5271 0.5041
    ALP 0.5341 0.4742 0.4729 0.4959

    Outstanding/Received Absentee Provsional Pre-Poll Postal Total Notional Margin
    LNP 2883 1059 -1373 6146 41985 686 Winning Margin
    ALP 3305 956 -1231 6046 41299

    Outstanding/Issued Absentee Provsional Pre-Poll Postal Total Notional Margin
    LNP 3088 1507 591 8675 44,514 727 Winning Margin
    ALP 3540 1360 530 8534 43,787

  13. There is an error in the above tabvle in that the AEC has reported that it has issued 3725 Postals and returned 0 yet it has counted 2,604 Postal votes. Clearly the AEC published data is out of wake. (Again) but the Notional inning margin is basxed on teh totals published

    http://vtr.aec.gov.au/HouseDivisionDecScrutinyProgress-15508-305.htm

    The notional winning margin based on the reported nunbers issued shows a LNP win.

    The actual result would be somewhere in between but it looks liek a LNP win.

    Declaration Vote Scrutiny Progress Absent Provisional Early Vote (Pre-Poll) Postal Total
    Envelopes Issued 7,372 1,566 4,546 3,725 17,209
    Envelopes Received 6,932 1,566 3,694 0 12,192
    Rejected at Preliminary Scrutiny 4 0 0 1 0
    Ballot Papers Counted 744 0 1,679 2,604

  14. Absents up to 8000 now. 7300 still to be counted.
    If ALP continue at 53%-47% they could make up 500.

    Probably not enough.

    It really depends on how many of those 1600 provisionals
    get counted. They usually heavily favour ALP.

  15. Anthony Green has caught up with my analysis outlined above and has confirmed my assessment that the LNP will most likely win Hasluck. Corangamite is also expected to go to the LNP which will change the balance. The ALP should retain Brisbane.

  16. [Corangamite is also expected to go to the LNP which will change the balance. ]

    No one else I’ve read ‘expects’ that to happen, D@W; including Antony Green. Most expect ALP will hold it.

    But I agree Hasluck look gone for the ALP, Brisbane looking positive for ALP retain.

  17. And another 832 postals in Hasluck. Wyatt up by another 88 votes (Lib 447/ALP 359). That’s an overall lead of 809 in Hasluck.

  18. #71 Brisbane no longer looks particularly positive for ALP retain. See the Brisbane thread for more detail. Highly likely that it will go to the LNP – sorry to burst your bubble!

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