Yesterday, the Australian Electoral Commission performed an act which in a rational world would have excited no interest. Since last weekend the commission has featured a “national two party preferred result” on the front page of its Virtual Tally Room, which has assumed tremendous psychological interest as Labor’s margin has steadily eroded from 0.6 per cent to 0.4 per cent. However, the tally had a flaw which biased it in Labor’s favour: there were no Labor-versus-Coalition figures available from strongly conservative Kennedy, Lyne, New England or O’Connor, where the notional two-candidate preferred counts conducted on election night involved independents. This was only balanced out by left-wing Melbourne, where Labor and the Greens were correctly identified as the front-running candidates for the notional count. For whatever reason, the AEC decided yesterday to level the playing field by excluding seats where the notional preference count candidates had been changed since election night, which in each case meant left-wing seats where the Liberals had finished third to the Greens (Batman and Grayndler) or Andrew Wilkie (Denison). The result was an instant 0.4 per cent drop in Labor’s score, reducing them to a minuscule lead that was soon rubbed out by further late counting.
In fact, very little actually changed in yesterday’s counting, which saw a continuation of the slow decline in the Labor total that is the usual pattern of late counting. The media, regrettably, has almost entirely dropped the ball on this point. Mark Simkin of the ABC last night reported that Labor’s lead had been eradicated by the “latest counting”, as opposed to an essentially meaningless administrative decision. Lateline too informed us that Labor’s two-party vote had “collapsed”, and Leigh Sales’ opening question to Julie Bishop on Lateline was essentially an invitation to gloat about the fact. Most newspaper accounts eventually get around to acknowledging the entirely artificial nature of the 50,000-vote reversal in Labor’s fortunes, but only after reporting in breathless tones on the removal of votes that will eventually be put back in.
The reality is that nobody knew who had the lead on the two-party vote yesterday morning, and nothing happened in the day to make anybody any the wiser. The Prime Minister equally had no idea on election night when she made her ill-advised claim to the two-party majority mantle. Only when all seats have reported Labor-versus-Coalition counts, which is probably still a few weeks away, will we be able to say for sure. The best we can do at present is to construct a projection based on the votes counted and our best assumptions as to how the gaps in the vote count data will be filled when all the figures are in.
At present we have completed “ordinary” polling day totals for all electorates and advanced counts of postal votes in most cases, but there has been no progress yet on absent or pre-poll votes in roughly half. Where counting of any of these three categories has been conducted, I have projected the party results on to the expected total of such votes (derived from the “declaration vote scrutiny progress” for absent and pre-poll votes, and from the number of applications for postal votes discounted by 16 per cent as per experience from 2007). Where no counting of a particular category has been conducted, I have compared the parties’ 2007 vote share in that category with their ordinary vote share, and applied that difference to the ordinary vote from this election. For example, the 2007 Liberal two-party vote in Canberra was 7.19 per cent higher than their ordinary vote share, so their 40.54 per cent ordinary vote at the current election has been used to project an absent vote share of 47.73 per cent.
For Batman, Grayndler and Denison, I have used the figures from the two-party Labor-versus-Liberal counts that were conducted in these seats from ordinary votes on election night, calculated the swing against the ordinary vote in 2007 and projected it over the expected absent, pre-poll and postal totals. For Melbourne, New England and Kennedy, where no Labor-versus-Coalition figures are available, I have used preference shares derived from the Labor-versus-Coalition counts from the 2007 election to determine the swing on ordinary votes, and projected that swing through the other categories. It’s with Lyne and O’Connor that things get crude, as we have no case study of how Rob Oakeshott’s or Wilson Tuckey’s preferences split between Labor and Nationals candidates. For O’Connor, which has at least been a Labor-Liberal-Nationals contest at successive elections, I have crudely arrived at a 7.9 per cent swing against Labor derived from the primary vote swing plus moderated by a 70 per cent share of the swing in favour of the Greens. The best I could think to do for Lyne was average the two-party swings from the neighbouring electorates, producing a 5.14 per cent swing against Labor.
Plug all that in and here’s what you get:
Labor 6,313,736 (50.02 per cent)
Coalition 6,307,924 (49.98 per cent)
In other news, Andrew Wilkie says the two-party vote total is “not relevant” in determining which party he will back. Good for him.
UPDATE: An Essential Research poll has it at 50-50, which is “unchanged” – I’m not sure if this is in comparison with the election result or a previously unpublished Essential result from a week ago. Basically no change on preferred prime minister. UPDATE 2: The 50-50 from last week was indeed an unpublished Essential result from their rolling two-week average, which they understandably felt was not worth publishing under the circumstances.
[Tony Windsor says there’s a black hole in the Coalition’s costings of up to $11b ]
And that is just the future projection of sloppys KFC consumption
🙁
If this $11 billion Coalition costings hole is true (and it makes sense since the Treasury briefing was today) then this is HUGE. Easily the biggest development in days.
Yes from the Greek meaning fat skin
On the Red-Green alliance, evidently if you mix red and green pigments you get brown but if you mix red and green light you get yellow.
Long live the Yellow Alliance!
[Tony Windsor says there’s a black hole in the Coalition’s costings of up to $11b]
Damned politicised corrupt Treasury. how could they do this to the noble Tone?
alias
the 11B is closer to about 18b
we tagged and bagged the fish wrapper costings pre election
The Fibs cant do math
period.
11 billion- chicken feed, Lucky i thought it would be more.
[ What I’d really love to know is, if you can pay a bit extra for green power.. can you get a discount for power sourced exclusively from brown coal?
]
GOLD AWARD for comment of the day.
ROTFLMAO. 😆
Diog, this is more appropriate:
[Long live the Yellow Perils!]
Where did you hear Windsor say that?
Oh yeah VB seems we are in furious agreement again
And here it is in Black & White:
[Tony Windsor says there’s a black hole in the Coalition’s costings of up to $11b 3 minutes ago via web Retweeted by zackster]
Frank, what’s eleven BILLION between friends 😉
This morning posters here were saying that the figure of 11.5 billion more in savings than Labor was the suspect amount.
If Tony Windsor is actually referring to it as a black hole that’s something.
The Wisdom of Britney:
[The Greens have found pragmatism. This deal is well short of everything they want but it’s progress for the Greens’ agenda.]
One of the major assumptions of the Fibs was that the revenue generated by the MRRT would be not collected BUT frigging allocated to other programs
Hashamathematics at best
gross dereliction of duty at worst
🙂
obviously, TW didn’t have Joe advising him on how to read the information properly.
$11b discrepancy out of how much? or is that re the putative savings?
OH NO, there is a mole in the Treasury, leaking document!!!
[Long live the Yellow Alliance!]
Yes, go for light rather than pigments because red, green and blue are primary colours in light. (Also because none of the parties are explicitly represented by cyan, magenta or yellow)
Also yellow is my favourite colour, so I could live with that.
The left alliance is actually one of the most important developments of this whole business. It means, whatever happens, Julia has done the unimaginable, together with Bob she has changed the dialogue on the left side of politics. The Libs will be very nervous.
The undies have not at any stage constructed an argument that convinces me that they want to side with Abbott. I have fears, of course, but I am optimistic.
And Dio likes my avatar – leave him alone…
[Tony Windsor says there’s a black hole in the Coalition’s costings of up to $11b]
I’m surprised it wasn’t more.
ty
they are both double counting and using assumptive modelling
eg stopping the boats will deliver a 1.5 b saving over 4 yrs
WT frigging F
Prediction: If this $11 billion black hole is in fact what Treasury has told the 3 country independents, then presumably we can expect an even more furious attack on Ken Henry by Tony Abbott in response. (Though presumably it can’t be attributed only to KH.. it must be the result of basic mathematics by a number of officials).
We can all be yellow shirts!
(Although Dio will have to be a blue shirt due to his medical background)
TSOP
the only yellow beats in a Fib heart
[And Dio likes my avatar – leave him alone…]
Are you talkin’ to me? I have left him alone since 2006
Finns
Why was it the Yellow Peril? I know it was meant to refer to the Chinese skin colour but the Chinese don’t have yellow skin.
what on earth is a [conservative bias allowance adjustment]?
[the only yellow beats in a Fib heart]
No, they’re as black as coal 😉
That’s a lot of Mung beens- $11 billion
I’ll sell you all the land in kennedy for 11 billion
[$11b discrepancy ]
Hockey:
Err, Tony, looks like we can’t afford Nauru.
Or the boatphone.
[Does anyone think it’s a bit tough to sack someone for watching porn/gambling on the internet during work time? Surely a formal written warning would be enough, whether it’s a Minister or anyone else.
Sack them if they do it again.]
Or promote them if they’re from the Sex Party.
TSOP
I’ll pay that
[ Not only has the poor bugger been sacked but just imagine all the jokes he’s going to have to put up with. ]
The guy is obviously not very sharp, if they had let him off some poor techie would have had to look him in the eye AND use his mouse and kb
….eew.
11 billion out?!! Holy funk!
I knew they were all spin, zero policy – but even my cat could get the numbers closer than that.
Is this for real? Major blow to Tones if so. No wodner he wanted to hide it – what an utter shambles. He’s not a serious candidate for office is this is true.
STOP THE WASTE – APPOINT GILLARD PM!
Windsor on lateline
NOW
Tony Windsor on Lateline now.
For those of us not near a TV please advise what Tony Windsor says — most notably on the black hole of course
So now we know why the Libs were depressed. They are caught is a nightmare.
W Undies is on Lateline – repeating the $7-11B blackhole
basically between 7-11 b in costings deficit
😉
…IN a nightmare… (of course)
Windsor on lateline right now saying the black hole is 7-11 billion
Treasury have used the same assumptions as for the government costings.
Therefore any black hole is merely a fantasy of time-serving Labor stooge leakers.
Here are the tweets: http://twitter.com/haydencooper
[haydencooper
1. Also, here’s the Treasury costings of Govt policies. #auswaits #lateline – http://filesocial.com/8ccp51b less than a minute ago via FileSocial
2. Here’s the document. Treasury costings of coalition policies. #auswaits – http://filesocial.com/8c93lzd 7 minutes ago via FileSocial
3. On 1st read: Treasury says Coalition’s policies would improve surplus by 4.5 billion dollars over 4 years, not 11.5 billion as claimed. 19 minutes ago via web
4. Rob Oakeshott has released Treasury’s costings of Coalition and Govt policies… #auswaits]
Agree Gweneth.. I can’t imagine how the Coalition will argue their way out of this. Considering the emphasis the 3 country independents have placed on costings and the budgetary bottomline since day one, this has to be a potential game changer
C’mon fellas, you know you’ve got to support Gillard, or at least not support Abbott. They are a rabble whose numbers don’t even add up. It’s for the good of the country.
anony 72 + 1 =75 now thats what I call silly.
There goes the family silver…