Friday
I believe the results don’t attain official status until tomorrow, but the preference distributions published today are off essentially the same numbers of votes as the primary vote counts, and can thus be treated as final to all intents and purposes. Here’s how it pans out:
Brindabella: Liberal 3, Labor 2. Zed Seselja is effortlessly elected for the Liberals, while Brendan Smyth makes it to a quota after distribution of Seselja’s surplus and preference from excluded Liberals Nicole Lawder and then Val Jeffery. At the point of Jeffery’s exclusion, he trails Liberal colleague Andrew Wall 5135 votes to 4938. Wall thus remains in the count with enough votes to see off defeated Greens member Amanda Bresnan by 8859 to 8247, leaving him the last candidate standing and winning him the fifth seat. For Labor, incumbent Joy Burch led the primary vote count with 8989 followed by former incumbent Mick Gentleman on 5069, with other Labor candidates some distance behind. Preferences do little to disturb this, resulting in Burch and Gentleman picking up the two seats.
Ginninderra: Labor 3, Liberal 2. As has been very widely discussed now, Ginninderra has indeed delivered the Greens the nightmare scenario of Labor’s surplus over the second quota dividing almost perfectly evenly between the second and third Labor candidates, Chris Bourke and Yvette Berry, leaving Greens member Meredith Hunter unable to overcome either. At the relevant exclusion, Bourke is on 9449, Berry on 9127 and Hunter on 8245. Comfortably leading the Labor primary vote and first elected from their ticket is incumbent Mary Porter. Similarly, the Liberal incumbents Alistair Coe and Vicki Dunne were untroubled by intra-party challengers.
Molonglo: Labor 3, Liberal 3, Greens 1. As I foreshadowed yesterday, late counting favoured incumbent Steve Doszpot in the race for the third Liberal seat against Elizabeth Lee, overturning yesterday’s narrow deficit and putting him in front 9311 to 9068 at the final exclusion. This immediately follows the election of the second Liberal, newcomer Giulia Jones. By far the strongest performing candidate on the Liberal ticket was incumbent Jeremy Hanson. Katy Gallagher overwhelmingly dominated the Labor ticket, and the distribution of her preferences heavily favoured the other two incumbents, Andrew Barr and Simon Corbell, over the four other Labor candidates. The election of Barr as the second candidate was never in doubt, but it takes Gallagher’s preferences to put Corbell ahead of Meegan Fitzharris, a 1896-2614 deficit turning into a 5269-3689 surplus. That gap is little changed after the exclusion of the other Labor candidates, with Corbell prevailing 8037-6437 at the relevant exclusion. Shane Rattenbury outpolls the other Greens incumbent, Caroline Le Couteur, 4937-4503 on the primary vote, and remains about that far ahead until Le Couteur is excluded with 7765 votes to Rattenbury’s 8001.
Thursday
I dropped the ball for a couple of days there in covering the very exciting developments in the count, with the prospects firming for a 3-2 outcome in Ginninderra meaning another seat lost to the Greens and a final result of 8-8-1. Today’s indicative preference distributions published on the Electoral Commission site account for about two-thirds of all votes cast, with the process to be finalised on Saturday. As anticipated, the trend in Ginninderra has been strongly in Labor’s favour and particularly in favour of Yvette Berry, with Chris Bourke’s vote share actually declining slightly. On today’s numbers, Meredith Hunter finishes in sixth place with 6406 votes at the final exclusion (0.77 quotas compared with 0.76 yesterday) against 7253 for Berry (up from 0.83 to 0.87 quotas) and 7054 for Bourke (down from 0.86 to 0.85 quotas).
In Molonglo, Liberal incumbent Steve Doszpot continues to trail by the slenderest of margins against party colleague Elizabeth Lee, being 28 votes behind at the key exclusion in today’s distribution, up from seven yesterday. However, the relativites between the primary vote and preference distribution figures suggest Doszpot should gain from here. The count the preference distribution is based on includes 67.9% of the total first preference count, and Doszpot’s share of the first preference count is 5.73% compared with 5.49% in the preference count. Lee’s relative shares are 4.92% and 4.87%. On the Labor ticket, Simon Corbell is now sure to survive an intra-party challenge from Meegan Fitzharris thanks to the large share of voters who gave their first preference to other incumbents and continued to favour incumbents on their preference orders thereafter. His lead at the relevant stage of the count is 5229 to 4448.
In Brindabella, the latest distribution has Greens incumbent Amanda Bresnan’s trailing the third Liberal by 864 votes at the final exclusion, Bresnan’s earlier narrow lead being wiped out yesterday as anticipated as more favourable votes for the Liberals were added to the count. The point at issue is thus who out of Andrew Wall and Val Jeffery wins the third Liberal seat. Wall has a handy lead of 398 on the latest distribution, although this has narrowed from 474 yesterday.
Monday
Antony Green suggests the election count may yet take an unpredictable turn, with the Greens in danger of losing their Ginninderra seat to a third Labor candidate. If this came to pass the result would be Labor 8, Liberal 8, Greens 1.
Presently the Electoral Commission’s indicative preference distribution, based on the pre-poll electronic votes which accounted for 28.2% of the total, gets to a 2-2-1 result by having Labor’s Yvette Berry bow out and her preferences electing Labor colleague Chris Bourke, whose preferences in turn deliver a seat to Meredith Hunter of the Greens. This is the outcome one would ordinarily expect with Labor on 2.4 quotas and the Greens on 0.6. Certainly such a result could be taken for granted in the Senate, where candidates appear in a fixed order on ballot papers and voters dutifully follow the above-the-line voting option. The top two Labor candidates elected at the beginning of the count, leaving the third Labor candidate with the remaining 0.4 quotas.
The issue under Hare Clark is the candidates are generally not elected at the beginning of the count, which means a greater share of the Labor vote remains in the count for a longer time. In this case only Mary Porter is elected early in the count, which means 1.4 Labor quotas for the Greens to contend with. The risk for the Greens is that the 1.4 will divide evenly between the second and third Labor candidates, leaving each with more than Hunter’s 0.6. Compared with the electronic polling figures, that would require an improvement in Berry’s vote and a decline in Hunter’s which is exactly what the polling booth vote shares suggests will happen.
We have also seen today a substantial chunk of the primary vote count added, accounting for 10.6% of enrolment, with a number of booths that did not report on Saturday night doing so today. This has seen Labor’s 1.1% lead in overall vote share shrink to 0.3%, with the Greens down a further 0.3%.
Labor Liberal Greens Counted Brindabella 35.9 (-0.7) 46.2 (+10.9) 7.9 (-5.7) 87.2% Ginninderra 40.0 (-0.2) 33.6 (+5.5) 10.0 (-3.8) 85.5% Molonglo 40.8 (+4.6) 37.1 (+5.7) 13.2 (-5.2) 82.2% TOTAL 39.0 (+1.7) 38.7 (+7.1) 10.7 (-4.9) 84.6%
Overview
Barring late surprises, the result looks very much like 3-2 to the Liberals in Brindabella, 2-2-1 in Ginninderra and 3-3-1 in Molonglo for a total of Liberal 8, Labor 7, Greens 2. The Liberals have been aggressively asserting their moral right to govern, which is tactically understandable but harder for an objective observer to credit. By the end of the evening they had fallen behind Labor on the primary vote, and the figures are such that a two-party preferred result under a single-member system would be about 53-47 in Labor’s favour.
Liberal claims that the Labor-Greens alliance had been rejected are dubious on face value, requiring us to overlook the fact that those two parties presently have over half the vote between them. Such claims further require that we conceive the result in purely negative terms, in which case we can equally say that over six in 10 voters rejected the Liberal Party. The alternative gambit has been to argue that the swing to the Liberals means the electorate has voted for change. On this logic, John Howard should have handed Kim Beazley the keys to the Lodge in 1998. Elections can only be determined by votes cast, not their proportions relative to some arbitrary point in the past.
The Liberals will certainly be able to boast the largest number of seats, which even accounting for the government’s longevity is a strong result in the hostile electoral environment of Canberra particularly given the anticipated impact of public service cutbacks by conservative governments elsewhere. The key to this triumph was the tactical coup of winning a third seat in Brindabella, achieved through policy positioning, campaign resources and the candidacy of Zed Seselja.
It is a nicety of proportional representation systems that the party with the most seats be given the proverbial first chance to form a government. However, this does not amount to much in practical terms if the numbers are against that party and is in any case a convention of systems where the formal appointment of the government is in the hands of a figurehead who might wish to keep removed from the partisan fray. This does not apply in the ACT, where the position of the Chief Minister is confirmed by the Assembly. Clearly most of those voting for the Greens would have done so in the expectation that they were voting against a Liberal government, and it seems safe to assume the Greens will keep this in mind during the negotiation process.
Final vote shares for the night:
Labor Liberal Greens Counted Brindabella 35.9 (-0.5) 45.7 (+10.4) 8.2 (-5.4) 77.9% Ginninderra 39.9 (-0.4) 33.4 (+5.3) 10.3 (-3.5) 77.6% Molonglo 41.0 (+5.0) 36.0 (+4.5) 13.9 (-4.6) 68.3% TOTAL 39.1 (+1.7) 38.0 (+6.4) 11.0 (-4.6) 73.8%
A purely impressionistic view of which might be that:
The Liberals’ 6.4% gain was partly at the expense of Labor and partly from others;
Labor compensated for these losses by absorbing much of a 4.6% drop in support for the Greens;
A Zed Seselja effect helped the Liberals gain up a further 2-3% from Labor in Brindabella, balanced by a comparable loss in Molonglo;
The Liberals garnered a further boost in Brindabella through a concentration of campaign resources and, perhaps, the recruitment of Val Jeffery (who polled 6.5% in 2008 with the Community Alliance);
Labor gained in Molonglo in the absence of the Frank Pangallo ticket, which polled 4.8% last time.
Electorate by electorate:
Brindabella. The Liberals are left looking very smart in having targeted Brindabella, which has paid off with an extra seat at no cost elsewhere. Zed Seselja and Brendan Smyth are the clear winners of the first two seats, with the third remaining a toss-up between Andrew Wall (3.9%), Val Jeffery (3.7%) and Nicole Lawder (3.4%). Labor’s winners are incumbent Joy Burch and former incumbent Mick Gentleman. Losing her seat is Amanda Bresnan of the Greens.
Ginninderra. Chic Henry of the Motorists Party remains a hypothetical chance of winning the final seat, but it’s far more likely to be retained by Meredith Hunter of the Greens for a result of 2-2-1. Liberal incumbents Alistair Coe and Vicki Dunne will clearly retain their seats. Mary Porter is clearly re-elected for Labor, but mid-term arrival Chris Bourke (7.7%) is struggling to stay ahead of Yvette Berry (7.6%). This result will most likely be determined by the flow of Porter’s preferences. As usual, the competing tendencies within Porter’s preference flows will include a share who favour incumbents and a share who favour women.
Molonglo. Katy Gallagher has so dominated the Labor vote that the fate of the party’s third seat is hard to read, with Andrew Barr clearly well favoured enough to score the second. If Gallagher’s supporters continued with the logic of favouring high profile figures in the party, incumbent Simon Corbell stands a good chance of closing the 2.9% to 2.1% deficit against Meegan Fitzharris. However, Fitzharris is likely to gain a dividend from those Gallagher supporters who were favouring a woman candidate, and her evident success as a candidate in outpolling Corbell will spill over to at least some extent into Gallagher’s preferences. On the Liberal ticket, incumbent Jeremy Hanson topped the poll but his colleague Steve Doszpot was outpointed by the incoming Giulia Jones. To win the Liberals’ newly acquired third seat, Doszpot (who is on 5.4%) will need to stay ahead of fourth-placed Elizabeth Lee (4.7%) after preferences, and the Electoral Commission’s interim count based on the electronic voting results suggest this will be touch-and-go. The Greens face a game of musical chairs with two incumbents chasing one seat, in which Shane Rattenbury leads Caroline Le Couteur 5.7% to 5.3%.
Finally, determining votes cast for male and female candidates turns up some interesting patterns. A significant factor in Labor’s case is that Jon Stanhope has exited the field and been replaced as Chief Minister by a woman, who accordingly enjoyed a dramatic increase in her personal vote. Even so, the 22.3% swing to Labor women is highly noteworthy given the gender balance of the candidates was unchanged. There’s also a basis to argue that the Liberals erred in not preselecting more women, given that the five endorsed this time almost matched the result of the seven endorsed in 2008, and in particular the strong performance of Giulia Jones in Molonglo.
Candidates Votes TOTAL Male candidates 50 (-10) 58.3 (-7.3) Female candidates 24 (-2) 41.7 (+7.3) LABOR Male candidates 10 (-) 36.7 (-22.3) Female candidates 7 (-) 63.3 (+22.3) LIBERAL Male candidates 12 (+2) 77.9 (+1.9) Female candidates 5 (-2) 22.1 (-1.9)
Live commentary
9.39pm. Labor pulls ahead of Liberal on the aggregate vote on what Antony believes to be the final count for the night.
9.05pm. And the second Labor member in Ginninderra, where Chris Bourke is second on 7.7% against 7.2% for Yvette Berry.
9.02pm. As I see it, all that’s in doubt now is who wins the third Liberal seat in Brindabella and the third Labor seat in Molonglo.
9.01pm. The Greens declining in Molonglo as well, where the picture is a fairly clear 3-3-1.
8.59pm. A 10.4% batch of the vote in Ginninderra has closed the gap between the Greens, down from 10.9% to 10.5%, and the Motorist Party, up from 7.2% to 7.5%.
8.57pm. Brindabella count now up to 60.3%, and I think you can put down your glasses: the Liberals vote has surged further to 46.2% and the Greens have fallen to 7.9%, confirming a result of three Liberal and two Labor. Joy Burch and Mick Gentleman elected for Labor; Zed Seselja and Brendan Smyth for Liberal; the final Liberal seat continues to have Andrew Wall leading Val Jeffery 4.1% to 3.7%.
8.43pm. Another 4.9% added in Ginninderra. Greens down slightly, fractionally improving the Motorists Party’s chances.
8.40pm. Another 6.8% in Brindabella further improves the Liberals position there.
8.33pm. Winner of third Liberal seat in Brindabella unclear: Andrew Wall on 4.0%, Val Jeffery on 3.7%, Nicole Lawder on 3.5%.
8.26pm. Liberal also declining in Ginninderra with 31.7% counted, although not enough to fundamentally change the situation. Motorist Party boilover not looking any likelier.
8.24pm. A big addition in Brindabella boosts the count to 35.9%. The swing against Labor is down from 1.4% to 0.5%; to Liberal down from 10.6% to 9.9%; against Greens little changed at 5.1%. The Liberal surplus over the third quota is down from 0.748 to 0.712, while the combined Labor and Greens surplus 0.616 to 0.664 (remembering there will be a lot of leakage there). Of Bullet Train (4.1%) and Motorist Party (3.9%) preferences, I can offer no insight.
8.16pm. Ginnninderra count up from 21.6% to 24.8%, but little change.
8.14pm. The Brindabella count is up from 21.7% to 26.5%, and in relative terms Labor has gained 0.5%, the Liberals have lost 0.5% and the Greens have lost 0.2%.
8.00pm. Kevin Bonham’s analysis of the first booths from Brindabella provide more encouragement for the Liberals. If so, a result of Liberal 8, Labor 7 and Greens 2 is firming up.
7.55pm. Booth results coming very slowly. Only a tiny increase in the count since the pre-polls were finalised.
7.34pm. Andrew Barr sounding bullish about booth results.
7.32pm. By no means likely that the Motorists Party will win a seat in Ginninderra, but one to keep an eye on.
7.24pm. That new batch that made no difference in Molonglo was substantial, upping the count by 7.6%.
7.23pm. Another 4% of the vote in Brindabella sees slight Liberal decline.
7.22pm. Antony has all pre-polls for Molonglo; the latest batch hasn’t changed the situation.
7.19pm. Interesting to note strong performances from women just noted.
7.13pm. Labor’s Meegan Fitzharris (second place) well ahead of Simon Corbell (fourth) in Molonglo. Liberal incumbent Steve Doszpot trailing Giulia Jones, also in Molonglo. Other incumbents untroubled in intra-party contests.
7.10pm. Counted: 15.5% in B, 19.5% in G, 11.7% in M.
7.03pm. So best indications are 3-3-1 in Molonglo, 2-2-1 in Ginninderra and 3-2 to the Liberals in Brindabella, for a total of Liberal 8, Labor 7 and Greens 2. However, a different trend on booth votes could change some of that.
7.01pm. Another batch sends Labor backwards in Ginninderra, strengthening likelihood of 2-2-1.
6.58pm. So the Liberals can hope for eight seats, if things keep going their way in Brindabella and Molonglo. The Greens are most probably looking at two.
6.55pm. Scratch what I said about Molonglo: much better for the Liberals than that. They’re on three quotas, and Antony is talking about 3-3-1.
6.54pm. Greens looking pretty good in Ginninderra: best bet there looks like another 2-2-1 result.
6.53pm. Giulia Jones has pulled ahead of Steve Doszpot for the second Liberal seat in Molonglo.
6.50pm. ABC website figures updated. Still early figures for Molonglo, but my guess is a status quo result of 3 Labor, 2 Liberal, 2 Greens. Well-informed Labor member John Hargreaves on the ABC though still thinks Labor could get a fourth at the expense of Caroline Le Couteur of the Greens.
6.44pm. My early guess is that Zed Seselja’s move to Brindabella has paid dividends then and might them a third seat (with Labor two and the Greens zero), but it’s still hard to see them building upon their two in Ginninderra and Molonglo. Very unclear how the Greens will go in Ginninderra or Molonglo though.
6.43pm. Antony’s discussing more up to date figures than on the ABC site, and the Liberals have gained further since the first batch.
6.41pm. Molonglo Greens: Shane Rattenbury only slightly ahead of Caroline Le Coteur, daylight third.
6.40pm. Antony has more numbers, particularly from Brindabella, and the Liberals appear to be doing very well there, and must be considered a shot at the third seat.
6.38pm. Molonglo Liberal: Jeremy Hanson here but Steve Doszpot struggling early, mixing it with Giulia Jones and Elizabeth Lee.
6.37pm. Molonglo Labor: Weak early result for Simon Corbell, in danger from Meegan Fitzharris. Katy Gallagher dominant, Andrew Barr second.
6.36pm. Ginninderra Liberal and Greens: Incumbents Coe and Dunne well clear, third unclear. Incumbent Meredith Hunter well ahead of Greens field.
6.35pm. Ginninderra Labor: Mary Porter and Chris Bourke clear in first and second, third still unclear.
6.35pm. Brindabella Liberal and Greens: Status quo, Seselja, Smyth and Bresnan looking for re-election. If a third Liberal, very unclear who.
6.34pm. Brindabella Labor: Joy Burch headed for easy win, Mick Gentleman well ahead for second seat, third seat if any toss-up between Karl Maftoum and Rebecca Cody.
6.33pm. So the very early indication are Brindabella: Liberal 2 and Labor 2, last seat toss-up between Liberal and Greens. Ginninderra: Labor 2, Liberal 2, Greens 1. Molonglo: Labor 3, Liberal 2, Greens 1, last seat anyone’s guess. Repeat: these are very early figures.
6.25pm. And here’s the first result, accounting for 1.7% of enrolled votes in Brindabella, 2.7% in Ginninderra and 4.8% in Molonglo. These point to a much higher others vote than the Patterson poll indicated, and slight increases in the vote for Labor, Liberal and the Greens.
6.22pm. Antony Green reports that 47,677 electronic pre-poll votes were cast, accounting for 18.6% of enrolled votes, and that these will be fed through to the media results feed over the coming hour. That should give us a very strong indication of the way things are headed, very early. Polling booth results however will not start coming through until after 7pm, owing to the ACT’s lack of small rural booths.
6pm. Polls have closed. Follow the results through the ABC and argue the toss here. Presumably the ABC’s live coverage featuring Antony Green will be broadcast on ABC News 24.
Berry has actually passed Bourke in Ginninderra now. Bourke now leads Hunter by 648 (increased slightly since yesterday). 76.5% of the primaries are included in the distribution. The included primaries slightly favour the Greens cf. Labor compared to the actual total so the preferences to come are likely to drag Hunter even further behind. This is actually an improvement on Labor’s position cf. yesterday in a situation in which even level pegging for them with that many votes removed would have been a decent argument for calling it.
I cannot see that Hunter now has any chance at all.
[I cannot see that Hunter now has any chance at all.]
An analysis of pre-poll v on-the-day will be very interesting when all the data is in.
I don’t suppose there will be an analysis of electronic v paper votes.
Oops – found the error in my calculations re Brindabella…me wrong, everybody else right – Bresnan is toast, just like Hunter.
Serves them right. They were invisible during the campaign.
On the basis that the ACT count is 8-8-1, it would seem that the only effect of the campaign blitz by the Liberals is that they have replaced two Greens. Labor has increased its seats by one and the Greens have lost three.
I think the Liberals made two fatal errors:
(1) They concentrated a large proportion of their efforts in winning Brindabella at the expense of Molonglo and Ginninderra.
(2) Their campaign slogan “Labor and the Greens will triple your rates” drew more attention to the Greens than to Labor so they were essentially up against two political enemies. Labor had the firepower to refute the Liberals’ claims but the Greens less so. IMHO they might have been more effective by not mentioning the Greens in their campaign slogan.
Senator Humphries’ election night rant on ABC that the Greens were bad but should support the Liberals anyway is unlikely to have pleased the Greens.
So, IMHO the ACT will see a continuation of the Labor-Green alliance.
I don’t think you can blame tactical errors for the fact the Liberals didn’t win. In fact, I think they played the game very well. They were in no way in the hunt for a third seat in Ginninderra or a fourth in Molonglo, but their third seat in Brindabella might easily not have happened if they didn’t target it so effectively. At the end of the day, they simply didn’t have enough support to win the election, which in the ACT is no great surprise.
But the Liberals had a campaign. They had twenty times as many placards and mobile advertising as Labor and for far longer. I saw a sum total of 2 greens placards in the 4 months that the Libs have been saturating my morning commute with decorated cards and roadside advertising.
How long did they spruik the triple rates line for yet I only heard one person come out and say it wasn’t true and that was 4 days out from the poll.
Labor should have campaigned earlier and more aggressively.
The Greens should have campaigned.
The Liberals can indeed be well satisfied with their campaign. The movement of Zed to Brindabella and the focus on Tuggeranong issues worked very well for them. There was no guarantee in Molonglo they were going to get the third seat back from the Greens, given Zed’s move from Molonglo to Brindabella, but strong campaigning by Lee and Jones meant they did well in Molonglo. In Ginninderra, Alistair Coe’s campaign was very strong, capping his hard work for the electorate in the last 4 years. Vicki Dunne rather let the Liberals down with a poor campaign.
But what the Liberals really needed to do in Ginninderra was some strategic voting. If 2000 to 2500 Liberals had voted 1 for Chic Henry from the Motorist’s Party, then Henry would have had enough votes so that Hunter would have been eliminated rather than him, and then when Hunter was eliminated he would have had enough of a lead over Berry so that Hunter’s preferences were not enough to get Berry past Henry. So Henry gets elected. I admit it may not be a feasible scenario. It would be pretty hard to get 2000 to 2500 Liberals to vote this way on the off chance it would work to get Henry up. But its an interesting thought.
Dumb question for Friday nite: I note that the Greens look like they won a seat their only seat in Molongolo, which has 7 seats, as opposed to 5 in the other 2.
Is the Greens’ victory a result of there being 7 seats? That is, had Molongolo only had 5 seats, would they have won one?
Laocoon@309
I get asked these 7-vs-5 questions all the time because in Tas our former 7-seat electorates were cut to 5 in 1998.
In this case the answer is yes. It would be 2-2-1; they would have 80% of a quota and no-one else would be near one.
By the way William, the summary for the ACT election that you put up this evening is very helpful. It has all the key numbers for Hare Clark devotees as to the state of play when various candidates are eliminated. And its a very good description of how the drama plays out as one moves through the elimination process.
Thanks very much Kevin!
[Hunter concedes Greens rout]
http://www.canberratimes.com.au/act-news/hunter-concedes-greens-rout-20121026-28bm0.html
Morning All
Thanks everyone for your work during the week – just one last question – who will win in the overall head to head Labor vs Liberal and be able to claim some vague sort of moral victory???
Was a very disappointing result for the Greens – maybe they should’ve made some more uncosted policy announcements in the last week rather than just sitting on what they had submitted a week out. Either way, reverted to the national average to a degree – 10/11% seems to be where they are at.
Will Rattenbury ask for a ministry as the price for his vote OR be happy to sit as speaker??? Personally I’d go with speaker with the 8 / 8 split. Hopefully at some stage they find a policy they and the Liberals are on the same page on and push it through – good policy should get up no matter who raises it in a hung parliament.
Finally – Zed Ha Ha 🙂
Not looking good little black duck. The declaration votes have come in, and although that has reduced the gap between Liberal and Labor, Labor is still 35 votes behind Liberal on the primary vote. ie Labor 85996 and Lib 86031. We just have to hope they are posting the declaration votes in batches and that there are some more of them to come. Any extra postal votes are going to favour the Libs.
It’s a bit hard to claim any sense of moral right to govern based off of 35 votes. Particularly in light of the fact that Zed tried to form government last time with a much wider gap in votes and seats than what currently exists.
Final results for ACT election are up http://www.elections.act.gov.au/news/act_legislative_assembly_election_-_final_results3
8 Labor 8 Liberal 1 Green. Members elected as in the distribution last night.
Liberals primary vote 42 votes higher than the Labor primary vote. Damn. We’re going to have to popularise the 2PP for the ACT, because Labor easily won that.
Congrats to johncanb on his successful modelling of the Ginninderra outcome at a time when it had slipped off the radar (which it was barely even on in the first place). Real nice piece of work.
I expect I’ll be using that result as an example in talking about HC for decades.
It’s an insult to the intelligence to talk about the significance of a primary vote lead in an election which is both preferential and proportional.
Indeed Psephos. And we were plagued by those meaningless primary vote comparisons in the old days at the Federal level when it was not routine or required to calculate the 2PP.
We will be able to accurately calculate the 2PP for the ACT for 2010 when the detailed database of the preferences on each ballot paper is released. The 2008 database is here. http://www.elections.act.gov.au/elections_and_voting/past_act_legislative_assembly_elections/2008_election/ballot_paper_preference_data_2008_election
I wonder if Zed is going to pick up a copy of ‘How to win friends and influence people’?