Progressive updates of the long and laborious Senate count.
Still in play
Western Australia
Monday 23/9. The ABC computer projection today flipped to show the last two seats going to Louise Pratt and Zhenya Wang at the expense of Scott Ludlam and Wayne Dropulich, the decisive change being that Australian Christians have fallen behind Shooters and Fishers at “Count 21”. This deprives Dropulich of the Shooters and Fishers preferences he needs to survive the subsequent counts.
Tuesday 17/9. The most excellent Senate modelling of PB regular Truth Seeker illustrates the delicate balance of the count here, and the stars that need to remain aligned if Wayne Dropulich of the Australian Sports Party is indeed to find his way to the Senate off 0.2% of the vote. Key to the outcome is Dropulich remaining ahead of the Rise Up Australia party after distribution of preferences from Australian Voice, after which his snowball builds all the way to a quota. This might yet be undone by a gentle trend towards RUA on late counting, together with the unknown quantity of below-the-line votes. Should Dropulich fall short, not only will his own seat instead go to Zhenya Wong of the Palmer United Party, but the complexion of the race for the final seat between Scott Ludlam of the Greens and Labor’s Louise Pratt will change. This is because the comfortable win presently projected for Ludlam is achieved off Palmer preferences, which won’t be available to him if the votes are used to elect Wong. Truth Seeker’s projection is that Pratt will “almost certainly” defeat Ludlam on a scenario in which Wong is elected.
Monday. Together with the Australian Motoring Enthusiast Party in Victoria, the other freak result being projected is that someone called Wayne Dropulich from something called the Australian Sports Party is projected to win off 0.22% of the primary vote. However, there are two points in the projected count where Dropulich narrowly escapes exclusion after finishing slightly ahead of the No Carbon Tax and Rise Up Australia parties. Those hurdles cleared, he harvests almost the entirety of the micro-party vote along with the Liberal Party surplus. If he drops out, it looks like another seat would be in the bag for the Palmer United Party, whose candidate is the little-known Zhenya Wang. The other point at issue is whether the second “left” seat goes to Labor’s number two candidate, incumbent Louise Pratt, or Greens Senator Scott Ludlam. If Zhenya Wang drops out, Ludlam looks the certain winner as he stands to receive the Palmer party’s preferences. But if the Palmer candidate is elected and has no preferences to spare, the result between Ludlam and Pratt at the final count becomes very close, though with Ludlam still appearing better placed.
Election night. One of a number of freakish outcomes currently projected by the ABC computer is that something called the Australian Sports Party wins a seat off 0.22% of the vote. However, there’s a very good chance that they will not in fact make it through the early rounds of the count. It does appear though that a micro-party seat is up for grabs to join the three for the Liberals and the two for Labor and/or Scott Ludlam. As best as I can tell, the only danger to Ludlam is that a share of the Palmer United Party vote might get used to elect one of the micro-parties candidates who are above the Greens on their preference order, which include the Liberal Democrats, the Australian Christians and Family First, perhaps depriving him of the preferences he needs to defeat Louise Pratt at the final count. It is also problematic for him that the PUP, being largely a phenomenon of the late campaign, may fade as pre-poll and postal votes are added.
Tasmania
Tuesday 24/9. The AEC yesterday announced that the computerised preference distribution will be conducted tomorrow, and the result declared on Thursday.
Tuesday 16/9. With two seats each for Labor and Liberal and one for the Greens assured, there are three scenarios for the final seat which could variously see it go to third Liberal candidate Sally Chandler, Jacqui Lambie of the Palmer United Party, or Canberra resident Robbie Swan of the Sex Party. The ABC computer is presently intriguing journalists by giving it to Swan, based on him finishing ahead of Labor at Count 21 by the grand total of 14,275 to 14,274. That sees Swan soak up the Labor/Greens surplus to finish ahead of the Liberal Democrats, whose preferences then put him ahead of Lambie and on to victory with Lambie’s preferences. But if the situation at Count 21 was just one vote different, Swan would be excluded and his preferences distributed in such a way as to leave Lambie about 1000 votes behind the Liberal Democrats, and thus be excluded. Lambie’s preferences would then flow to the Liberals and deliver the seat to Sally Chandler. A win for Lambie thus looks the least likely of the three possible scenarios, although the high rate of below-the-line voting in Tasmania is such that I don’t think it should be entirely ruled out.
Thursday. The ABC projection in Tasmania no longer has Jacqui Lambie of the Palmer United Party winning a seat, as she now finishes behind the Liberal Democrats (28,114 to 27,234) after the Greens surplus is distributed at Count 24. I earlier presumed that this scenario would deliver the seat to the Liberal Democrats, but Palmer preferences are in fact going to the Liberals and, unless Lambie can recover, will deliver the final seat to the third Liberal candidate, Sally Chandler.
Monday. Labor and the Greens have won over three quotas between them, securing two seats for Labor plus the re-election of Greens Senator Peter Whish-Wilson, despite a headlong plunge in the Greens’ statewide vote from the historic high of 2010. On the right, the Liberals have won their obligatory two seats, but the last is a close-run thing between the third Liberal, Palmer United Party candidate Jacqui Lambie (who unsuccessfully contested Liberal preselection for Braddon) and Clinton Mead of the Liberal Democrats. All three are between 9% and 10% at the second last exclusion, Mead having preference-harvested off a base of 2.29%, Lambie having received the Labor and Greens surplus, and the Australian Christians and Rise Up Australia feeding preferences to third Liberal candidate Sally Chandler. The high rate of below-the-line voting makes this particularly hard to pick.
Election night. Neither Labor nor Liberal appears to have the firepower to get a third member up, leaving Labor preferences to re-elect Peter Whish-Wilson. The last seat, I believe, is a toss-up between the Palmer United Party, currently projected to win the seat, and those pesky Liberal Democrats.
Decided
New South Wales
Monday. David Leyonhjelm of the Liberal Democratic Party is currently on 8.9% of the statewide vote, which is almost certainly an accidental consequence of his party being the first listed on the huge ballot paper, and hence the first most voters encountered with the word “Liberal” in its name. The party also receives the preferences of the Democratic Labour Party, which is on a not insubstantial 1.5%. The DLP too did handily on the ballot paper draw, securing the third position out of 44 groups, and similarly owes some of its vote to those who thought they were voting for the other Labor party. A further 0.4% was funnelled to the party by the snappily named Stop the Greens, Smokers Rights and Australian Republicans, whose links to the LDP have been reviewed by Crikey’s Andrew Crook . Other micro-parties feeding Leyonhjelm preferences, either due to their general hostility to larger parties or because they hoped to be the ultimate beneficiary of the preference network, include Katter’s Australian Party, Shooters & Fishers, the Fishing & Lifestyle Party, the Christian Democatic Party, One Nation, the Sex Party, Wikileaks, the Animal Justice Party, HEMP and the Drug Law Reform Party and the Stable Population Party. Not too many of these parties’ supporters would have cast their vote with the intention of electing a party that trades in Ron Paul-style low-tax libertarianism. When combined, Leyonhjelm emerges with a 14.3% quota with at least 4% to spare, and no need for any surplus from the major parties.
Election night. Notwithstanding a sadly typical flurry of excitement based on a meaningless early projection, Pauline Hanson’s chances have been negated by the phenomenon of an accidental 8.9% vote for the Liberal Democrats. This has probably secured a result of three Coalition, two Labor and one Liberal Democrats, although the Greens would be a chance of nabbing one of the Coalition seats if they or Labor improved in late counting for some reason.
Victoria
Monday. Despite picking up a swing in Victoria, the Coalition has for the second election running failed to achieve a Senate vote sufficient to ensure a third seat. Last time this caused them to lose out on a third seat which instead went to the Democratic Labor Party. However, the DLP’s vote in Victoria was well down this time, mostly no doubt due to the proliferation of competition. Based on Antony Green’s calculator, Ricky Muir of the Australian Motoring Enthusiast Party stands to win the final spot, simply because the Coalition doesn’t have three quotas in its own right and very few parties are favouring it ahead of Muir, who fortuitously outperformed other micro-party candidates due to the way preferences were allocated. As far as I can see, the most likely scenario to thwart Muir involves him falling behind Australian Christians and the Australian Fishing and Lifestyle Party at a point where one of three must be excluded, though this would be easier to envision if Muir had to fall below two candidates rather than just one. If he does fall short, it appears that the last micro-party standing would be Family First, who would not match Muir’s preference firepower owing to the Sex Party (polling close to 2%) putting the Christian parties last. The upshot would be that Liberal incumbent Helen Kroger could get up after all, leaving the Abbott government with one less cross-bencher to worry about.
Election night. The ABC calculator currently projects a win for the Australian Motoring Enthusiasts Party off 0.52% of the vote together with two Liberal, two Labor and one Greens, but I wouldn’t stake the mortage on that. However, the Coalition has fallen short of a third quota and doesn’t get many preferences, helping to explain why the preselection stoush between second placed Scott Ryan and third placed Helen Kroger was so willing. In Kroger’s stead, the final seat would go to some or other right-wing micro-party. Unlikely to be in the hunt are the “DLP Democratic Labour Party”, whose vote from from 2.33% to (on current numbers) 0.69%. This was no doubt partly due to the greater competition for the micro-party vote, but I also suggest it was a bad idea to subtly rename themselves from “Democratic Labor Party (DLP) of Australia”, which I suggest was easier to confuse with the Australian Labor Party.
Queensland
Monday. Here at least the result is both straightforward, with the Liberal National Party winning three seats, Labor two and the other going to Glenn Lazarus of the Palmer United Party, and inoffensive on a democratic level, since a) Lazarus’s 10.3% of the vote is near enough to a full quota in his own right, and b) people were clearly voting for him on purpose.
Election night. I think you can lock in the currently projected result of three Liberal National Party, two Labor and one Glenn Lazarus of the Palmer United Party looks locked in.
South Australia
Monday. Another of the many extraordinary results was that Nick Xenophon outpolled the Labor Party in South Australia, by 25.88% to 22.78%, and finished only slightly behind the Liberal Party on 26.69%. That looks certain to limit Labor to one seat, Don Farrell’s act of altruism in conceding the top position on the ticket to Penny Wong appearing more consequential than he probably realised at the time. That leaves a decisive Labor surplus to pass on to Sarah Hanson-Young, who had wrongly been written off by many who failed to consider the possibility of Xenophon sucking up enough votes to reduce Labor to one seat. Xenophon could probably have won a seat for his running mate if he had been more ready to engage in preference deals, but very few of the minor players have favoured his running mate over Liberal incumbent Simon Birmingham. The remaining seat looks set to go to Family First, whose candidate is housing tycoon and one-time Liberal candidate Bob Day. Day polled a strong 3.77%, and the only potential roadblock on his path to victory is that he finishes only slightly ahead of the Liberal Democrats at the point where they are excluded. South Australia’s six Senate seats thus look set to be divided between five different parties.
Election night. I may need a fresh pair of eyes on this one this morning, but I think the present projection of two Liberal and one each for Labor, Nick Xenophon, the Greens and Family First is the likely outcome. The one potential disturbance I see is Count 27, where the Liberal Democrats are excluded on 3.67% only just behind 4.03% for Family First. A reversal would, I presume, give the Liberal Democrats the seat instead. Despite Xenophon’s brilliant success in scoring 1.8 quotas, I don’t believe he can secure the remaining 0.2 quotas he needs to elect his running mate. Labor’s failure to secure a second seat, as looks to have happened in Western Australia in results without historical precedent, looks likely re-elect Sarah Hanson-Young. Now recall that the Labor Party initially proposed to give Don Farrell the only winning spot on the ticket at the expense of Penny Wong.
Territories
Monday. The territories have never failed to deliver one seat each to the major parties, but Greens candidate Simon Sheikh has at the very least come extremely close to knocking off Liberal candidate Zed Seselja, the former ACT Opposition Leader making a bid for federal parliament after knocking off incumbent Gary Humphries for preselection. In the Northern Territory, there was talk that Nova Peris’s path to the Senate might be blocked by the tightness of preference flows to the indigenous rights party First Nations, but their vote was too low to put them in contention.
Election night. The Greens are making their best fist yet of winning a Senate seat in the ACT, potentially thwarting Zed Seselja’s bid to move from territory to federal politics. However, the ABC projects Zeselja holding by 34.05% to 32.62% at the final count, and my instinct is that that’s unlikely to be overturned on late counting. In the Northern Territory, the First Nations party doesn’t look like it’s going to survive the early stages of the count, thwarting a potential threat to Nova Peris’s election, which probably would have been averted anyway by a near-quota vote for Labor.
In the earlier thread Psephos said that Abbott will probably have a friendly Senate. Is that right? That was supposed to be the one thing safe from Abbott’s hands according to Rudd apologists such as Thomas Paine.
This complete mess surely has to lead to serious calls/plans for Senate voting reform.
It’s in both the majors’ interests, and (unusually) in all our interests to fix a system that throws up such random and undemocratic results so regularly.
Someone mentioned it requiring constitutional change, but I don’t believe that’s correct. There are some parameters for the Senate from the Constitution that need to be adhered to – such as the ‘nexus’ relationship between HoR seats and Senate seats, and the minimum numbers for founding States – but the actual system used to elect members can be set by an act of parliament.
And it needs to be fixed. Optional preferential for parties above the line with exhaustion and scrapping cross-party preference tickets. Optional preferences for candidates below the line with some small minimum number of preferences required (twice the number of positions up for election or something like that).
They could also go for full preferential above the line, which would make it consistent with the HoR. I will resist advocating between the two options as the optional v compulsory preferential arguments have been made time and again.
Triton, it’s a better senate for the Coalition than the pre 2014 Senate as the Coalition will have options, but they will not have outright Senate control so it will not be as good for them as the 2008-11 Senate.
I should note that the number of states where the Coalition fail to get 3 senators will also make it a larger hurdle for them to get outright control in the 2017-20 Senate. This is because for every state where they fall below 3 senators, they’ll need a state with 4 senators at the next election to get up over the majority line.
One important detail you may be missing is that the ABC modelling appears to be based only on Above The Line voting. In the ACT the Animal Justice Party bizarrely preferenced the Greens last, but their voters may have chosen different. So it remains possible that The Greens will get a Senator on AJP preferences.
Pete
The alp/greens reduced to 2 seats in nsw/qld/sa and wa had came to pass these and wa senate count looks the most interesting
Holy crap, I expected the Lib Dems to score a few percent from the donkey voters and the illiterate, but 8.9% and a Senate seat? That’s champagne comedy!
I don’t even know what their policies are – and given that their website http://ldp.org.au/ is showing “This Account Has Been Suspended”, my first attempt at finding out was thwarted.
As Jackol says, this has become a farce. The LDP getting 8% off confused Liberals in NSW, and the DLP not getting in because they changed their name to be less confusing, illustrates what is really going on. People are gaming the system, and it is not democratic.
How can Nick Xenephon get 1.8 quotas and not have two seats, while Family First may get a senator with less than a third of Xenephon’s vote?
I think the AEC also deserves some criticism. They are permitting parties to register with confusing names, and misleading names. The DLP was confusing. The LDP is confusing and misleading. They are libertarian, not liberal, and they got far fewer votes when they called themselves libertarian. They have changed their name several times before hitting upon a “winning formula”.
The motoring enthusiasts party is genuine, but also genuinely foolish. Look at their policy statements and values.
http://www.australianmotoringenthusiastparty.org.au/policies
You can understand the motoring and road ones, but after that they want less tax, smaller government, yet also good education, health, aged care and support for the disadvantaged. Nuts.
LDP are for the most part US-style libertarians (supporting freedom on both economic and personal liberty issues). They support massive tax reductions and a kind of flat tax system that gives you back money as a form of welfare if your income is below a certain amount (it’s not really enough to live on if completely unemployed though). They are pro gun rights, pro drug rights and pro same sex marriage. I’ve been told they’re a bit squeamish about “late-term” abortion but haven’t verified it yet.
Socrates@7
One of their problems in the early days was that they just appeared on the ballot as “LDP”.
Now I agree that it is confusing for them to call themselves liberal when they are libertarian but it is equally confusing for the Liberal Party to call itself liberal when it is actually conservative/populist and further from all the varied meanings of “liberal” than even the LDP. This is a massive scam of false advertising perpetrated by one of the nation’s two major parties; I’ve been tempted to create a party called the Actually Liberal Liberal Party (ALLP) in protest.
In my view if the LDP is forced to change its name then so should be the Liberal Party.
And one of the reasons the LDP changed their name was that initially their preferred name was blocked. So they called themselves the Liberty + Democracy Party.
It should of course be pointed out that if people wanted major party candidates elected in the Senate they’d vote for them. Both the majors were down this election in the Senate, although this is somewhat due to the advantageous positioning of the LDP in NSW.
I don’t think the LDP name is significantly the same as the Liberal Parth to warrant banning it. The Coalition, who seem to favour personal responsibility arguments should be arguing that it’s up to the voter to educate themselves on the parties and their position.
This Senate result is a dream-come-true for the Coalition. Do you Tony Abbott will be upset with the current NSW result estimate? Not much motivation for reform.
KB, ltep
I agree the Liberal party name is misleading too, as yes they are Tory conservatives in nature. I do not like that either. But the general point still stands. Two elections in a row we have seen people elected to the Senate based on confusion, not their own identity. At least Clive Palmer, nutter or not, was clearly identifiable. The AEC must control at better, before we blame the vote preference system.
The LNP really needs to take the Liberal Democrats to court for a name change.
ltep
[it’s a better senate for the Coalition than the pre 2014 Senate as the Coalition will have options, but they will not have outright Senate control so it will not be as good for them as the 2008-11 Senate.]
It will probably give Abbott what he wants on carbon. That was the one issue I hoped would dog him (if he could not follow through with his “pledge in blood”). If he only has to deal with right-wing nutters he’ll probably get what he wants by moving further to the right on some policies.
This is certainly an area where Rudd has failed his KPI.
Those who look at last night as some sort of bizarre victory should reflect on Labor only electing one senator in SA and possibly WA; this didn’t happen in 1966, 1975 or 1996.
The reason is because primary votes are important in the senate and Labor’s primary vote hasn’t been this bad since Scullin was being whiteanted by Lang
[LDP are for the most part US-style libertarians (supporting freedom on both economic and personal liberty issues).]
The name is doubly-misleading then, because my first thought was that they might share some common ground with the UK’s Liberal Democrats. Seems not much.
@Alasdair 14
[The LNP really needs to take the Liberal Democrats to court for a name change.]
According to Wikipedia, there was already some argy-bargy.
[In 2007, the party tried to register federally under the name “Liberal Democratic Party” but this was opposed by the Liberal Party of Australia, so the party chose to register as the “Liberty and Democracy Party”. However in 2008 the party successfully applied to the Australian Electoral Commission to change its federally registered name to “Liberal Democratic Party”]
– http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal_Democratic_Party_(Australia)
Claw
The LDP is explicitely Libertarian. The Australian Libertarian Society backs them and has members in common. Their name change history has been quite calculated. See
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal_Democratic_Party_(Australia)
Also if you read the LDP history in that same Wikipedia entry, you will see that before their name change the LDP got less than 1% of the vote. The confusion is quite tactical.
Rather than move to an optional preferential voting system, which could still lead to weird outcomes, could they not just institute a primary vote floor.
So, in order to elect a Senator your ticket must have at least x% of the primary vote/ a quota. Tickets below this % are all excluded.
[perhaps depriving him of the preferences he needs to defeat Louise Pratt at the final count]
What kind of stupid would you have to be to put Bullock ahead of anyone on a senate ticket. He doesn’t look all that well perhaps we wont have to put up with him for long.
We need some kind of reform to stop this kind of stupidity.
NSW:
The galling thing for the Libs in NSW will be that the LDP is elected on the distribution of preferences from their 3rd candidate.
The 6th elected, on my own distribution program as of 0818 this morning is the Democrats. They get across the line on the distribution of the GRN primaries.
William says above that the result could change in SA at count 27 of Antony Green’s senate calculator output because the Liberal Democrats could over take Family First.
If Family First was excluded at this point then there preferences would go to No Carbon Tax Climate Sceptics as Family First preference them before the Liberal Democrats.
After that the Liberal Democrats would be excluded with their preferences also going to No Carbon Tax Climate Sceptics.
So I do not think the Liberal Democrats would benefit from a change in the count at that point. Instead No Carbon Tax Climate Sceptics might get the seat or perhaps Xenophon number two Stirling Griff instead of Family First.
The Liberal Democrats having such an impact at this stage of the vote is only due to them increasing their vote by almost 3% probably because of the confusion surrounding their name.
No Carbon Tax Climate Sceptics are only getting 0.08% of the vote and they might not be getting a seat only because people accidentally voted for the wrong party.
NSW LDP again
While the Libs were very assiduous at pre-poll in pointing out that they were Group Y and not Group A (although I saw them get it back-to-front), all of this assiduousness seemed to vanish at the booths.
It will be interesting to see in the “vote type” results whether pre-poll and booth results for the LDP were substantially different.
Note No Carbon Tax Climate Sceptics have had an 83% decrease in their vote in SA compared to the last senate election.
Thanks Geoff, have you had much success with your program before?
What are the no carbon tax sceptics saying no to?
Sceptics or the carbon tax?
Not that I’d vote for them, but why should the Liberal Democrats change their name? They are classically liberal in all forms both socially and economically. Their policies are very similar to the Liberal Democrats in the UK. The Liberal party are not liberal at all. The “Liberal Democrats” and “Liberal party of Australia” don’t look anything alike, and anyone that confuses them shouldn’t be voting. Same as anyone that confused the “Democratic Labor party” with the “Australian Labor party”
They used to be known as just Climate Sceptics so they are climate change sceptics who are against the carbon tax. They funded the visit of Lord Monckton to Australia in 2011.
The LDP position/name fiasco is doubly odd if the Vic Senate figures are right. They have a risible 0.14% there, on overnight counting, DESPITE being 2nd on the ballot. Okay, so the Lib/Nat Vic ticket was 5th, making it perhaps easy to see the two teams in the same eyestroke, so to speak. Yet in Tassie, with a less crowded but still wide ballot, the positions were identical to Vic, and the LDP scored 2.28%. (An identical vote increase to their WA result, where again they lucked no 2 on the ballot.)
Are Victorians so much smarter than NSW folk?! Presumably there was just a tipping point/perfect storm for the Libs/Nats in NSW – being buried on a wide ballot and so far from their vote thieves.
I inveigled my wife to plug some data into SPSS. Yes, the LDP vote share and vote share increases moderately correlate to things like absolute and relative ballot position. But not in a statistically significant way – due to the Vic outlier and the small sample set (just 6 states).
Perhaps the Kevin B and Ant G’s of the world will run some regressions using more data, eg LDP votes from 2010 and earlier, but that may be messy given the elision of their name, where they dropped the extra ‘LDP’ moniker.
Perhaps the simplest solution is, besides above the line voter allocated prefs*, listing Senate parties in order of previous vote share. It’s a harsh thing to abandon random ordering but it may be the only way round the complexity/location problem that doesn’t involve mass extermination of registered parties (something moreclikely to be constitutionally suspect than doing away with below the line and one wolf options).
* With a big allowance for mistakes.
Xenophon has said this morning that Stirling Griff his running mate is only missing out on a seat because Labor preferenced Liberals ahead of him.
I had not noticed this so it appears that Labor preferences elected Bob Day and Simon Birmingham ahead of Stirling Griff.
Watching the Sunday morning commentary on likely senate there seems to be
1)Journalists who look at primary votes and don’t think through the flows
2)A few journalists and Xenaphon who have put the current numbers into Anthony Green’s senate predictor and come up with some unusual results.
No one seems to have taken into account how pre-polls and postals tend to flow, these are important when we are talking about how micro votes and the Coalition are so good at getting these votes.
Don’t know how these figures will look but basically it is state, party, percentage of ordinary vote, percentage of total votes and the difference. In summary last time Green final was up .2% from ordinary, Labor down .4% and Coalition up.3% (all the minors together averaged down .1%).
State Party OrdinaryVotes Total Dif
NSW Green 10.00% 10.29% 0.29%
QLD Green 12.21% 12.26% 0.05%
SA Green 12.06% 12.18% 0.12%
WA Green 13.15% 13.32% 0.17%
TAS Green 17.28% 17.50% 0.22%
VIC Green 13.65% 13.86% 0.20%
QLD Labor 30.17% 29.91% -0.26%
SA Labor 39.95% 39.43% -0.52%
TAS Labor 44.48% 43.91% -0.57%
VIC Labor 38.98% 38.42% -0.56%
WA Labor 30.50% 30.16% -0.34%
NSW Labor 37.44% 37.02% -0.41%
SA Coalition 37.86% 38.16% 0.30%
TAS Coalition 33.55% 33.85% 0.30%
WA Coalition 43.84% 43.76% -0.08%
QLD Coalition 41.75% 41.93% 0.18%
NSW Coalition 39.50% 39.37% -0.13%
VIC Coalition 34.80% 35.01% 0.21%
Graeme, the LDP’s vote in Victoria is so low because they failed to submit a GVT, and hence didn’t have an above-the-line box.
If the ALP misses on a second senator in SA, it will partly because of its derisory how-to-vote information. Pictures of Kevin Rudd etc but just a scanty mention of the Senate.
ifonly
The SA senate result seems quite robust to small changes in votes of various parties, but I might be wrong. Also the changes you suggest seem to support the current result. Not sure how Xenophon will do but not being a major party might suffer a bit and again that only supports the current results as far as I can tell.
Will there be any senate counting today?
Abbott could not have hoped for a better Senate. He has the Greens to help pass his PPL, and a range of others who will assist in repealing the Carbon Tax. Labor completely out of the game.
In fact I suspect he’ll first point out that Labor campaigned on terminating the Carbon Tax (accompanied by video of Rudd specifically saying this) but now won’t do it … further feeding the story that Labor say one thing before an election and another thing after an election.
If Labor won’t support terminating the Carbon Tax – meh, wait till July.
Edi, the AEC says yes.
[Abbott could not have hoped for a better Senate. ]
Wrong, he could’ve asked for outright control. The Coalition may be down one seat on their previous numbers and on controversial legislation, that they’d rather ram through, there’ll be the temptation for these new micro parties to oppose them to raise their profiles.
Still a lot of counting to go though.
LTEP – I agree it’s not Abbott’s ideal Senate, but it’s about the worst possible Senate from a progressive point of view.
The temptation will be for the micro parties to haggle over legislation. If the ALP/Greens try to vote against any legislation the micro parties will be in like Flynn to cut a deal for some dodgy agenda.
Still a long way to go between PUP and the Libs in Tas. PUP vote may very well fall in post-counting, although the Lib Dems’ position is being overstated because of BTLs. As far as I can tell that exclusion is the critical point in the whole thing. Maybe others will develop if numbers change.
It is between PUP and the Liberals though; the LDP are out of it for the win.
Heard Clive Palmer say he is winning a senate seat in WA.
I think he has no idea what he is talking about, am I wrong?
Thank you Itep for the answer, there have been a few senate updates on the website now today.
So the Liberal democrats were boxless team ‘B’ in Victoria? Thanks DWBarry, for clearing that up for a bananabender: I had to rely on the AEC team lists – can anyone point me to actual images of all Senate ballots.
What would have happened had they lodged a GVT there? Given a similar draw to Tasmania and an even bigger ballot, they might’ve scored (lucked?) 3% in Victoria…
I note they managed just 0.55% in SA last time, when positions were reversed (Libs having the favourable draw and Liberal Democrats the tail end).
Did they (Liberal Democrats) stand m/any Reps candidates? Their failure to do so likely exacerbates confusion, as people noticing the two ‘Liberals’ close together on the Reps ballot would be tipped off, assuming most people vote House first then Senate second. One could also surmise not many people actually use HTV cards for the Senate, if they go in thinking it is just a matter of plumping ‘1’ in a box…
Running the results from 2010 and 2013 (n = 10), there are fairly strong correlations between LDP vote share and these three variables – and are all clearly significant (p = 0.02 and 0.04)
* LDP vote share to raw position on ballot (ie close to front, meaning immediately easy to find reading left to right)
* LDP vote share to relative position on ballot (more useful, taking into account how long ballot was)
* LDP vote share to position relative to Liberals position (this is the clearest and strongest of the three correlations).
Edi, I think you can’t count PUP out in WA completely at this stage, but it’s looking unlikely.
Looking like the micro parties have nearly all ex-Liberal Party roots
Motorist – ex Lib, donor
NSW LDP – ex Lib, left over Howard’s gun control
FF Bob Day – ex Lib
Palmer of course a big ex Lib
X was a youngLib
This lot is Abbott’s to lose…
The WA gridiron player may appear the wackiest, but he is. Project Manager for mining services company, so could be a front for the miners.
I have had more of a look at WA and the chances of the Australian Sports Party getting elected.
They are only just surviving being excluded early in the vote going by the ABC calculations. They need to first stay ahead of No Carbon Tax Climate Sceptics so that they can Australian Voice Party preferences that first go to NCTCS.
Then they need to get above Rise Up Australia Party so that they are no excluded and get RUAP preferences.
Both of these things are very close and could change with more counting.
Then their next goal is passing the Democrats and the Australian Motoring Enthusiasts Party which might change as well but is a bit more clear than the first couple.
They then get preferences from Australia Stable Populations Party via the Democrats, AMEP, Family First, Wikileaks, Shooters and Fishers, HEMP and Animal Justice Party when HEMP is excluded, Sex Party and Australian Independents who SXP is excluded, Australian Christians and others when they are excluded, Liberal over quota preferences after the Liberals are elected on Nationals preferences and finally Liberal Democrats preferences to get them elected.
So it is a long trip to get ASP elected but if they are excluded at one of the early counts then it will change a lot.
It seems if ASP do not get the seat it is highly likely PUP will get up with the last place extremely close between Labor and Greens.
The Animal Justice Party seems to get a nice preference run if ASP is excluded early but not nearly enough to get them a seat.