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 6 of 11
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  1. According to Antony’s site, the Lib vote in The Entrance was up about 4500, Labor’s down about 8000 votes.

    turnout so far is 88% in the seat, so if that was the final count that would be about 4500 people not voting, not 14,000

  2. It’ll depend on the quality of the new Liberal MPs now representing traditionally Labor areas – if they do a good job over the next 4 years, they’ll be hard to dislodge in 2015.
    Robertson really doesn’t have much in the way of talent to pick a shadow ministry from – no wonder they’re trying to get Whan into the Upper House.

  3. My suggestions would be: Daley for Shadow Treasurer, Andrew McDonald in Health, Carmel in Education, Firth(if she’s elected in Balmain) for Environment, not sure about the rest………..
    Perhaps Rees for Industrial Relations?

  4. I’ve got to fit in also Tony Kelly, Barbara Perry, Linda Burney.
    Robbo might also be smart to promote 2 or 3 of the newer MPs – Ryan Park, Clayton Barr, Guy Zangari etc.

  8. What if Firth and Parker gets the same vote, after all the distributions?

    Would they both exhause together and elect Falk

    Is there a tie breaker

  10. The count in toongabbie is pretty much done. Rees will win.

    East Hills and Oatley will also be Lib wins.

    Only seat really in doubt now is Balmain

  11. Hornsby was the one seat in NSW where there was a swing against the Liberals, but only because the independent candidate and Mayor Nick Berman got a decent vote(he used to belong to the Liberal Party).

  20. GRN-ALP lead now 200. Looks a good bet. Final on this would be about 56% GRN TCP

    Wait…. there’s more…. a similar catch up in Marrickville has halved the ALP-GRN gap. On 2007 preference flows, this would translate to a 30 vote Green win over LIB (50.1% TCP)

  24. the catchup in Marrickville is pretty impressive. Having lived in the electorate, I’d understand the 100 vote catchup in absentees. ouch!

  27. but have you seen the turnaround Evan? it’s quite breathtaking. I’d expect the libs to catch up on postals like this in some seats. But it’s quite a stunning turnaround.

  29. I know, but she probably expected the absentees etc to split evenly, not be heavily going the other way. It may be an upset.

  31. matty_online RT @carolduncan: RT @1233newcastle: BREAKING: Jodi McKay has accepted defeat in the seat of Newcastle. #NSWVotes half a minute ago via TweetDeck

  32. @273:

    That provisional TCP count would have included the distribution of Liberal preferences, which (when they exist) presumably strongly favour ALP over Green. In this race those preferences won’t be distributed.

    Though I’m not sure what numbers you are looking at? I’m not across all of the data, but looking at the election night ordinary votes, of the 13173 votes (including Lib) nominally distributed, 1479 went ALP, 1610 went Greens and 9929 exhausted. (a further 155 seem to have disappeared 🙂

    Now if the Greens are getting more minor preferences when Libs are included, I can’t see that they will not be getting more of the minor preferences when Lib votes are not included. I understand that there is sampling error here, and that election night ordinary votes aren’t perfectly representative of all votes. But while the FP choices of various declaration votes change, do the preference flows for a given FP choice also change?

    Or is there a logical or mathematical error in the above?

    Anyone? Anyone?

  33. Antony Green/ABC say that there are no longer any results in doubt.
    They’ve awarded Balmain to the Greens and Toongabbie to Labor.
    69 Coalition seats
    20 Labor seats
    3 Independents
    1 Green

  34. As one who grows quite weary of the Greens Labor stoushers, well done to the Greens in Balmain. I’d have preferred Labor to win, but its still better than the Libs winning. As I said earlier in the week, overall I didn’t think the late counting would favour Labor, and that has been the case. My prediction of 21 Labor was close; 20 and a Green. A thrashing in any language.

  35. I’d wait for the final count to declare who won Balmain besides I win a little if Verity Firth wins Balmain & labor wins 21 seats…….. people were also very sure that the libsendent won the Frome byelection… sa but they were wrong

  37. post the election it would be interesting to see how many lower house seats the greens
    decision to mainly not preference the Alp…. cost labor
    I suspect about 3

  39. In the LC, the gap between Hanson and GRN3 which was widening on Mon-Wed is now narrowing and is down from 8000 to 3000 (approx). This is largely due to the Absentee vote. In some “good greenie” seats, the GRN vote is as high as 30% in the Absentee, whereas the Hanson vote in such seats is sometimes zero in the Absentees. Two very important seats Balmain and Marrickville have yet to have their Absentees entered. One may expect over 5000 votes in each to be cast. At 30% GRN (in these seats very probably higher), that’s a gain of 3,000 on Hanson (yeah right). A similar improvement over the ALP exists in these seats. It was explained to me that these are latte voters who wander around the inner-city seats and vote at the first booth they come to, even if (indeed usually if) it’s in the next-door electorate to their own. Be that as it may, these wandering folk could now put the Greens back ahead of Hanson in the fractional quota race.

  41. I know quite a few inner city renters who “prefer” to keep their enrolment in Greens strongholds when they’re forced to move out due to high rents.

  42. Greens now just 0.01 of a quota behind Hanson for the last upper house spot (about 1700 votes) and well clear of Labor (so getting their preferences); I think that puts them pretty much out of danger.

  43. My housemate and I moved from Marrickville to Sydney. I updated my details, he didn’t. He wasn’t aware that we’d shifted electorates (move was less than 1km), but was quite pleased to be able to vote in a more exciting contest. He’s usually a Green voter but on this occasion his [1] went to the Liberals. The phenomenon deconst describes is definitely out there.

  44. I know for a fact that there was massive “enrolment stacking” by Greens voters in Melbourne before the federal election. Greens voters from all over (greater) Melbourne enrolled in (the seat of) Melbourne, using the addresses of friends and fellow party supporters. Of course zealous followers all parties do this to some extent, but it’s more widespread among Greens because (a) they have only one or two target seats, and (b) they have more highly educated voters who understand that being enrolled in a target seat is important.

  46. These are not coordinated activities but it is a concern about the voting system. The automatic reenrolment in NSW should clear up this effect somewhat over the next couple of years.

  48. Mike Quinlivan

    I am going to say the Greens did not cost the ALP any seats

    For example in Oakley, there was 6000 non ALP/Liberal vote (3900 greens, 2100 CDP)and 3000 preference which broke the ALP 1700 to Liberals 1300

    The Liberals end up winning by 420, so even if everyone preferenced and it broke ALP 1700-1300, the ALP would still lose by 20 and an exhaust rate of 50% is not extraordinary and it showed a lot of Greens (likely 1700/3900) did preference

    In East Hills, the Liberals won by 490, there was 7,200 non major party vote, of which the Greens only had 2,100. The preference flow went to the liberal by 1800-1700. again about 50% of people preferenced.

    I do not think the ALP could have made up either gaps, even if the Greens directed preference. Even if the green directed preference there would still be exhaustion that makes it hard for the ALP to overtake the large Liberal led.

  49. This morning’s counting would seem to suggest that it will be difficult for Firth to win Balmain now – 90% counted and the Green is 230 primaries in front of her, which as I understand it is the important figure. That’s because if Firth comes third, then her preferences will see the Green safe. If Firth comes second behind the Lib, and the green third, then the Greens prefences would see her elected. Still, 230 votes with some 5500 (?) to be counted is very tight.

  50. bluegreen
    [I love a good claim that begins with “I know for a fact”]
    No doubt that ‘fact’ forms part of the prosecuton brief against those voters who have committed ‘factual’ Electoral Act offences. 😀

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