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.
My Tas article now has a flowchart, albeit an ugly one:
http://kevinbonham.blogspot.com.au/2013/09/2013-federal-election-post-counting.html
PUP are struggling now; everything keeps going wrong for them. Few days ago I would have given them an 85% chance, now maybe 40%.
I still think they’re more likely than not, to be honest! They’ll be saved by massive leakage of BTLs, around 10.5% I’ve heard. So I calculate PUP ahead by 412 votes, to be precise! 🙂
WA is clearly the closest election – Wayne Dropulich leads by just 83 to 166 votes at an early count, factoring in BTLs from the Voice Party. Who would have thought Voice Party BTLs would be instrumental in shaping the Senate for 6 years????
Outrageous.
And this is 1137 votes, if you assume BTLs for the micros are 15%. Strong enough?
(Whoops, last comment was for Tasmania, regarding PUP lead over LDP, which will effectively determine the election).
It’s on my blog
http://originaltruthseeker.blogspot.com.au/
If PUP are only 412 votes ahead in Tas on current figures accounting for BTLs then they are probably busted. Not on current figures but on the figures to come.
The problem is early prepolls which have not been counted.
2010 Tas Senate:
ALP Ordinary 41.89%
ALP Absent 38.61%
ALP Provisional 43.35%
ALP Postals 41.05%
ALP Early Prepolls 32.72%
If anything like the same swing on early prepolls occurs this time then that rips as much as 1000 votes out of Labor’s position. And any loss to Labor is a loss to PUP as well. Maybe the swing on prepolls will be less because the Labor primary is so low to begin with.
I have not been following this much this week due to work.
It appears that the last seat in Tasmania could go many ways. Thank you Kevin for your informative blog post.
How about elsewhere, are there still other seats in doubt?
The WA result is still fairly up in the air I think. I’d also keep an eye on the last Victoriam seat.
On my reading the WA result is very much up in the air. When you are talking about projected margins that are so close as Truth Seeker models them, you are talking about margins that can easily change because some party or other performs better in late counting.
WA is a coin toss, with nice precision, Tas is a bit unknown as all aspects are too imprecise, SA is an outside chance of No Carbon Tax beating FF, as outlined on my blog.
truth seeker, yes your blog is very good. I went and had a look at your blog after I posted this morning, should have gone there before I posted.
Latest numbers in WA are slightly more favourable to Sports Party. Within a couple of days we’ll know if/how prepolls/absentees favour/disadvantage RUA, Voice and Sports – the three critical parties that will determine the election or otherwise of Palmer Party or the Sports Party.
Anyone looking closely at the ACT? Any chance of an upset and Simon Sheikh (GRN)getting elected? Despite a drop in Green primary it looks quite similar to the previous election. I wonder if AJP ABL votes make the difference.
The ACT Liberals have a quota in their own right and their vote is higher than 2010. Even if they fell below a quota as counting continues they have AJP preferences. Also Truthseeker calculated that the Libs have a 0.36% BTL leakage advantage based on 2010 results (ie 20% of ALP BTL voters put the Libs ahead of the Greens). There is no chance of the Greens winning the ACT senate race.
Also, I have just done a blog post on the ACT and NT Senate elections, both Seselja and Peris safe as houses. Well… Safe as upper houses!
http://originaltruthseeker.blogspot.com.au/
well the ACT Liberals are below a quota now on the AEC site. not by anything that AJP and RUA ABL preferences won’t fix for them, let alone needing ALP BTL. Interesting to see if AJP ATL would have made the difference, though.
The Sex Party are very likely to take the lead on the calculator in Tasmania within the next 24 hours – the gap’s below 100 already. There will probably be pandemonium and a massive increase in my quota of media interviews (currently running at about 2/day). People here are really fascinated by the prospect that the Sex Party might win, though I have to keep telling them it is only an outside chance as SXP are hugely exposed to BTL leakage and would need a lead of something like 1500.
People talk about the Greens targetting the ACT Lib’s Senate spot, however the ALP’s Senate vote has dropped dangerously close to a quota at 34.71%. In 2016, after preference tickets have been lodged, the Greens should target both senators. Some negative advertising about Kate Lundy might knock her vote down a couple of percent and leave an opening for the Greens.
Votes have disappeared from the Tasmanian count because of a computer or procedural glitch again – this time postals from the seat of Lyons. At least the third time the count has gone backwards in this way.
I’m rooting for the Sex Party
Updated Tas Senate now:
http://kevinbonham.blogspot.com.au/2013/09/2013-federal-election-post-counting.html
I make the gap that really matters (LDP over PUP) 1381. If they pushed the button on that gap I reckon PUP would win – the problem being that the gap is going up and probably has further to climb. LDP have c. 15K more votes to come to them than PUP on their way to that point, and LDP’s share comes mostly from micros that tend to have high BTL rates, while PUP’s preferences are 2/3rds ALP (low BTL rates) with most of the rest Green (high BTL). Voters for a bunch of micros are choosing between relatively high-profile PUP and the LDP which has no profile, has a candidate from NSW and only got so many votes because people thought it was the Liberals. I’m not sure the preferences of the LDP feeders should favour the LDP over PUP at all. If the split is level then that’s something like 2000 off the margin, perhaps more.
Just checked the ABC elections website for Tasmania and it does, in fact, now show the SEX party candidate in the sixth slot
10:58 Tuesday Sept 17. 2013
Better download some porn, hadn’t I? Any suggestions? I haven’t seen any for a while.
http://kevinbonham.blogspot.com.au/2013/09/2013-federal-election-post-counting.html
Tas Senate coverage updated again. The situation with below-the-lines is even messier than I thought, because the potential below-the-line leakage from Labor differs in value depending on which Labor candidate it comes from and a lot of BTL Labor voters were smart cookies and voted for the last two. There is also some really messy stuff with the Pirate Party getting nobbled by Inclusive Gregory.
I still can’t pick it between the Libs and PUP for the last one at this point. Also FF still not out of it, they just need to pick up their ATL by even a few hundred votes and they might do it, but they’re just not quite getting there.
Tasmanian Times has incorrectly reported that the Tasmanian count is over with the Sex Party winning. A bad case of premature ejaculation there.
Mr S @121
[Better download some porn, hadn’t I? Any suggestions? I haven’t seen any for a while.]
Deep Vote – a story about…
Let’s keep it clean, people – what happens below the line, stays below the line.
PUP have improved slightly in today’s counting with some of the Bass EPPVs (which I expect to harm them) now out of the way. Quite possible we are going to go to the button press with no real idea which of PUP and the Liberals has won the seat.
Antony Green has mad some projections, and also acknowledged some of the limitation in his ABC calculator.
http://blogs.abc.net.au/antonygreen/2013/09/update-on-tasmanian-and-wa-senate-counts.html
Sex Party are surging in late counting in Tas but at this stage with probably at most 1.2% left to throw they don’t look like getting enough of a calculator lead to overcome their BTL problem.
PUP vs Liberals still a total tossup. No idea.
I reckon PUP, but it’s only a guesstimate!
WA and NSW is where I’m focusing. WA has the classic Christians vs Shooters battle, but what is important to note is that if HEMP fall below Animal Justice, the Christians vs Shooters will not matter as Green/Sport will win anyway. Note that the AJP/HEMP margin is smaller (just 117 votes) than the Christians vs Shooters margin (183 votes). Both margins are falling. How excitement!!
Not over yet in ACT with Liberal under the quota and “tens of thousands” BTL
[The end is in sight, just, in the close contest for the ACT’s second Senate seat. The Australian Electoral Commission says the result should be known by Wednesday week.
The delay in finalising the result is due to entering tens of thousands of below-the-line ballots into the commission’s computer.
That task could be completed by the end of the next week, at the earliest, allowing the distribution of preferences to be done, but the following Monday is Family and Community Day in the ACT.
The Greens say a significant proportion of their supporters voted below the line.
Advertisement Ian Gordon, Australian Electoral Officer for the ACT, has written to all candidates about the timing of the outcome.
”A full distribution of preferences is not undertaken until the Senate fresh scrutiny is complete and all below-the-line ballot papers have been entered into our Easycount computer system in the Central Senate Scrutiny,” he told them. ”This is not expected to be completed earlier than October 1.”
Greens candidate Simon Sheikh continues to make very small gains as the counting continues, however, Liberal Zed Seselja remains well ahead on primary votes.
Labor’s Kate Lundy retains a Senate seat, despite a swing against Labor.
On Thursday afternoon the commission had counted 84.24 per cent of the vote.
Senator Lundy had 34.42 per cent of primary votes, Mr Seselja had 32.86 per cent, and Mr Sheikh had 19.50 per cent.
]
Read more: http://www.canberratimes.com.au/national/seselja-ahead-but-sheikh-gains-in-race-for-second-senate-seat-20130919-2u2ui.html#ixzz2fNsTkSwJ
Looks pretty over to me. The AJP vote and Labor BTL votes to Seselja should see him easily elected you’d think.
As for the ACT senate, they don’t seem to have counted any of the declaration votes, which is odd. But they seem to have finished counting all of the BTL votes….hence I wouldn’t have thought it could get much better than what it is now for the Greens. So I think you are right ITEP.
Kevin, you mention that the ASXP is surging late in the Tasmanian senate count. But you also mention they need a lead of a certain amount due to BTL votes. Would you be able to explain further your logic on how this plays out for the uneducated….how far do they need to be ahead of Labor and why?
Sproket: “Not over yet in ACT with Liberal under the quota and “tens of thousands” BTL” The newspapers are playing this up to sell papers. You should ignore them.
The BTL votes aren’t a mysterious force that’ll cause a surprise Greens win. The BTL votes help the Libs. The more BTLs, the more likely a Lib victory. They rely on almost no preferences to make a quota, whereas the Greens need every single non-Lib vote.
15000 votes just went missing in the ACT senate count….looks like from Fraser…..what happened? now at 79% vote counted down from 84% previously for the ACT…anyone know why? They also look like they have started to count declaration votes…..
It took Antony Green over a week to determine what we identified was going to a close call in WA
Antony Green needs to also factor in FARMER one nation’s votes. and the distortion in the way the AEC count the Senate Vote. The method of calculating the surplus Transfer value and the segmentation distribution of excluded candidates. T
Add to this the fact that the AEC is refusing to provide scrutineers with copies for the Below-the-line preference data-entry data-files and the outcome is anyone’s guess. The Senate count is not open or transparent. Without access to the data-entry file it is impossible to scrutinise the election.
There are serious issues with the lack of transparency, openness and accuracy in the counting and distribution of the senate count. the extent of the distortion in the calculation of the surplus transfer value alone can add up to the equivalent of over 10,000 votes
The system of segmentation also distorts the outcome of the election. Something Antony Green is in denial, having refused to examine and recount the Queensland 2007 Senate vote . Try recounting the QLD 2007 Senate vote by excluding all candidates except the last seven standing (3 AL, 3 LNP and 1 Grn)
Posted by:
demcracyATwork | September 20, 2013 at 08:56 PM
Had Antony Green taken time to review the Queensland 2007 Election he would have soon realised the extent of the flaw in the way the Senate vote is counted.
Re votes missing in Fraser we have had the same thing in Tasmania – a bug that now and then resets postals in some electorates to a previous state of play. Always gets fixed before too long, but very annoying.
JimS@133
The calculator shows the Sex Party about 500 ahead. However, the calculator assumes that all votes are above the line. In Labor’s case, the votes the calculator is giving it are just its own, nobody else’s. But in the Sex Party case the calculator is assuming it gets 100% of the preferences of eight parties that feed preferences to it.
However all those eight parties have significant below the line voting rates, from about 7 to over 20%, varying by party. The below the line votes will not necessarily go to the Sex Party. Indeed most of the BTLs from those parties friendly to the Sex Party won’t go to it (Sex Party might get 30-45% depending on party, a lot will go to the Greens and the rest will scatter). Also, the Sex Party did deals with a bunch of right-wing parties, and those parties’ below the lines won’t flow to it much at all, and are slightly more likely to go to Labor. So the preference flows to the Sex Party will be weaker than the calculator says, which means their position is not as strong. There are likely to be about 1400 BTL votes that they can lose (and every one that goes to Labor is a double loss in terms of the margin between the two); I’m thinking they’ll lose most of these and retain only a few hundred (net).
On the other hand, Labor will lose votes within their own ticket to leakage when their first and second candidates are elected and their fourth candidate excluded, perhaps as many as 300 all up. And one of the micros that doesn’t preference the Sex Party above the line – the Pirate Party – has nearly 500 below the lines, and the Sex Party will get quite a few of theirs.
Originally I thought the Sex Party would need a calculator gap of 1000 to beat Labor at this point. Now I think that even 700 really could do it and 900 very likely would. They’re approaching 500 now.
I have just updated my blog with analysis of WA and NSW – http://originaltruthseeker.blogspot.com.au/ Fascinating reading and late changes in votes changing election likelihoods.
Thanks Kevin for your very detailed response…will go down to the wire in Tasmania but looks like only about 3k votes left to count anyway..
Dear Australian Electoral Commission,
I request that the Electoral Commission as part of its obligations
and commitment to maintaining an open and transparent electoral
process publish progressively during the data-entry process copies
of the electronic data entry preference data files used to tabulate
the election results.
This information should be readily available and certified copies
of the data files MUST be published prior to the declaration of the
polls.
There is no legislative or overriding reason why this information
is not published on line as is the case with other electoral
results. An electronic record of the data is the same as any other
document or record.
It is fundamental that our electoral system is open and transparent
and subject to full independent scrutiny
By refusing to make this information available for scrutiny
undermines public confidence and brings the Electoral Commission
and the election itself into disrepute
JimS@139
I agree with that as about the number remaining. It looks like we are going to go to the button (prob mid this week) with three realistic contenders!
The ABC calculator now shows Wang and Pratt elected to the last two Senate spots in WA. Sports excluded at Count 23, after the Shooters and Fishers overtake the Australian Christians by 170 votes.
The WA flip of 2 seats if it survives, could be telling.
The Senate numbers will fall.
LNP 33
ALP 26
GRN 9
So LNP need 5 minors to tie, and 6 to pass legislation.
ALP/GRN need 3 to tie and therefore reject legislation.
1 x Xenephon
1 x Motorist
1 x Family First
the above are all right leaning, especially if their pet policies are recognised. This leaves LNP 3 short
2 x PUP gives them 38 (if the government agrees to kiss Clive’s backside, metaphorically speaking – and he has a big backside..)
so one of these required, a libertine and a libertarian
1 x SexParty
1 x LDP
alternatively, if PUP beats SEXP for the last Tasmanian seat, then Clive with 3 votes will be holding all the cards.
Don’t forget 1 x DLP which should fall in that first group…
Even if PUP have 2 or 3 senators – it remains to be seen whether they will in fact act as a unified force or whether they will essentially behave as independents who have little in common other than the method of entry.
We’ve certainly seen this kind of thing happen before. Remember that 11 MPs were elected from One Nation at the 1998 Qld election – how many of those made it through the whole term?
I think it’s more likely they’ll remain as a group if Palmer’s win in Fairfax stands. At least up to the next election. For the same reason, it makes more sense for the PUP politicians to strategically oppose the Abbott Government enough, to establish themselves as a legitimate protest vote for the next election.
In other words, I think analyses such as Sprocket’s above are too simplistic.
I think whether or not the presence of Prof Palmer MHR acts as a stabilising factor for the group is another thing that very much remains to be seen.
There is nothing in the Act that prevents t56eh Australian Electoral commission from providing scrutineers a copy of the electronic data-entry- preference data files. Section 273A This is not an exclusive list but the minimum.
By not providing access to this data Scrutineers are prevented from properly scrutinising the data-entry and counting of the ballot
Given that WA is such a close contest the detailed below-the-line preference data files is crucial to proper and effective scrutiny of the ballot
Jeff Pope APM
Australian Electoral Commission and State Manager for Victoria
State Executive
Victorian State Office
Further to your correspondence dated 18 September 2013
Re: Request for copies of the below the line Data-entry records recording the details and preferences in electronic format
The information requested in my previous correspondence falls within the definition of Section 273A(6) (a) of the Commonwealth Electoral Act
COMMONWEALTH ELECTORAL ACT 1918 – SECT 273A
Computerised scrutiny of votes in Senate election
…
Rights of scrutineers
(6) For proceedings under subsections (4) and (5) of this section, the requirements of paragraph 265(1)(c) are met if the scrutineers have access to:
(a) a record of the preferences on the ballot papers that have been received by the Australian Electoral Officer and whose details have been stored in the computer (including informal ballot papers, and formal ballot papers that are not sequentially numbered);…
Anthony Green’s ABC Senate calculator is producing a changed result for WA. Anthony and the rest of us here understand the limitations, but its a noteworthy shift. No Sporting types or Greenies. Palmers and Shooters instead…
WESTERN AUSTRALIA SENATE COUNT
Antony Greens ABC Senate results calculator showing ALP and PUP elected with Sprots party falling below Hemp Party
What’s interesting is that the Liberal Party ticket vote has increased in value as the count progresses. This is due to the distortions in the way the count is counted.
Luddy *Green Senate Candidate) should have paid attention to what I was saying about Queensland 2007
Their loss is the ALPs gain
The system of counting the vote is flawed. They should have address it. The Greens sat on their hands and did nothing.