Senate call of the board

Senate results sliced and diced as the final determinations are reached, starting with the first two: Tasmania and the Northern Territory.

The first two Senate results were determined today, for Tasmania and the Northern Territory. No further results will be decided until at least next week, with the possibility of some having to wait until a week subsequently. This post will review the results as they emerge.

Western Australia (October 2)

The one we’ve all been waiting for: it’s Louise Pratt and PUP, rather than Scott Ludlam and Sports, possibly pending an unprecedented Senate recount. 1. David Johnston (Liberal); 2. Joe Bullock (Labor); 3. Michaelia Cash (Liberal); 4. Linda Reynolds (Liberal); 5. Zhenya Wang (PUP); 6. Louise Pratt (Labor).

The result was decided by a difference of just 14 votes, that being the margin at the key point of the count between Shooters & Fishers (23,515) and Australian Christians (23,501). Going on the ABC computer projection, the margin at that point in the count was 23,395 for Shooters & Fishers against 22,967 for Australian Christians. So below-the-line votes cost van Burgel 534 vote and Bow 120 – not quite enough to make the difference. Had Shooters & Fishers dropped out, their preferences would have gone to the Australian Sports Party, sustaining them at a point in the count where they would otherwise have been excluded. There would then have come a later point in the count where the Palmer United Party would have been excluded on account of being behind the Sports Party, and their preferences would have flowed to the Greens giving Ludlam the seat at the expense of Pratt.

New South Wales (October 2)

As anticipated, 1. Marise Payne (Liberal), 2. Bob Carr (Labor), 3. John Williams (Nationals), 4. Doug Cameron (Labor), 5. David Leyonhjelm (LDP); 6. Arthur Sinodinos (Liberal).

Queensland (October 2)

No surprises here either, except that it’s come sooner than anticipated. 1. Ian Macdonald (LNP), 2. Chris Ketter (Labor), 3. James McGrath (LNP), 4. Claire Moore (Labor), 5. Glenn Lazarus (PUP) & 6. Matt Canavan (LNP).

Victoria (October 1)

1. Mitch Fifield (Liberal), 2. Gavin Marshall (Labor), 3. Scott Ryan (Liberal), 4. Jacinta Collins (Labor), 5. Janet Rice (Greens); 6. Ricky Muir (Australian Motoring Enthusiasts Party).

Also confirmed today, and also in line with what all models were projecting.

South Australia (October 1)

1. Cory Bernardi (Liberal); 2. Nick Xenophon; 3. Penny Wong (Labor); 4. Sarah Hanson-Young (Greens); 5. Bob Day (Family First); 6. Simon Birmingham (Liberal).

Confirmed today, with no surprises. More to follow.

Australian Capital Territory (October 1)

1. Kate Lundy (Labor); 2. Zed Seselja (Liberal).

Confirmed this morning. No surprises here.

Tasmania

1. Richard Colbeck (Liberal); 2. Carol Brown (Labor); 3. David Bushby (Liberal); 4. Catryna Bilyk (Labor); 5. Peter Whish-Wilson (Greens); 6. Jacqui Lambie (Palmer United).

Liberal and Labor both scored a clean two quotas off the primary vote (2.63 and 2.30 respectively), with Labor’s surplus enough to ensure election for Peter Whish-Wilson (0.82) after the exclusion of the third Labor candidate, Lin Thorp. The race for the final seat ended up a three-way contest between the ultimately successful Jacqui Lambie of the Palmer United Party, third Liberal candidate Sally Chandler, and Robbie Swan of the Sex Party. The ABC calculator had been giving it to Swan because a strong performance on preferences, including from some unlikely sources, would have helped him stay ahead of Lin Thorp by 15,145 to 14,449 at a key point of the count. However, many of those preferences were perversely to come from conservative parties (Shooters and Fishers, Country Alliance, Australian Fishing and Lifestyle Party) whose supporters were not of a mind to direct preferences to the Sex Party consciously (UPDATE: Kevin Bonham in comments points out the Sex Party in fact got more below-the-line preferences than Labor from Shooters and Fishers voters – however, on the ABC calculator projection they were getting all of them). That caused 653 below-the-line votes for those parties to leak away, while below-the-line votes gave Thorp a net gain of 287. The closure of the gap meant the exclusion of Swan, followed by the exclusion of Thorp and the election of Whish-Wilson. At this stage, Jacqui Lambie emerged with a 31,142-29,866 vote lead over the Liberal Democrats, whose exclusion unlocked the flood of preferences which elected her. Had Lambie failed to stay ahead of the Liberal Democrats, her own preferences would have decided the result in favour of Chandler.

Northern Territory

1. Nigel Scullion (Country Liberal); 2. Nova Peris (Labor).

Labor finished just short of a quota with 0.9824, but would presumably have got over the line on below-the-line preferences on any scenario. Even if it were otherwise, the combinations that might have put Nova Peris in jeopardy were not in place. The one party with the potential to absorb the entire non-Labor vote was First Nations, but the combined vote for it and its immediate preference feeders amounted to only 2.18%, giving its candidate no chance of overtaking Australian Independents or Shooters and Fishers as required to keep the snowball rolling. Peris made it to a quota when Sex Party preferences were distributed, and stood to receive the 8.7% Greens vote if the count had proceeded further.

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.

308 comments on “Senate call of the board”

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  4. You need to look for inverse donkey patterns and I agree with Kevin proximity voting AND YES I work off real votes.
    The percentage is much higher than 4%

  5. WA

    I do not see Farmer supporters voting Green do you. Nor do I see Christian groups voting Green. M0ost the votes that are attributed notionally to the ALP ate the end of the count will will past though the LNP and or PUP and be reduced un value . More votes from the Green side of the ledger are likely to flow to the ALP or PUP not the Greens. The issue Truths tables do not take into account is the increase in value and point 0f segmentation where a candidate is elected. I can not see the Greens being elcted unless Sports is back in the race. Does your analysis indicate Sport winning.

    Again all this is academic as all we have to go on is a primary below the line distribution.

    The preference data files are not available and NO ONE on this board has put forward and valid reason or justification why this data is not made available for scrutineers?

    The results of the election are not secret. This data is published as we have seen in the NT. Why is it not available during the count?

  6. [Senate results to be declared today

    Meanwhile, the AEC will declare the Senate results for Victoria, South Australia and the ACT later today.

    The Victorian and ACT results will be declared this morning while South Australia’s Senate candidates will be confirmed after lunch.

    Western Australia’s Senate race will become clearer at 1:00pm on Wednesday when the results are declared.

    Greens Senator Scott Ludlum is in danger of losing his seat, in a tight contest with Labor’s Louise Pratt, but both the Australian Sports Party and the Palmer United Party also have a chance of winning the seat.

    The WA result is so close that there will almost certainly be a recount.

    There has been no date or time set for the declaration of the New South Wales and Queensland Senate results.

    The results for Tasmania and the Northern Territory have already been declared.

    ]

  8. D@w, wouldn’t the crucial cut-off for the ALP v Greens contest for the final seat be whether Sport are elected and PUP excluded? It’s irrelevant looking at who is going to BTL for the Greens I would’ve thought. The analysis of BTL is more interesting for the Shooters and Christians contest, which is important for Sport’s chances of success.

  9. That article Sprocket is linking to doesn’t seem accurate totally given they make it look like Ludlum, Pratt, Wang and Dropulich are all directly competing for the one seat, when it’s two seats.

  10. Critical point for WA is Sport v Christians. There are 8623 full value BTLs to be distributed at this point (most of them are BTLs for left candidates) and I put the current margin at 28 votes. Close, eh?

    As for BTLs for ALP and LNP, they’ll be minimal and most of them will be reduced to Transfer values of 0.27 or 0.47. So segmentation has nothing to do with the Shooters v Christians contest.

  12. Victoria.

    The button has been pressed and the results as expected.
    Liberal 2
    ALP 2
    Greens 1
    Motorists 1

    Helen Krogger (Liberal) missed out on the last spot, By how far we can not say as the report provided does not list that informmation

    The AEC failed to provide a detailed printout of the results other then a list of candidates elected showing the order of election

    There was a strange situation where the computer reported a number of ties in count one. (Primary distribution)

    No explanation given other then that is the way the system is.

    One would have thought that ties would only occur at the point of exclusion. IN count one surpluses have not been distributed.

    The lack of openness and transparency in the count was obvious. We are told that the AEC will publish the preference data files but they could not say when. I guess they need to clean up the data to fit the outcome…

    There will be a number of issues raised not the least the need for the source code to be open sourced. One the BTL preference data is published we can analysis the data flow.

    This was not a close election and the distribution went as expected apart from the clock of secrecy.

    These issues will be raided with the JCSEM who will hopefully address the numerous flaws in the process.

  13. Itar @158

    Yes Sports is crucial to the Greens chances of winning.

    If you add up the number of BTL votes that are floating that belong to those groups that are excluded there is not much room to bridge that gap.

  14. Where are you getting your information on 162 from d@w? I can’t see anything on the AEC’s website, nor have they tweeted anything like they did for the ACT and Tasmania.

  16. D@W Are you making stuff up? AEC had advised distribution button push will not be done until 2pm. I’d hate to think you were deliberately misleading us.

  17. I attended the Victorian Pressing of the Button show. Held at 10AM today. You did not miss much. But I am amased at the lack of openness and transparency in the 0rocess. The information released and provided to scrutineers has little to desire and provides no information other than a list of who was elected. Whoever designed and approved this system should be sacked.

  22. [AEC ‏@AusElectoralCom
    @AU_Truth_Seeker There has been a delay. The distribution of preferences now happening at 2pm. Tweet shortly after that
    Retweeted by Truth Seeker ]

  24. Western Australia declaration scheduled for

    3pm Wednesday, 2 October 2013
    AEC office, 13th floor, 200 St Georges Terrace, Perth

    So when is there button press and more importantly when will the publish the BTL preference data files, Without access to this dat6a it is impossible to properly scrutinise the count.

  25. Re democracy@work present for button press.
    Based on the posts here, d@w and AEC officials all in the same room sounds like a dangerously explosive mixture.

  26. Its about exosoing the various flaws in the counting system. I note that you have failed to count QLD 2007 results although you did count Victoria 2007 after we highlighted the flaw in system that could have cost David Feeney.

  28. There were a number of issues with the way the count was undertaken. Mostly die to the lack of openness and transparency. This will form a part of my submission to the JSCEM

    The is a lot that can and must be done to improve the transparency of the way the vote is counted. Not to mention correcting the numerous flaws in the vote distribution and the calculation of surpluses.

  30. d@w, but if you didn’t constantly attack people, if you weren’t deliberately offensive, if you treated discussion of electoral systems as a matter for serious debate rather than an excuse to engage in slander and abuse, people might pay more attention to your views.

  33. if you were more open and transparent and independent we could say the same about you. I have been counting PR elections for 3 decades and know the system back to front thanks and yes I am critical and no I am not an apologist for the AEC or the VEC. And Yes I will continue to criticise the system for the flaws that you and others have allowed to persist over the years. the issue of open and transparency and publication of the preference data files has been going on since 1999. If they were available then your “dumb automated process” )Your words not mine. – I quite like it. It is more informative then the AEC report)

  34. Critical point for WA is Sport v Christians. There are 8623 full value BTLs to be distributed at this point (most of them are BTLs for left candidates) and I put the current margin at 28 votes. Close, eh?

    As for BTLs for ALP and LNP, they’ll be minimal and most of them will be reduced to Transfer values of 0.27 or 0.47. So segmentation has nothing to do with the Shooters v Christians contest.

    Where do you get this margin of 28 votes from? Shooters and fishermen are notionally higher then the Christians. It’s is because of them that Sports Party lose out

    Instead of looking at theoretical distributions you should be trying to gain access to the real data.

    The BTL drift will effect the point of segmentation and the value of the surplus, This is the unknown quantity that your tables has not taken into account. Even with a more detailed counting model applying your tables it is hard to determine this threshold. I would suspect that most of the drift would favour PUP as people tend at that stage of the count distribution preference part6ies they know more then parties they do not know. Where do you estimate Farmers vote will land at that point. What percentage will favour the remaining candidates and a contest between LDP/PUP and Shooters and Sports?

  36. WESTERN AUSTRALIA

    The Count appears to be complete

    http://vtr.aec.gov.au/SenateStateFirstPrefsByVoteType-17496-WA.htm

    All unapportioned votes have been distributed and presumably entered in to the computer database.

    It’s just a matter for the press of the button and publication of the detailed results

    Without case to the BTL file it is impossible to verify for scrutineers to the results, This has been expected to be a close election from the first day of counting.

  39. KB Not a very informative count sheet is it. Does not show the calculation of the surplus transfer value or segmentation of the count the number of ballot papers involved in each transaction. I do not know who designed this report but it would rank one of the worst I have seen.

  41. Itep: ACTSenate

    The Droop quota was 33% It’s not reflective of the electorate

    What would the result be if the quota was 50% (x/y- Pure proportional)

  44. Love to know why the AEC published two copies of the data files in the one ZIP file. I would have thought it would be better to have separated them. That’s our AEC.

  45. Is everyone else familiar with the term “vexatious complainant”?

    Responding to abuse will only invite further abuse.

    I think we should all just relax and have a slice of cake. There’s some leftover cake around here somewhere.

  48. Vic confirmed Vic Senate result: 1. Fifield (Lib), 2. Marshall (ALP), 3. Ryan (Lib), 4. Collins (ALP), 5. Rice (Greens) & Muir (Motoring)

  49. I would love to be sitting behind Senators Hanson-Young & Xenophon next time they sit together on a Canberra bound plane. No need to ask for more ice in one’s scotch or coke.

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