Friday 3pm. Absents have now been wrapped up: 298 were disallowed, and the last 105 counted have broken 59-46 to Palmer, increasing his lead from 98 to 111. Still to be processed are 415 pre-polls and 155 postals, of which Ted O’Brien would need nearly 60%. However, the comment from Julian T below suggests that a number of the pre-polls will likewise be disallowed, and have been left out of the count to this point pending a final determination on the matter. If that’s so, Palmer looks to have it wrapped up, pending what might show up on a recount.
Thursday 5pm. The race that’s stopping the nation has today seen the addition only of 201 provisionals, which were the biggest imponderable of the remaining count. It turns out that they have broken very handily to Clive Palmer, 148-53, boosting his lead from three to 98. Still outstanding: about 650 absents and as many pre-polls, and about 150 postals. If they break as such votes have until now, the LNP will only be able to carve about 50 votes out of Palmer’s lead. UPDATE: Julian T in comments observes that a number of the supposedly outstanding pre-polls and absents will not in fact make it into account by virtue of being “disallowed”, as they involve voters submitting votes for Fairfax when they actually turned out to be enrolled elsewhere in Queensland. Ballots from such voters can be admitted for the Senate, but not the House. That likely makes the hill very difficult for Ted O’Brien to climb.
Wednesday 4pm. Clive Palmer lost the lead earlier today but at the time or writing has recovered it – by three votes. Troublingly for Palmer (assuming he does actually want to win), a batch of 395 absents were less good for him than those admitted previously, going 52.6-47.3 his way against a grand total of 56.6-43.4. By contrast, 474 pre-polls have maintained their trend of going 58-42 against him. Still to come: about 650 absents, on which he would hope to gain maybe 80; 550 pre-polls, on which he should lose them again; a trickle of postals (100, perhaps) that would then be likely to put him behind; and about 200 provisionals which will do who-knows-what.
Tuesday 6pm. From 502 on the weekend to 362 yesterday, Clive Palmer’s lead has now worn down to 65 after today’s counting of pre-polls went 830-588 against him and postals went 436-378. However, the postals were somewhat less bad for him than previous batches, and there’s now very few of them left. The bulk of the outstanding vote consists of about 1000 absents and pre-polls each, which appear likely to cancel each other out with the former going 57.0-43.0 for Palmer and the latter going 57.5-42.5 against. There are also likely to be about 200 provisional votes, which are an unknown quantity. Assuming the latter go 50-50, I’m currently projecting Palmer to win by 34 votes.
Monday 7:30pm. The AEC explains the Coolum Beach anomaly. Clive Palmer sought a Federal Court injunction today to have counting suspended, though to what end I’m not quite sure. As the AEC notes, the normal practice would be to petition the Court of Disputed Returns. The court has so far reserved its decision.
Monday 7pm. It appears the Coolum Beach PPVC mystery has finally been resolved. The votes for that booth had incorrectly been entered for the Buderim PPVC and vice-versa, and only now has the error been corrected. Since there are still no Senate votes recorded for Buderim PPVC, my earlier scatterplot did not show up a corresponding error for that booth. While it doesn’t look like there will be salvation for Clive Palmer in the form an uncovered vote count anomaly, he has gained ground with the addition of 1291 absent votes which continue to favour him quite strongly, in this case breaking 722-569 his way and giving his faltering lead a badly needed boost from 209 to 362.
Monday 4pm. Looks to be going right down to the wire, with another 1223 postal votes slashing Palmer’s lead by 293 to 209. There remain to come 2400 absents and a similar number of pre-polls, which have respectively been heavily favouring Palmer and O’Brien, along with maybe 500 postals which have been favouring O’Brien 62-38. My projection of where this is headed leaves nothing in it. In other news, Clive Palmer has today been raising the issue of the Coolum Beach PPVC discrepancy, though not in a way that might inspire the casual observer with confidence in his claims.
Saturday 8pm. Another 1306 pre-polls have gone badly for Clive Palmer, favouring Ted O’Brien 762-544 and cutting Palmer’s lead from 718 to 502. My projection of the share of the outstanding 7200 or so votes needed by O’Brien is down to 53.5% (assuming once again that nothing comes of this Coolum Beach PPVC anomaly).
Friday 3pm. Another 1792 postals have been just as favourable to Ted O’Brien as earlier batches, cutting 414 into a lead for Palmer that now stands at 718. There should be a bit over 2000 to come, which should further cut into Palmer’s lead by about 550. That leaves the result well and truly down to absents and pre-polls, the likely behaviour of which is a bit of a mystery at this stage. As to the apparent Coolum Beach anomaly, the commenter who raised the matter has received what to my mind is an unsatisfactory response from an AEC worker who appears not to have properly grasped the issue.
Thursday evening. Leaving aside the Coolum Beach PPVC issue, which is yet to acquire a life independent of this website, postals are flowing heavily enough to LNP to suggest an extremely close result. The addition of 2363 have cut 611 votes from Palmer’s lead, and could potentially take out a further 1000 of the remaining 1132 if there are indeed 4000 of them outstanding and they continue to behave like the previous batch. However, Palmer has done much better out of 855 absents, on which he has gained 79 votes and of which there are about 2000 more to come. There are also around 2000 pre-polls, which look likely to favour the LNP.
Wednesday evening. Michal Klaus in comments notes that the Coolum Beach pre-poll voting centre booth, the addition of which did so much to swing the count in Ted O’Brien’s favour, “could be one of the most extreme outliers anywhere in Australia”. He’s not wrong:
As the above chart clearly shows, the 55.87% primary vote recorded for Ted O’Brien at the booth is entirely out of whack with its 36.27% Senate vote for the Liberal National Party. There are also 575 more votes recorded there for the House than the Senate. Clearly there is an Indi-style error waiting to be uncovered here, either in relation to the House or the Senate vote. Given there are ballpark similarities between the Coolum booths for the Senate and a strong discrepancy with Coolum Beach PPVC on the House numbers, it seems safe to assume that the error is with the House results, and that Ted O’Brien’s tally is consequently higher than it should be. To shift the Coolum Beach PPVC data point to where it should be in the above chart, about 1000 votes need to be deducted from O’Brien’s total.
Wednesday 5pm. The count continues to trend away from Clive Palmer overall, who perhaps faces a further headache from the yet-to-report “BLV Fairfax” pre-poll voting centre in Maroochydore. If it’s anything like the other PPVCs in Maroochydore, it could cost Palmer as much as 1000 votes of a lead which currently sits at 1664 (UPDATE: LTEP notes in comments that the BLV booths in fact do very limited business). Other late counting has been a mixed bag, with absent votes favouring Palmer 827-565, but pre-polls going 381-328 the other way. The total number of such votes should perhaps be around 4500 and 2500, and there should further be about 5000 postals, none of which have been counted yet. So a fair bit of life in this one yet.
Election night. I don’t believe Antony’s projection of 50.9% to Clive Palmer is based on anything other than a guesstimate as to preferences. It’s still clearly the best thing available, but the 0.9% figure would be well within its margin of error. I’m guessing the AEC will conduct a preference throw in fairly short order that will put the issue beyond doubt one way or the other.
Peter Wellington’s wife (he is State Member for Nicklin) stated that the count in Fairfax was a disgrace, that ballot papers were all over the place.
She has never seen anything like it scrutineering at past elections.
I wonder if its a shock to the AEC staff that usually are forgotten about at 8.00PM on Sat night.
51
It may well end up in the Court of Disputed Returns. Especially if Palmer looses.
Indeed – you hear plenty of demand for data to be uploaded and available as soon as humanly possible, which isn’t ultimately helpful.
There is always a problem with releasing data early and then correcting it later – people often anchor on the first result and demand justification for the change.
I would rather wait for good, quality-checked data than have early information that is wrong.
Palmer 1100 votes ahead – the AEC obviously hasn’t as yet corrected the error in the count highlighted above by William.
Evan, I am also still awaiting the AEC’s reply to my email.
The AEC has replied:
The reason that more votes appear to have been recorded in the House of Representatives than for the Senate is because below-the-line voting for the Senate must be data-entered in entirety by AEC staff into a computer system in order for preferences to be correctly distributed. This is a time-consuming process and takes much longer than counting for the house of representatives as you might imagine when you consider that there are 8 house of Representatives candidates for the Division of Fairfax but 82 Senate candidates.
This is not a case of votes being wrongly assigned or going missing.
However, I believe questions should continue to be raised about it: I note that at other polling places, the total Senate votes cast for all do match up, and the way they are recorded (in the Unapportioned and Group Total lines) look the same. There is no explanation given why the count is apparently proceeding (and/or being recorded) differently at different polling places. The AEC’s reply also does nothing to address the extreme outlier status of the Coolum Beach PPVC, in fact if anything I would expect Below the Line votes to shrink the LNP’s Senate total further (as the proportion of the LNP’s Below the Line Vote is traditionally much lower than for some minor and micro parties), making the gap to the LNP’s House of Representative vote appear even more incredible.
SgtThursday, the AEC claims there is nothing to see here, which would indicate your suggestion comes into play. However, even so, quite a few people would have appeared to send a message to PUP in a rather strange manner, by switching their vote away from ALP or Greens (their votes are also below trend when comparing House of Representatives with Senate votes).
Sounds to me like whoever replied on behalf of the AEC might not have fully understood the question.
Anyway my “anonymous feedback” theory doesn’t hold a lot of water if the main Coolum booth is on-trend. Even less so if the apparent discrepancy is more pro-LNP than it is anti-PUP
That is what I’m inclined to think as well, SgtThursday. At the moment, we just cannot satisfactorily account for all indicators pointing in the same direction. I now await a further reply from the AEC.
I think that is a disappointing response from the AEC.
I’ve used the latest AEC downloads on House & Senate votes by polling place to compare the HoR & Senate counts for each polling place in Fairfax, Fisher & Flynn.
The discrepancy in Coolum Beach PPVC sticks out like a sore thumb.
For the AEC’s explanation to be correct, Coolum Beach PPVC would need to have had a below the line Senate vote of more than 19%. I don’t believe that – the general below the line proportion looks more like 2-4%.
No other polling place in those 3 electorates, that has any Senate figures entered, currently has an excess of House over senate votes of more than 102 (at Coolum Beach PPVC it is 768).
Admittedly the other Fairfax PPVCs do not yet have any Senate figures entered so perhaps PPVCs are different or the Coolum Beach one is incomplete. But in Fisher the Maroochydore PPVC has similar House & Senate figures (actually Senate exceeds House by 72).
I think the AEC needs to take this more seriously.
PS In comparing Senate & House votes by booth I was struck by how there are 2 booths in Flynn where Senate votes were much higher than House at Gracemere and Blackwater (opposite to Coolum Beach). The votes by party between Senate & House appeared consistent (unlike Coolum Beach PPVC or as occurred in Indi) so it appeared unlikely to be a data entry error. At first I couldn’t understand it. But if there were a large number of absentee votes at these booths (due to fly-in/fly-out workers at the coal mines there?) could this account for the difference? Their HoR votes would be sent off to be counted as absent votes elsewhere while their Senate votes are counted locally?
I can’t see absent fly-in/fly-out mine workers accounting for the difference the other way at Coolum Beach PPVC in Fairfax though. Perhaps it may help account for some of the LNP’s poor showing in absent votes in coastal Queensland.
DodgyDave thank you for your additional valuable contribution, which further builds the case. I agree this should continue to be monitored and more detailed explanations sought from the AEC.
Even if there is an explanation for the Senate/House discrepancy it still could be there’s an error of some other sort. Especially if the discrepancy is c. 1000, which is much more than the Senate/House gap predicts. A bundle of 500 Palmer votes with an O’Brien vote on top for instance is a sort of error I have seen happen sometimes.
Leaving the discrepancy to one side, if the current count of the various declaration votes stays to trend, it looks to me like the LNP could catch Palmer on postals & pre-polls, but would still fall short if the absentee vote continues to favour Palmer by the same amount (or even a smaller amount)
I have to say I’m torn on whether or not to hope for Clive winning or losing.
If he wins: we’ll hear endless tirades of barely comprehensible gibberish AND it’ll come with the bonus of parliamentary privilege.
If he loses: we’ll hear endless tirades of barely comprehensible gibberish AND have a bunch of ridiculous lawsuits against the AEC to sit through.
I wonder what is better in the long term (both for the Australian people in general, and for Clive’s more-or-less guaranteed stab at being PM in 2016/17).
The AEC answer Michal has passed on at #56 is not a credible explanation. They have either misunderstood the question/concern, or are being disingenuous. I’d say the former, as I start from the expectation and experience that they are honestly doing their best.
The reason it is not credible may be confirmed by reference to the AEC fact sheet about vote counting. This makes it clear that on election night Senate first preferences, whether above- or below-the-line, are counted at the polling booth. First preferences are phoned through to the Divisional Office and put on the website. If necessary, counting of first preferences continues at the polling place on Sunday.
Above-the-line votes are subsequently checked at the Divisional Office, while the below-the-line votes end up at a central state centre for data entry of preferences to allow the eventual computerised allocation of preferences.
So the data entry argument the AEC has given Michal has nothing to do with an aberation in first preferences counted or reported. All first preferences should have been reported by Sunday, and only subject to later checking and modification.
Michal did you raise this with the Divisional Office or someone at AEC in Canberra or Brisbane?
Sgt Thursday, I think I’d prefer the 2nd outcome. A court case against the AEC would very likely lead to an AEC win (unless the result had been so exceedingly close – which is plausible – that the Court could do a Mundingburra and order a re-poll/by-election). (As an aside, I thought the Mundingburra decision was a bit dubious, but Labor didn’t appeal it so iyt can’t have been too bad).
Having an appeal to the court thrown out would help dispel some of the many myths and conspiracy theories that get thrown around about elections & the AEC. But it might also help by proposing ways the AEC could do their counting job better, along the lines of suggestions occasionally made on this blog.
Andrew Bartlett at #63:
That’s my reading too – O’Brien is doing well on postals and will probably do fairly well on pre-polls but Palmer is doing really well on absent votes and if that continues they will probably get him across the line.
With just under half the absent votes counted, Palmer is getting 57.5% and O’Brien will only win (disregarding any discrepancy) if the remaining half of the absents at least break even (or favour him rather than Palmer).
Palmer’s lead is down to 718 but that is with 2/3 of the postal and half of the absent votes counted.
canberra boy, I couldn’t find anything other than generic phone or email contacts, so I tried the Call Centre, and was given a direct phone number for the Fairfax AEC Office. I tried this number many times, but it always rang out. I then emailed the generic email address (making it obvious from the subject line which Division and issue it relates to). My first reply came from Election and External Communication Section, at Head Office (unclear whether input was sought from Fairfax). When I queried the reply further today, I was advised it has been forwarded directly to the Division of Fairfax for their comment. I am a little underwhelmed by this sequence of events.
OK – mea culpa – I clearly overlooked the fact that we are dealing with a PPVC rather than votes counted at a polling booth on Saturday night. But the principle holds: when the Senate votes are counted, the first preferences for both above- and below-the-line ballot papers are counted at the point of first scrutiny and reported publicly, and data entry of preferences occurs later.
I can’t cavil with Michal’s concerns or William’s scatter plot of Senate v House votes. But is there mileage in comparing TCP counts, for PPVCs vs ordinary polling, by settlements? I’m a product of Nambour, if a small pineapple compared to Swan/Rudd/Elliot…
There are four 4 big communities here worthy of having a PPVC. Maroochydore even has 2 PPVCs. Together these 4 communities equal have over 45 000 votes in the count.
By TCP so far:
Coolum PPVC LNP 57.78 Coolum Ord Booths LNP 41.89
M’dore PPVCs LNP 55.83 M’dore Ord Booths LNP 43.53
Nambour PPVC LNP 47.58 Nambour Ord Booths LNP 38.62
Buderim PPVC LNP 48.05 Buderim Ord Booths LNP 56.36
The LNP PPVC premium in Coolum – the subject of attention here – is 15.9%. That’s on a par with Maroochydore’s 12.3% They are closely contiguous coastal regions.
Nambour is more a formalised town. There is still a sizeable LNP PPVC premium there, but less strong. Its politics are hardly left, but more Independent than Coalition focused thanks to Peter Wellington’s long reign as MLA – Labor voters there are used to voting strategically so Palmer doing better there is expected.
Palmer doing less well at most PPVCs makes sense if his vote was a surge based in part on late advertising; and given there are clearly more protest votes on polling day than at pre-polls where committed voters seem to dominate (the informal vote is more than halved at these PPVCs).
Conversely, Buderim is Coalition heaven: retirement town perched on a mountain. There is MUCH more old-fashioned, polling day polling (and a ratio of 7 ordinary booths to one PPVC).
In case anyone wants to check my calculations, and to give an idea of the size of the sample, total votes per polling place type are:
Coolum PPVC 3773 Coolum 3 Ord Booths 4533
Nambour PPVC 7068 Nambour 3 Ord Booths 4617
(Burnside included as a suburb of Nam)
M’dore PPVCs (2) 9750 M’dore 4 Ord Booths 5450
(Cotton Tree and Kuluin are suburbs of M’Dore)
Buderim PPVC 3057 Buderim 7 Ord booths 8325
As for other coastal communities without a PPVC, the LNP ranges from 42% (‘Pacific Paradise’, south of Coolum), through 46.4% (Mudjimba, just next to ‘Pacific Paradise’) up to 58.7% (Peregian Springs, just north of Coolum). Wealth measured by land values would be highest in Buderim and north of Coolum.
Clive isn’t jumping up and down about this yet. Is it because he doesn’t know?
Having made that long post, there is also room in those figures to wonder why Coolum PPVC hasn’t reported more House votes, ie why it doesn’t have a higher ratio of PPVC to ordinary polling.
One explanation is a parcel of Clive’s votes are missing…
The other is that the bigger and better known PPVCs (Nambour and Maroochydore) draw in more people. Coolum has less industry/retail and 9-5 jobs than Nambour or Maroochydore.
Re #71
I think Clive has too many imaginary problems with the vote count to worry about a possible real one.
Graeme
I handed out HTV at Coolum in pre-poll and on the day. There is no reason for any difference in the PPVC tally to the election day.
Coolum has long been an ALP island in the LNP sea (check the last few Federal Elections) the figures do not pass a credibility test.
Graeme’s posts are useful but don’t really explain the anomaly of the difference in House & Senate votes at Coolum PPVC.
However we have mainly been assuming that the problem is an overstatement in the LNP HoR vote at Coolum – perhaps influenced by events in Indi.
I still think that the most likely explanation but it is possible that the problem is actually an understatement in the LNP Senate vote at Coolum.
re #74
Actually looking at the 2010 results, on the day Coolum Beach is an ALP island but the PPVC was not.
The LNP share at the two normal Coolum Beach booths was only 44.85% & 44.77% BUT at the Coolum Beach PPVC it was 56.02%, over 11% better.
Apologies! Transcription error: working on a train… The first table in post 70 SHOULD be:
By TCP so far:
Coolum PPVC LNP 62.23 Coolum Ord Booths LNP 41.89
M’dore PPVCs LNP 55.83 M’dore Ord Booths LNP 43.53
Nambour PPVC LNP 47.58 Nambour Ord Booths LNP 38.62
Buderim PPVC LNP 48.05 Buderim Ord Booths LNP 56.36
The LNP PPVC premium in Coolum – the subject of attention here – is 20.3%. That’s a a deal bigger than Maroochydore’s 12.3%. Which is bigger again than Nambour’s which is of course much bigger than Buderim’s negative premium…
Yes, indeed RuAwake and DodgyDave. I’m no insider so the anomalies you point out are beyond me too. Talking anomalies, why is there no count for the Senate in Fairfax’s biggest booth – the number 1 Maroochydore PPVC?
DodgyDave’s point was on my mind. Let’s look at LNP Senate primaries across the types of booths in the comparable settlements, and the raw ‘premium’ over PUP Senate primary, and House primary:
Coolum PPVC LNP37.1% +19.3 (House +37.2)
Coolum LNP28.2% +9.7 (House -2.1)
Coolum North LNP30.3% +10.2% (House +2.3)
Mt Coolum LNP34.3% + 17.1 (House +4.5)
M’Dore PPVC No Senate Count?! (House +25.9)
M’Dore Nth PPVC LNP47.6% +33.6 (House +25)
M’Dore LNP33.9% +12 (House -1.5)
M’Dore East LNP34.6% +15.9 (House +4.7)
Kuluin LNP34.7% +12.9 (House -4.4)
Cotton Tree LNP43.9% +29.6 (House + 20.4)
Overall in the electorate, Katter outperformed his Senate group by a bit under 8.8% (26.9 to 18.1)
As a consequence, overall in the electorate, on primaries, the LNP House premium was 14.4 but its Senate premium 21.2.
So…
* as Michal points out the House premium to LNP in that Coolum PPVC looks odd.
* but the numbers are equally consistent with DodgyDave’s intuition that the LNP is missing Senate votes from Coolum PPVC. In the M’Dore PPVC we have, the LNP Senate vote and premium is much higher. So too in Cotton Tree, which is where the fancy apts are in Maroochydore.
Again, happy if someone checks/corrects these numbers. Was relying on pen, calculator and laptop on a long journey.
Freudian slip! ‘… Palmer outpeformed his Senate group by a bit under 8.8%…’ not ‘Katter’!
If Ted O’Brien pulls this one out, you can bet that Palmer will take it to the Court of Disputed Returns(he has got enough money to sue the entire AEC if he wanted to), and in the light of the comments in this thread, Clive has a good case to argue that the vote counting in Fairfax has been slightly dodgy.
On my latest projections there is basically nothing in this unless the Coolum thing is resolved in Palmer’s favour.
Just projecting the outstanding declaration votes received to follow the current trends I make out Palmer falling short by 22 (which is obviously within the error for such s projection).
So yes this looks down to the wire…
Yes I have similar: -5 in one projection and -47 in the other.
There is an automatic recount for <100 and I think it will be good to see this seat fully recounted.
Clive now knows about the 768 vote error and is being reported in the msm:
http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/clive-palmer-calls-for-new-election-in-fairfax-20130916-2tuc5.html
According to a report in The Australian, the missing 768 votes from Coolum PPVC turned up at “a Buderim booth”.
The report doesn’t make clear whether these are missing LNP Senate votes that turned up at Buderim (note we don’t have Buderim PPVC senate figures from the AEC) or PUP votes from Coolum that turned up at Buderim or some other alternative.
The AEC site is stilling showing figures for Coolum Beach PPVC with a big discrepancy between House & senate. It doesn’t seem to have yet fixed the anomaly spotted here last week.
Anyway Clive is now aware of it and has let slip the dogs of law. Oh to be an electoral lawyer in Queensland – think of the fees to come for the next few years.
It’s good that finally it has made it into the main stream and the AEC was compelled to look into it. However, it’s not good that because of how the count was published (or not) by the AEC to date, there was no real opportunity to put forward this potential explanation, nor to test it.
Bless his little (!) cotton socks.
We in WA are looking forward to our fresh election as well, due to the early release of incorrect 2PP information. Goodness knows how many of use were hanging out to vote at the last minute, awaiting confirmation of the impending PUP landslide.
Would be nice to know what the Buderim PPVC Senate figures actually are so we can see how well they tally with the Reps figures at that booth.
However if the discrepancy really only concerns Senate votes being in the wrong place then I’m not sure what leg Palmer would have to stand on.
Does this AEC finding the votes in Buderim story actually check out? All the other booths except Coolum look legit.
TheSpeaker: Well, it doesn’t yet actually check out at this stage – The LNP’s House of Representatives vote at other Coolum Beach booths is 26.8% and 30.54%, while at the Coolum Beach PPVC the LNP’s vote shoots up to double that, 55.87%. This remains totally out of sync with the behaviour of other PPVC’s, which show a very much smaller premium to the LNP’s vote.
As William notes, the AEC has now put out a statement regarding this.
They have also switched the Coolum Beach PPVC & Buderim PPVC vote counts on VTR – that is the entire count for each so that now Buderim PPVC has the 3,773 votes & 62.23% LNP 2PP that were recorded against Coolum Beach PPVC (which has the 3,097 votes & 48.05% LNP share that were previously recorded as Buderim PPVC).
So according to the VTR it is not 768 votes that were switched but the entire votes for Coolum Beach & Buderim.
We can’t check whether this alignment makes more sense versus Senate votes because we don’t have the Senate figures for Buderim PPVC.
However compared to the 2010 figures it does make more sense – in 2010 Buderim PPVC was much better for the LNP than Coolum Beach PPVC: 65.02% v 56.02%. I think the alignment with surrounding normal booths is now better too.
The odd thing though is that in 2010 there were only 798 formal votes at Coolum Beach PPVC (now showing 3,097) while Buderim has gone from 2,107 in 2010 to 3,773 (in the latest version).
But one of the locals might be able to shed some light on this – different location? different opening times? affected by Noosa Show? Just one of those things? In any case Clive shouldn’t complain about Coolum Beach PPVC being bigger than expected – he actually won there on 2pp (as now recorded).
It also makes sense compared to the rest of the 2013 votes. See the figures I extracted in post 70.
Now the LNP Buderim TCP for pre-polls is higher than for polling day voting, as elsewhere and as expected. And Buderim is, given its retiree demographic and higher status, the naturally most conservative of the sub-regions.
Dave, isn’t it the case that pre-polling is ballooning everywhere? But I’d expect the growth to be less marked in older or more traditional cohorts of voters.
Graeme
I thought the latest figures might be more consistent with your comparisons with adjoining normal booths.
And yes the PPV votes are up a lot everywhere in Fairfax. Coolum Beach has the biggest increase as a percentage (+288%) but they have increase markedly elsewhere. Buderim is showing +79% (but Graeme suggests demographic reasons for a lower increase). Maroochydore Fairfax PPVC has increased from 3,489 to 7,895 (+126%) & there is a new PPVC at Maroochydore North which also has 1,895 (none last time). Nambour PPVC went from 3,782 to 7,068 (+87%).
So the revised figures for Coolum Beach PPVC show the largest percentage increase in votes from 2010 but all others have increased a lot, some by more in absolute numbers (rather than proportions).
So I guess in the absence of Senate figures for the other PPVCs, there is no reason not to accept the latest published AEC figures.
Graeme
Actually looking back at your posts, #77 IMHO was the best pointer to the solution – well done.
The original and revised premiums from normal booths to PPVC are:
Coolum: was +20.3% now +6.2%
M’dore: was +12.3% still +12.3%
Nambour: was +9.0% still +9.0%
Buderim: was -8.3% now +5.9%
So down from a 28.6% spread to 6.4% – looks a lot better.
One wonders with such a high rate of early voting if Palmer is now wishing his advertising onslaught had kicked in earlier. Or if almost all early voters are staunch.
So DodgyDave, from what you say it was nothing more dodgy than a transposition in data entry for the virtual tally room?
So much for Clive Palmer’s idea on QandA that it was an AEC conspiracy with something to do with former miltary people being wrongly involved.
The real question though is are we going to see more of Clive Palmer’s imaginary conspiracies being put forward under parliamentary privilege?
On my projection now, Palmer is not only probably losing but may not even make the automatic recount threshhold. He’s currently +122 but I’m projecting that to -131.
Now that it looks like PUP loses, does anyone know if this is a Federal Election record “come from behind” victory to the LNP after it had 48.96% of ordinary votes on election day?