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.
Re #97
Graeme that is what it looks like BUT
1. It is not the explanation the AEC gave Michal last week.
2. That is not the explanation given by the AEC in their statement on Monday night
3. They say in their statement that they picked up an error on Friday. Yet they did not correct the VTR figures until Monday night nor make any disclosure to anybody that an error had been found until Palmer’s loopy attempt at a Federal Court injunction.
4. If the other PPVC Senate figures had been available (still not) then the true nature of the problem might have been realised earlier.
I can understand that a simple transcription error can easily occur but the AEC might want to look at the quality of its responses to such situations.
PS I agree with Kevin’s most likely outcome.
Certainly looks as if Clive’s goose is cooked, barring court intervention. If he happened to get up on calls for a new election, I reckon he may know a bit more about the importance of getting in the postals and pre-polls next time around!
oh dear!
The almost final postal votes were nowhere near as favourable to the LNP as the rest and Clive may yet hold on.
Now looks likely to be a recount either way.
Palmer now only 64 votes ahead as at 5pm. Only 119 postals left to count (although theoretically there culd be another 1000 or so out there that haven’t been received yet).
Absentees are going about 57%-43% to Clive, while prepolls are roughly the reverse (about .5% better for the LNP). There are 128 more prepolls left than there are absentees (plus another 60 prepolls issued which havent been received yet).
Looks to me like it will come in within the 100 vote margin, unless a decent slab of the extra 1000+ postals come in.
As I mentioned earlier, I hope Clive does mount a legal challenge against the result as it will provide a chance for the High Court to dismiss some of the groundless conspriacies that are occasionally thrown around about the AEC and the electoral system.
Mmm. Looking again, he may well end up in the “auto recount” zone. Say Libs are +200 on the Postals & EVPPs while Clive is +100 on the absentees. Leaves Clive only 40 behind.
Wonder how many of the provisionals will end up getting counted? Certainly might push it one way or the other if many get the nod.
Andrew writes I hope Clive does mount a legal challenge against the result as it will provide a chance for the High Court to dismiss some of the groundless conspriacies that are occasionally thrown around about the AEC and the electoral system.
I’m afraid Andrew I reckon those who believe such conspiracies will simply say “the Court’s in on it too” and go on believing whatever bizarre conspiracy theories they do now. 🙁
My extremely rough projection had Palmer by 11, but really there’s so many assumptions built into that the only thing it tells me is that it’ll be extremely close.
Here’s what I posted on the main thread.
It’s based on the position reported by the AEC at 3.35pm
Palmer leads at present by 64
Left to count are:
Absent 708
Prepoll 908
Postal 119
Based on counting to date, these split between O’Brien and Palmer, respectively, as follows:
Absent 43/57
Prepoll 57.5/42.5
Postal 61.1/38.9
Applying this split to the outstanding votes left to count, Palmer’s lead is reduced by 51, leaving him 13 ahead.
Some variables ahead.
First, there are 1124 postal votes issued but not yet returned. The number coming in now would be a trickle. A return of 60 of these votes, based on the current split, would give O’Brien the extra 13 votes to wipe out Palmer’s lead ie, back to zero.
The other variable is the 692 provisional votes that have not yet been processed. To date, 206 have been processed. All have been rejected.
There is little data to go on with the fate of those provisional votes. It appears that the only ones to be processed are all rejected. In 2010, 120 such votes were counted in Fairfax, and favored the ALP 57.5/42.5, in the context of an overall 2pp result favoring the LNP 57/43.
These provisional votes could get Palmer over the line. He would expect a higher proportion to flow his way than ALP had in 2010, bearing in mind that 2013 is essentially a 50/50 2pp outcome. If 120 votes get counted, and say they split 65/35 to Palmer, this would deliver a final outcome of a 30-35 vote win to Palmer.
Its that close….
Or else a higher than expected return of outstanding postals could get O’Brien over the line, but with only a handful of votes the difference.
Or maybe none of the provisionals get counted!!
My overall prediction: Palmer to win by 20.
And I would love to see a probability analysis of different potential,outcomes from Mr Bonham. Including that of a tie with a toss of the coin deciding the outcome. I suspect from here, this could take months to sort out.
Palmer has indeed recovered on the most recent postals and my current projection has him winning by 3 assuming the receipt of all outstanding prepolls and no further postals. So the probabilities are as close to 50:50 as you like them now.
I don’t believe there is a random draw for ties for first in a federal election. Think it’s a null result and a by-election. At least that’s my reading of the Act.
Michal Klaus@100
If PUP does lose (now uncertain) I’d be surprised if it was a record. There were cases of larger ordinary-to-final differences even in 2010, but they did not decide seats. I would expect to find many larger differences prior to 2010 as in that year within-electorate prepolls were first counted as ordinaries.
What is unusual in this election is the 12% gap between his ordinary vote (51%) and his postal voting result (39%). With no analysis on my part, this does seem a most extraordinary difference.
Putting any partisanship to one side, there seems to be something inherently wrong in the way the postal voting system operates in the modern era. Personally, I think it should basically be banned, with some limited exceptions for overseas voters and the infirm (supported by a medical certificate). With the growth in postal voting, the potential for abuse is significant.
But maybe all that needs to be banned is the role of the political parties in harvesting postal votes. If someone wants a postal vote, they must in future apply direct to the AEC. Otherwise, PPVCs or fronting up on the day should be the only alternatives.
What is unusual in this election is the 12% gap between his ordinary vote (51%) and his postal voting result (39%). With no analysis on my part, this does seem a most extraordinary difference.
Putting any partisanship to one side, there seems to be something inherently wrong in the way the postal voting system operates in the modern era. Personally, I think it should basically be banned, with some limited exceptions for overseas voters and the infirm (supported by a medical certificate). With the growth in postal voting, the potential for abuse is significant.
But maybe all that needs to be banned is the role of the political parties in harvesting postal votes. If someone wants a postal vote, they must in future apply direct to the AEC. Otherwise, PPVCs or fronting up on the day should be the only alternatives.
Outsider@114
This gap is consistently high in some Queensland seats, eg:
Fairfax 11% in 2010, 12% now
Flynn 16% in 2010, 15% now
Maranoa 13% in 2010, 10% now
Conservatives tend to get this sort of gap naturally to some degree but certain kinds of seats may be geographically more prone to it.
1. Qld Fed Court judges would hear this case, not High Court. Neither, as Andrew says, are fools.
2. AEC media runs out of Canberra, on a relative shoestring, not Fairfax. Personally, the presumption of perfect communication, infinitely downloadable files for amateur psephologists, given the physical complexity of our voting systems and variety of voting avenues, is beyond me. People are supremely impatient – count the votes, as the 2000 Yanks said.
3. Ban postal voting? Why; at least why, whilst early voting is now a right not a privilege?
The 10 day postal vote rule – which people I know overseas still value, as early 20th century as it sounds – is actually a nice fillip for the ‘Patientez SVP’ slogan. Short of moving to instantaneous electronic results, what’s wrong with a methodical count? The arrogance of Mr Palmer’s injunction attempt yesterday was the way it said ‘stuff you’ to all the absentee and postal votes yet to be heard.
I guess I didn’t explain my gripe with the postal voting system very well, and it is to do with the fact that we live in the 21st century, and it does seem a little odd that we have so many delays in deciding close seats. Internet voting is a substantial part of the answer, especially for those voting overseas. But 12,000 postals? The real gripe is the way the political parties have taken control of the postal vote process. For the elderly it is confusing, to say the least.
A far better solution is that only the AEC should be involved in issuing postal votes, perhaps backed by an AEC letter drop in each electorate once writs are issued, including a postal vote application vote form and a detailed (non political) explanation of the process.
At this stage there are 780 absent, 885 pre-poll, 141 postal to be counted. Based on the current percentages I get Palmer winning by 10 votes. I think 45 more postal votes would get it back to a tie.
Addition of 474 pre-polls favoured LNP by margin of 80 votes. Palmer now behind by 16 votes. This is a 58.4% of this bundle slightly higher than the previous percentage of pre-polls.
18 votes sorry
Palmer still has quite a few absents to come so now he is the one who has to come from behind and should – my projection now has O’Brien by two assuming no more postals.
The big question here is those remaining absents – where are they from and will they behave representatively? (And why haven’t they thrown them already?)
Gee it doesn’t get much closer than this one. Clive behind now but every chance of regaining lead on Absentee votes.
It might even come down to the randoms of Provisional – I see in Indi (which might be somewhat comparable of an ‘independent’ taking on a safe Liberal seat) they ended up accepting/counting 206 out of 1052 envelopes received. But they ended up splitting almost 50-50, so that might not be a game breaker in Fairfax either (unless the margin is under 5, which is possible – although that could be getting close to re-ballot territoty)
Absents actually went against Palmer, so it’s looking (to me) highly unlikely he can win from here. My rough projection is a deficit of 170 votes.
I seem to remember one seat a few years back where the final margin was (if I’m remembering correctly) seven votes. It might have been McEwen but I could be wrong. I don’t know if that is the record for closest margin.
This looks like it could challenge that one.
Which to me begs the question… if there was some kind of conspiracy to tamper with votes to knock Palmer out (and even to make it look close) – why the hell wouldn’t they do a better job of it? Why let it come down to a handful of votes?
So much for that prediction – 413 extra Abesentee votes processed, but unlike previous ones these have favoured the Lib and sees Clive go further behind. Maybe there is a conspiracy after all! (or maybe this pile of Absentees came from a different area to all the rest, but that’s would be way too boring)
Cllive now 100 behind and starting to run out of ballots to claw all that way back.
There was a 1 vote win at one of the earlier elections, so not a record.
There was some funny stuff going on with a lead of 100 to O’Brien briefly showing but replaced with a lead of 3 to Palmer without the outstanding dec vote totals changing. Probably a clerical error. My projection now has O’Brien by 38. 904 left to throw excluding provisionals and any not-yet-received postals.
Outsider
What if
you are on holiday in the Hunters
Working in the city and can only vote on Lunch time
What if you were visiting relative in another part of the city
What if you went to the wrong booth in another electorate.
What if you live 20km from a polling place
Voting should be easy and should not make you go out of your way to vote
I am wondering whether Abbott is privately hoping for a Palmer win. I also wonder if Palmer wins how many parliamentary session will he miss
Regarding McEwen in 2007:
* Initially a win to Labor by 6 votes.
* Recounted; win to Liberals by 12.
* Court challenge; eventually a win to Liberals by 31.
The case of Ballarat being decided by one vote in 1920 was declared void following court challenge.
Thanks Kevin,
I knew someone around here would have a better memory of that event.
Huh – it’s hard enough to follow without the tally changing like that!
Getting close enough for a dead heat.
A few more postals trickling in might decide it for the Libs.
Does anyone here have experience on what evidence might be required to present to the court of disputed returns (or whichever court ultimately has jurisdiction), and whether there have ever been successful challenges that came down to proven vote tampering?
I’m thinking Clive might need something a bit stronger than “go to Google*”.
* Memorable quote from:
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-09-05/clive-palmer-threatens-to-sue-murdoch2c-claiming-wife-is-a-spy/4936982
Dovif. Fair points all. My main gripe is the involvement of the political parties in the postal voting process. It’s not necessary. Given the clear rules around non politicization of the voting process at ordinary polling stations, I cannot fathom why political party influence is permitted in the postal voting process.
The Fairfax poll will almost certainly be decided by the courts. Palmer would win a fresh election, simply because he has the enormous personal wealth to bankroll his campaign eg, this time, to focus on postals, which are the only reason why the liberals have done so well to date. Also i sense a much lower turnout in a re-poll would also favor Clive, but there’s no real basis for that sense. What it does come down to is his unlimited capacity to fund a campaign which is a unique factor compared to the position of other independents. He has spent a lot of his own money on Election 2013 to get as far as he has. I can’t see why an extra million or two would make much difference to him now.
And I realize the inconsistency in my last two posts about the role of postal voting, but thems the rules!
Outsider, for what reason would the court order a fresh election in this occasion when they didn’t in McEwen for instance. Are you basing it on the photocopied ballot papers?
Ltep. In my confused state, given all this excitement (!!!) I was conflating 2 separate issues. Yes, the first is the ballot paper issue, which would lead to a fresh election (regardless of who wins), IF it can be proved. I was also, separately, thinking about the 2007 McEwen position, where effectively a recount of the recount was done by the court, resulting in the final margin as referred to by Dr Bonham earlier in this thread.
Incidentally, photocopied papers are fine under the electoral act. The issue is whether they were correctly initialed.
I bet they’re only fine if they were photocopied BEFORE being filled in.
I think that goes without saying SgtT!
A journo told me Mr Palmer said he would challenge the result EVEN if he won. Can anyone confirm?
Surely we all want him to win, so we can see Palmer v Palmer. (The first election petition to be confused for a family court case).
Being unprecedented, the Act doesn’t seem to prevent it.
The AEC might have it chucked out for abuse of process; or if he didn’t allege errors against his majority, for failure to disclose a cause of action.
Of course Clive can always save money and resign the seat to re-contest a by-election.
Lewis Carroll reporting…
Without going into the actual events that have taken place in the course of the 2013 Fairfax election, the Federal Court’s 2008 decision in Mitchell v Bailey (following the 2007 election for McEwen) illustrates the range of potential issues that a court may consider where an election outcome is very close. All indications available point to Fairfax being a very close outcome, potentially only a handful of votes either way.
The McEwen case can be seen here: http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/cases/cth/FCA/2008/692.html
And the 1920 Ballarat Election appeal is a cracker, though the Electoral Act has changed significantly since. The AEC has come a Long way since.
Read it here| http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/cases/cth/HCA/1920/35.html
I wonder what Clive is going to unearth? But there does seem to be fertile ground for court intervention where a result is especially close.
As far as I know, this is the only Commonwealth case where an election result has been declared void in the basis of flaws in the election process (jacky Kelly’s first win in Lindsay was overturned because she was in eligible to be a candidate, but she won the subsequent by election comfortably. Something similar happened with one of the One Nation senators and I’m sure there have been other instances)
There is also the Qld instance of the result in the seat of Mundingburra being voided by the Court and a by-election ordered. The original margin of victory was 16 votes.
http://www.austlii.edu.au/cgi-bin/sinodisp/au/cases/qld/QSC/1995/298.html if you’re interested
Robert Wood of the NDP was another to be rubbed out as Senator after being found ineligible.
A useful contrast with McEwen was Mundingburra 1995 in the Queensland parliament. Mundingburra was won by Labor by 16 votes but among the issues raised in a challenge was that 22 votes had not been processed because of the late arrival of a plane from Rwanda. In the McEwen case there was no evidence of wrongdoing or unjustified barring of voters or voters unfairly unable to vote, so it came down to rulings on the formality or not of specific votes.
Palmer will lose unless one of the Absent, Postal or Pre poll groups of votes is much better for him than they have been currently or whatever provisional votes are counted favor him considerably.
So off to court will will go and Palmer will make lots of allegations. Whether one of them will stand up is what we will have to see.
If there is another election in Fairfax then Palmer will throw massive money at it. I wonder if he might spend too much money and leave the residents of Fairfax feeling like they have been carpet bombed with nuclear weapons and therefore totally sick and tired of him.
Has anyone else noticed that some Buderim PPVC Senate figures have finally been posted, but they look exceedingly strange. Only 94 votes in total, and only 23% to the LNP. Why would the AEC publish such a small batch?
Maybe they are all the Below the Line votes? (given that the Green vote is far higher than the LNP vote, and Green voters vote below the line at a much much higher rate)
Kevin and Andrew. Thanks both. We can see where Palmer will be heading in the event of a handful of votes determining the outcome. Though the Queensland legislation seems to provide the court with broader powers than the equivalentbCommonwealthbElectoral Act. But that’s only from a very quick and unalytical read!