NSW election: photo finishes

UPDATE: Results in: Greens 20, Coalition (Nationals) 21, Hanson 22. Final upper house result: Coalition 11, Labor 5, Greens 3, Christian Democratic 1, Shooters and Fishers 1.

Tuesday, April 12. I’ve allowed this post to go dormant since a week after the election, since when the last lower house seat of Balmain was decided in the Greens’ favour. The big news now is that the button will be pushed on the Legislative Council count this morning, and that Pauline Hanson’s chances have firmed considerably after she moved ahead of not only the third Green, but also the eleventh Coalition candidate. This leaves these three candidates battling for the last two places. The general expectation was that Labor preferences would put the Greens ahead of Hanson, but there now seems an even money chance that she will win a seat all the same. Antony Green explains all. I’ve changed the time stamp on this post to move it to the top of the page, to allow easier access for anyone who wants to comment on the events as they unfold.

Thursday. The NSWEC hasn’t updated the figures, but the ABC results and various news reports tell us absent votes have boosted the Greens to a 218 vote lead over Labor, which Verity Firth will now have to rein in on independent and minor party preferences. Another coat of paint has been removed from Nathan Rees’ lead in Toongabbie, but his lead may be enough.

Wednesday. Labor’s lead has narrowed in Toongabbie, East Hills continues to drift away from them and Balmain remains as much of a wild card as it always was. However, Noreen Hay now looks safe in Wollongong. Nothing today from Oatley.

Tuesday. No further progress in East Hills or Balmain, but Oatley has slipped from Labor’s grasp in today’s counting and the margin in Wollongong has been cut still finer. The latter will come down to absent votes, none of which have been added yet – a clear trend one way or the other would decide the result.

Monday. Late counting has seen any hope for Labor go in Monaro and almost certainly Swansea as well, and things are souring for them in Wollongong as well. East Hills and Oatley are still too close to call, and Balmain remains a wild card. The numbers are thus Coalition 67, Labor 19 and independents three with four in doubt, one of which could go to the Greens. The other turn-up today is that Legislative Council counting has put Pauline Hanson on to the ABC computer’s projection to win the final seat. Antony Green has written a post on why he thinks this unlikely but not impossible – more on this at the bottom of the page.

Sunday. Excluding seats where the ABC computer has the margin at less than 2 per cent, the numbers currently stand at Coalition 64 (Liberal 47 and Nationals 17), Labor 18 and three independents. That leaves eight seats “in doubt”, although in some cases not really. These will be dealt with in turn below. The tables show the two-candidate preferred counts using the most complete figures available, swings for each type of vote matched against the equivalent result from 2007, the number of exhausted votes, the total number of formal votes counted and – to give some sense of how many votes there might be outstanding for a given vote type – the total number of such votes from 2007.

The NSWEC publishes “election night” and “post-election night” figures of the polling booth results, with the latter being the re-checks. In some cases the latter are not fully completed, and it is these partly complete figures which show on the electorate summary pages on the NSWEC site (although the results table on the index page uses the election night figures). Where this is the case, I have used the complete election night figures rather than the incomplete post-election night ones.

EAST HILLS (Margin: 14.1%)

Wednesday. Continues to drift away from Labor, with 3742 absent votes increasing the Liberal lead from 207 to 303.

Sunday. The Liberals led by two whole votes on polling booth figures, but they have gained ground today with 1860 pre-poll votes breaking 954-741 their way.

LABOR LIBERAL Swing Exhaust Formal 2007
Ordinary 15,315 50.0% 15,318 50.0% -14.0% 2,970 33,603 34,578
Absent 1,483 48.4% 1,579 51.6% -19.3% 541 3,603 2,400
Postal 0 0 0 0 2,260
Pre-Poll 741 43.7% 954 56.3% -17.5% 165 1,860 1,916
Other 0 0 0 0 188
TOTAL 17,539 49.6% 17,851 50.4% -14.6% 3,676 0 188
Projection 49.5% 50.5% -14.6%

OATLEY (Margin: 14.4%)

Tuesday. Labor’s gain on pre-polls has been pretty much reversed by the addition of 3000 postals which have added 232 to the Liberal margin, now 321.

Sunday. The Liberal candidate had a 332 vote lead on polling booth votes, but Labor member Kevin Greene has chased down 243 with the addition of 3055 pre-polls.

LABOR LIBERAL Swing Exhaust Formal 2007
Ordinary 15,397 49.5% 15,727 50.5% -14.7% 2,218 33,342 33,965
Absent 0 0 0 0 2,947
Postal 1,333 45.9% 1,568 54.1% -17.8% 168 3,069 3,023
Pre-Poll 1,538 54.3% 1,294 45.7% -11.7% 220 3,052 2,348
Other 89 50.0% 89 50.0% -6.9% 16 99 125
TOTAL 18,357 49.6% 18,678 50.4% -14.7% 2,622 99 125
Projection 49.5% 50.5% -14.8%

SWANSEA (Margin: 10.8%)

Wednesday. Another 400 postal votes added, breaking 194 to 160 and increasing the very secure Liberal lead to 825.

Tuesday. Labor has picked up 43 votes from 3462 postals, which have gone 1544-1501, but it’s too little too late.

Sunday. Labor’s Robert Coombs trailed by 491 votes on the polling booths, and has gone a further 318 votes backwards with the addition of 1883 pre-polls and 43 institution votes.

LABOR LIBERAL Swing Exhaust Formal 2007
Ordinary 14,556 49.1% 15,064 50.9% -11.8% 5,528 35,148 35,360
Absent 377 49.5% 385 50.5% -8.7% 155 917 3,078
Postal 1,704 50.1% 1,695 49.9% -15.0% 463 3,862 3,209
Pre-Poll 660 40.5% 968 59.5% -16.7% 255 1,883 1,727
Other 12 35.3% 22 64.7% -32.0% 9 43 120
TOTAL 17,309 48.8% 18,134 51.2% -12.1% 6,410 43 120
Projection 48.6% 51.4% -12.3%

WOLLONGONG (Labor vs Independent)

Wednesday. Absent votes have indeed behaved different to pre-polls and postals, favouring Labor 615-445. This has increased Noreen Hay’s lead to 442, enough for her to claim victory.

Tuesday. Another 1406 postals have maintained the trend of the first 1783 in shaving 111 off the Labor lead, which is now down to 263. However, with pre-polls presumably done with and the addition of postal votes down to a trickle, most outstanding votes are absents, and these may well behave very differently.

Monday. The two-candidate count between Labor’s Noreen Hay and independent challenger Gordon Bradbery made Hay appear home and hosed, with a margin of 2.5 per cent off the polling booth votes. However, subsequent counting has gone disastrously for her: pre-polls have favoured Bradbery by a remarkable 2173-1300, and he has further gained 766-680 on postals. This has whittled Hay’s lead down to 389, with the trend running heavily against her.

LABOR INDEPENDENT Exhaust Formal 2007
Ordinary 13,938 52.5% 12,605 47.5% 818 33,455 34,723
Absent 615 58.0% 445 42.0% 0 0 3,648
Postal 1,201 46.3% 1,393 53.7% 92 3,189 2,844
Pre-Poll 1,300 37.4% 2,173 62.6% 90 4,359 1,644
Other 27 54.0% 23 46.0% 0 0 622
TOTAL 17,081 50.7% 16,639 49.3% 1,000 0 622

MONARO (Margin: 6.3%)

Monday. With 674 pre-polls breaking 3578-2890 the Nationals’ way, John Barilaro now holds an unassailable of 1275.

Sunday. The Nationals have a 1 per cent lead which it would take something remarkable to undo. The addition of 4300 pre-polls haven’t provided it, going 2108 to 1957 the way of Nationals candidate John Barilaro, who now leads Labor member Steve Whan by 754 votes.

BALMAIN (Margin: 3.8% versus Greens)

Thursday. The Greens have reportedly moved to a 203 vote lead over Labor on the primary vote, but the NSWEC figures haven’t been updated. The ABC figure has the lead at 218. Their challenge now is to keep that lead with the distribution of independent and minor party preferences, including those of Maire Sheehan, a council rival of Greens candidate Jamie Parker who polled 1373 votes.

Wednesday. About 4300 more votes have been added, mostly postals, and they have very much reflected the overall trend in slightly favouring the Liberal candidate (1468 votes) with Labor (1303) just shading the Greens (1274) for second place. However, this does not reflect the trend of 2007 when Labor did much better on postals than on ordinary votes (44.3% compared with 39.6%), and the Greens much worse (24.1% compared with 29.5%). The two main types of vote yet to be added, pre-polls and absents, were much stronger for the Greens. However, any lead the Greens open with the addition of these votes will have to be defended against a probable flow of independent preferences to Labor. In any event, Labor are currently ahead of the Greens by 139 votes, up from 111.

Sunday. The Liberals hold a narrow lead on the primary vote, with Labor and the Greens mixing it on 30.4 per cent and 30.0 per cent respectively. Given the likelihood the Liberals will stay in front, the NSWEC’s Labor-versus-Greens count is of little use. What matters is who out of Labor and the Greens finishes second, as I would assume that whichever of the two makes it to second will then overtake the Liberals on the other’s preferences. The precedent of 2007, when post-election night counting saw Labor’s vote fall 0.3 per cent and the Greens hold steady, suggests there won’t be much in it.

TOONGABBIE

Thursday. Pre-polls and “enrolment new votes” have gone 546-521 in favour of the Liberals, and Nathan Rees’s lead is now down to 194.

Wednesday. Absents and pre-polls have strongly favoured the Liberals with Nathan Rees holding his ground on postals; taken together, the Labor lead is down to 285.

Sunday Nathan Rees led by 409 with the counting of polling booth votes, but he’s down 16 with the addition of 945 pre-polls and institution votes.

Newcastle. With the Liberals 1.8 per cent in front, I won’t be making the effort to follow this one.

LEGISLATIVE COUNCIL

Monday. It is clear enough that the Coalition will win 11 of the 21 new seats, Labor five, the Greens two, and the Christian Democratic Party and Shooters and Fishers one apiece. The final seat is a tussle between Labor, the Greens and, improbably, Pauline Hanson. As of today the ABC computer projection has Hanson in front, but this projection assumes no preferences, which is a very unsafe assumption where Labor and Greens candidates are involved. The most likely result is that whoever out of Labor and the Greens is excluded will deliver the seats to the other on preferences – especially if it’s Labor which is excluded, given their how-to-vote card directed preferences to the Greens. However, as Antony Green notes, Pauline Hanson does uniquely well among minor candidates in polling strongly on the below-the-line votes that remain to be counted, so there is some chance she could get up thanks to exhausting Greens votes if Labor stays ahead of them.i>

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.

530 comments on “NSW election: photo finishes”

Comments Page 5 of 11
1 … 4 5 6 … 11

  1. modlib

    sounds good – but as you say can’t believe over 12% non show. looks like there are 3000 or so votes uncounted, but not according to local paper

    i know this thread is for progress, but can i add that is could be one of worse electorate outcome (if it has been decided) in the state, for reasons already canvassed on this thread. only rivalled by imminent non election of opposition leader

  2. Should I be thrilled that Noreen Hay won?
    Not an ounce of humility either in her claim of victory – I fear too that Robertson will offer her a shadow ministry.

  3. [ I fear too that Robertson will offer her a shadow ministry.]

    Isn’t everyone going to have to take on a shadow ministry??

    Looks from my calculation that the ALP will only have 2 safe seats next time around (using the 10% margin). A whole lot of the 20ish seats are going to be on 5% or less.

    The expected large bounce back better happen in 4 years for Labor or its lights out…

  4. Mod Lib: There’s roughly 35 of them left, so yes, most of them will be offered shadow portfolios.
    On the plus side: Daley, Tebutt, Rees, Burney, Amery, and Firth(assuming she wins hers seat) have ministerial experience. Andrew McDonald is someone who should be promoted, perhaps to shadow Gillian Skinner.
    Barbara Perry is quite capable too.
    On the down side: Robbo hasn’t got much in the way of new talent to pick from, although Ryan Park is one with experience working in a government department.
    Even more on the down side: hacks like Noreen Hay, Cherie Burton, Roozendahl, Obeid etc are still around.

  5. When does ER get his super? Suspect he will make way for someone the day after that.

    The best thing the Liberals should do is start a campaign insisting on Obeid going. His pride will then prevent his resignation and they can keep hammering him for the next 4 years!

    My mind is evil I know.

  7. John Hazistergos is quitting politics immediately, even though his term in the Upper House doesn’t cease for another 4 years.
    A lot of speculation that Robertson wants to get Steve Whan back into parliament, and so they’ll parachute him into the vacancy.

  9. [evan14
    Posted Wednesday, March 30, 2011 at 11:19 pm | Permalink

    Mod Lib: There’s roughly 35 of them left, so yes, most of them will be offered shadow portfolios.
    On the plus side: Daley, Tebutt, Rees, Burney, Amery, and Firth(assuming she wins hers seat) have ministerial experience. Andrew McDonald is someone who should be promoted, perhaps to shadow Gillian Skinner.
    Barbara Perry is quite capable too.

    On the down side: Robbo hasn’t got much in the way of new talent to pick from, although Ryan Park is one with experience working in a government department.
    Even more on the down side: hacks like Noreen Hay, Cherie Burton, Roozendahl, Obeid etc are still around]

    Perry is a nuffie. Burney is lovely but hardly sets the world on fire. Tebutt is photogenic but that is about where her ability ends. Daley is yet to show anything.. Amery has been in parli for over two decades and has acheived zilch. Firth is servicable but as this will be her second term, she might improve.

    McDonald should have been made health minister but clearly was not part of the in crowd.

    If Hay gets a shadow role, then the party deserves to eat itself.

    They need to put their best talent into treasury, health, education and environment.

    Treasury: Daley. Health: McDonald. Environment: Firth. But it wont go like that.

  11. I bet they’ll get Whan into the Upper House ASAP!
    Robertson has no choice other than to promote McDonald, and the swing against Labor in Macquarie Fields was far lower than the general Western Sydney anti-Labor one.

  12. Pre-election I thought Verity would get up. But post-election, I looked at the shift in voters and realised that Parker would be more likely. As the swing is largely a Labor to Lib swing with the Greens being stationary. I then looked at last times pre-polls and postals and found this

    [blue_green
    Posted Monday, March 28, 2011 at 1:48 pm | Permalink

    Last time in Balmain. Verity got 3211 non-ordinary votes but the Greens got 2504 non-ordinary votes. By that I mean pre-poll, postal and absentees.

    However, if the ALP to Lib switch that occured in ordinary votes, also occurs in the non-ordinary votes (and the Greens poll the same), then Parker should win by 300-400 votes.

    Verity needs to hope that the ALP postal voters are more rusted on than the ordinary voters.]

    Looks like I might be right (well with my second prediction anyway 🙂 )

  14. Looks like I might be right (well with my second prediction anyway 🙂 )

    Yes, but the Absentees are going the other way. In central Sydney seats, the average ALP vote is down 3% and the GRN vote is up 4% in the Absentees versus the booths.

    With 3300 out of 5600 Absentees counted in Balmain, these numbers are ALP down 3.2%, GRN no movement. This has put GRN only 47 votes behind ALP this morning. If the trend continues, the lead will swap to GRN being ahead of ALP by about 45 votes. (Sheehan votes could seriously upset this if a lot of people followed her HTV)

    Then, given reasonable preference flows (ALP->GRN is an unknown except for Vaucluse in 2007), GRN will win the seat with a GRN-LIB TCP of about 56% TCP.

  15. [Even more on the down side: hacks like Noreen Hay, Cherie Burton, Roozendahl, Obeid etc are still around]
    Yech, how true. Before they were power without glory. Now they have no power. Thanks to Roozendahl, the State no longer owns any power assetts either.

    With Robertson taking charge the writing is on the wall: the NSW Labor right has no intention of embracing reform. Those who say I am being anti-Labor, I refer to Paul Keating’s comments 🙂

    One ray of sunshine – the huge financial loss for NSW Labor (few votes = few dollars and now no business support) will mean many unemployed apparachiks 🙂

  17. I feel like a race caller but instead of this being a sprint it is like the Grand National. Latest counts have Parker 40 behind Firth and Rees back out to 296 ahead in Toongabbie.

  18. Serial candidate Jane Ward appeals to more the Greens voters, and she explicitly tells voters to preference and not exhaust: http://www.electionleaflets.org.au/leaflets/652/

    Nicholas Folkes is a ‘no immigration’ candidate and not likely to influence the outcome. Neither will Jon Shapiro, a ‘elections are useless’ candidate.

    Maire Sheehan may not be the spoiler that Greens voters expect, especially if Jamie can get ahead by about 100 votes, which may happen if the Absentees continue to play out as they have.

  20. Robertsons strategy will be to make the union movement and the opposition ‘one and the same’.

    So much for grassroots reinvigoration.

    [One ray of sunshine – the huge financial loss for NSW Labor (few votes = few dollars and now no business support) will mean many unemployed apparachiks :)]

    No they can just all move to Canberra!

  22. [The best thing the Liberals should do is start a campaign insisting on Obeid going. His pride will then prevent his resignation and they can keep hammering him for the next 4 years!

    My mind is evil I know.]

    Your thinking is NOT evil, merely Machiavellian!

    I reckon that a significant part of the Liberal’s decision not to preference Indie Gordon Bradbery in Wollongong was due to the near certainty that this one action would remove a foul Labor albatross, Noreen Hay, from 4 more years of public pillorying.

    Already in her victory statement, Hay has now abandoned her smart strategy since last Saturday morning of uttering absolutely bare minimum comments to the media. If ever a public official should maintain a lower-than-low profile for the good of her party, it’s Noreen.

  24. Based on 2007 results, Jane Ward’s votes should break:

    115 to ALP, 233 to Greens, 76 to Libs, 212 exhaust.

    Who knows how Maire’s will go. I don’t how many booths she handed out HTVs. If I was to say anything, I’d say Maire’s preferences would give about 150 votes to ALP over Greens, so how much of a lead Jamie gets from the rest of the absentees is crucial.

  25. [The expected large bounce back better happen in 4 years for Labor or its lights out…]
    Why? If it doesn’t happen in 4 years it will happen in 8 years. Sure that means probably 12 years in opposition but it certainly won’t mean lights out. What a strange comment.

  26. [No they can just all move to Canberra!]

    Bluegreen, you speak truly!

    I have personal knowledge of a married Young Labor couple who rocketed into senior management positions in two different government departments under Wran/Unsworth. Much like Keira’s new MLA, 32 year old Transport Dept. senior manager Ryan Park (salary well over $200K/Year), who had been David Campbell’s chief of staff.

    During Greiner/Fahey’s 8 years, they first were provided temporary staffer positions serving Hawke ministers until being given QLD senior exec. positions shortly after Wayne Goss was elected.

    When Goss departed, their final move was back to NSW, where one was appointed a Director and the other a Regional Director (later rose to Director). Both retired last year.

    That’s what jobs for the boys and girls is all about.

  27. Don’t stress Dan Gulberry – so long as labor is behind greens, greens can leap frog the draped austrayan flag group…

  29. [Be afraid. be very afraid,]

    A Tory Government with Hanson part of the balance of Power, now that is my definition of instability. Good luck with that one. I wonder if her attendance record will be better than when she was in the Federal Parliament?

  30. [I wonder if her attendance record will be better than when she was in the Federal Parliament?]

    Let’s hope not. If she’s a slack absentee Member, the media needs to keep it under wraps!

  31. Goodness knows what contribution Hanson can make to NSW politics, other than another predictable rant over Asians taking over the suburbs LOL 😀

  32. To say that Labor is written off for 12 years or forever is extremely premature.

    After all on this site there were pundits after the 2006 Victorian election saying that the next Liberal premier was still in Year 12 at Scotch!!

    It will be interesting to contrast O’Farrell’s approach to a landslide win with Greiner. Greiner was all management and not enough politics, O’Farrell is a much more political animal and handle the situation better.

  36. But Robbo isn’t a Steve Bracks, & Fatty perhaps won’t be dumb enough to go on a Kennett style cutback of services & public service jobs.
    Mark my words, Robertson won’t be taking Labor to the 2015 election. 😉

  37. [If Pauline has indeed won a seat in the LC – where has she deigned to base herself?]

    Somewhere free of Asians and Muslims? 😉

  40. I remember reading that Pauline had moved to the Central Coast, or the mid-North Coast of NSW.
    Other news: Nathan Rees’s electoral office was vandalised overnight.

  41. [evan14
    Posted Thursday, March 31, 2011 at 12:28 pm | Permalink

    Apparently Michael Daley was told that if he ran for the leadership, he’d suffer the same fate as Iemma & Rees!]

    Yep, reform is in the wings! 🙁

  43. Precedent is that after very very bad defeats there is big bounceback Qld Labor in 1977, Tas in 1996 etc. One reason why 1996 in Vic was disappointing for Labor is that Labor did relatively OK in 1992. With only 60% of Labor identifiers voting Labor there’s a lot of easy ground to be made up but the normal swinging voters will be a harder ask.

  44. Funny thing is that some folk who rant against welfare have been on the taxpayers teat for a long time. Take for instance, the AIS scholarship that Cory Bernardi got.

    I wonder if he ever paid it back. 😉

  47. According to a letter in the Herald today, in the Entrance electorate 13,718 people decided not to vote – that was 10,500 more than the 2007 election. Further, labor’s vote went down 10,211 while the liberal vote went up by only 768.

    The writer says:

    “Labor voters went on strike against Labor and remained on strike against the Liberals…”

    These seem pretty remarkable statistics. Are they true? Is the letter writer correct?

  49. Counter-example to Geoff would be Qld Labor 2001, who won a bunch of traditionally conservative seats and clung on to them for several elections in a row. A whole heap of Labor MPs were expected to be “oncers” but stuck around for nearly a decade. In some cases they’re STILL around. Less rusted on voting patterns means MPs can dig in for long periods in enemy territory.

    Admittedly the Queensland LNP has given them endless helping hands by plumbing new depths of stupidity and incompetence, but NSW Labor might be no better in Opposition.

Comments Page 5 of 11
1 … 4 5 6 … 11

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *