Coalition 90, Labor 55, Others 5

House of Representatives numbers settled as Clive Palmer makes it over the line in Fairfax by 36 votes, pending a recount.

The AEC reports the count in Fairfax has ended with Clive Palmer 36 votes in front of Liberal National Party candidate Ted O’Brien. The scrutiny progress table still lists 107 pre-polls and seven postals as awaiting processing, but I guess these are the ones that have been “disallowed” (the numbers are about right in each case). Admitted to the count today were 304 pre-polls, which broke 178-126 to O’Brien, and 147 postals, which broke 85-62, in each case in line with the general trend of the pre-poll and postal count. That was only sufficient to chip 75 votes away from Palmer’s 111-vote margin from last night.

Assuming that result is not overturned on a recount, I would say this definitively settles the line-up of the new House of Representatives: 90 seats to the Coalition (58 Liberal, 22 Liberal National, nine Nationals and one Country Liberal), 55 to Labor, one each for the Greens, Katter’s Australian Party and the Palmer United Party, and two independents.

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.

1,044 comments on “Coalition 90, Labor 55, Others 5”

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  1. Interesting to note that although we’ve returned to majority government, the public returned the same number of cross benchers in the HoR as the last election.

  2. [Does Australia have the slowest election counts in the world?]

    Seems that way sometimes. Does anyone know why the AEC still have to wait two weeks for postal votes to arrive?

  3. 10

    The politicians are to scared to cut the deadline for postal votes.

    In the UK postal votes have to be there by close of polls on election day.

  4. [Of the world’s slowest election counts, if you don’t know then nobody does.]

    Well I think we do. It’s not of course because the AEC is inefficient, but because our processes are so painstaking. This is no doubt a good thing.

    At the last Indian election, 417 million votes were cast. The complete results were up on the internet in three days.

  5. [Coalition 90, Labor 55, Others 5]

    So Labor need to win 21 seats to obtain a bare majority at the next election. Anticipating the LNP will mess up nearly everything they touch, this should be no problem at all 🙂

  6. Psephos
    [ * Does Australia have the slowest election counts in the world? ]

    Florida 2000 was pretty slow, wasn’t it? Any election where the means of voting can produce votes open to interpretation (hand-written, hanging chads, etc.) will be slow when it’s close. Ours are perhaps made slower by allowing postals to arrive so late, but I guess they are trading speed for maximum inclusion.

  7. [Of the world’s slowest election counts, if you don’t know then nobody does.

    Well I think we do. It’s not of course because the AEC is inefficient, but because our processes are so painstaking. This is no doubt a good thing.]

    This is one instance where accuracy is far more important than speed.

  8. [lorida 2000 was pretty slow, wasn’t it? ]

    Yes but that was because it was exceedingly close. Our results are slow even when they’re not close. There are still 8,000 votes to count in Gellibrand.

  9. [Ours are perhaps made slower by allowing postals to arrive so late, but I guess they are trading speed for maximum inclusion.]

    And they always er on the side of the franchise which is a very good thing. And really, there is no real problem of an election result takes a bit of time to be definitive. We normally know enough on election night to know the overall result, and there are clear provisions for one Govt handing over to another.

    Well, no real problem apart from for the political tragics who WANT TO KNOW NOOOOOW!!!! 🙂

  10. I know I asked this question yesterday but could not stick around for an answer .. so I will ask again.

    When the Fairfax recount happens will they go through all of the Provisional votes and reconfirm if those votes are allowed / disallowed? or is the current status of allowed /disallowed final?

  11. [This is one instance where accuracy is far more important than speed.]

    Agreed. Better to take one’s time and remove all day. Don’t worry, everything will be declared and the writs will all be returned before too long.

  12. [Peter Brent ‏@mumbletwits 1h
    Longman Qld biggest drop in informal votes, Werriwa NSW the biggest rise. Mark L would be proud.]

    Fowler still had more informal votes though.

  13. The ABC report on the Voice For Indi campaign was interesting. It really points the way forward for independent candidates to successfully run in seats where there’s high “social capital”, as they described it – areas where strong personal networks and social media can be used to mobilise change. I wonder if this could work in some of WA’s rural seats – Durack, O’Connor, Forrest – where the LNP basically just coast from one term to the next and do very little to represent the interests of their constituents.

  14. [But what if Palmer’s threats really are just p & w?]

    I will be interested to see how Clive goes with pecuniary interest declarations and conflicts of interest.

  15. briefly

    Yes, it seemed to be a model for future campaigns, and started off as a full community consultation, not political one, without (at first) having a candidate in mind. Sounds good.

  16. [I will be interested to see how Clive goes with pecuniary interest declarations and conflicts of interest.]

    What happens if he never gets around to fully filling them in? Will he sack himself?

  17. Briefly

    You do raise an interesting point but Indi is very different from those seats – the WA seats are very transient in the mining areas and lots of FIFO workers who would not necessarily engage with the local political process. A seat like Barker might respond better to that sort of campaign.

  18. Briefly

    It will be interesting to see if some MPs take heed of the Indi lesson and start to renew their engagement with their electorate. Also, one gets the impression that Mirabella pissed a lot of people off personally over a substantial period of time.

  19. blackburnpseph, I don’t know, but I would think that the status of any vote is open to court challenge, so the AEC will want to review them all. It wouldn’t make sense if certain types of votes are now excluded from that process.

  20. briefly:

    The Voice for Indi mob themselves said their campaign was a perfect storm of a grassroots social media enterprise, community engagement and an unpopular sitting member.

  21. I think Mirabella is a divisive candidate and that makes the difference. I am not sure that a grass roots campaign against an amiable deadwood candidate on a safe margin would be beaten by a grassroots campaign like Indi….

  22. I have a sneaking suspicion palmer is going to get to know the folks on the Priv Committee pretty well over the next 3 years…..just saying…. :devil:

  23. Mirabella could still have won if she had been more sensitive to people other than herself and her boss.

    V of Indi went to her and put forward the results of their research on what was needed, and she replied wtte “I know what they need. They need us to stop the boats, get rid of the carbon tax. . . ” At that point they turned away from her.

  24. It wouldn’t be that hard being a member for three years. Show up once a month in the chamber to get checked off on the roll. Apart from that he can carry on with his normal work.

  25. Two local anecdotes regarding the engagement of MPs with their electorate:

    – At my children’s primary school there is an annual award called the Deakin Award. Phil Barrese – the pre 2007 MP – presented it every year. Mike Symon – the recently defeated Labor MP – turned up to present it once in 6 years as MP. Several parents I know had this pointed out to them by their children – the latter had noticed not the parents.
    – I have always assumed that my mother in law is a Labor voter. She lives in Corangamite. After the election, she gave a real spray about Darren Cheeseman never having visited one of the larger towns in the electorate at all in his 6 years and being very scarce in their town. He was compared unfavourably with Sarah Henderson who has been a very active candidate. Both Mrs Pseph and I wonder if she had actually voted Liberal this time just based on local engagement.

  26. briefly

    [areas where strong personal networks and social media can be used to mobilise change.]

    Except that doesn’t really describe Indi – an electorate which is very spread out and with extremely poor internet access.

    The social media stuff played to people outside Indi, who were keen to support getting rid of Mirabella.

    There’s a lot of mythologising going on here. For example, McGowan’s made a lot of her positive campaign – but there were plenty of others running the negativity for her.

    Unless an MP is as unpopular nationally and as lazy at a local level as Mirabella – and very few are – I doubt the McGowan model will work elsewhere (but I bet an awful lot of people will buy into it!)

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