Sunday, April 13
This is probably my final update, since the result is well and truly beyond doubt. On the raw votes, the ABC calculator produces a result at the final count of 194,282 (14.86%) to Linda Reynolds and 179,150 (13.71%) to Louise Pratt, and my own projection is hardly different (14.91% to 13.66%). As Antony Green points out on Twitter, Labor below-the-line votes are producing the very unusual result of the second candidate, Pratt, outpolling the first, Joe Bullock, the current numbers being 1285 to 1039 with a great many more still to be apportioned, although it seems unlikely Pratt’s lead will be overturned. A precedent for this noted by GhostWhoVotes is that Barnaby Joyce outpolled George Brandis as the respective second and first candidates of the Liberal National Party Senate ticket in Queensland in 2010, the circumstance here being that Nationals loyalists who opposed to the LNP merger expressed their displeasure below the line.
Friday morning
Antony Green and Kevin Bonham are both calling it for Linda Reynolds, and I’m not going to argue. Yesterday saw the addition of another 13,530 postals and 2034 absent votes from Brand (on top of the 1653 that had been counted there already, these being the only absent, pre-polls or provisional votes entered into the count so far), together with more rechecking. My projection now has Reynolds’ lead over Louise Pratt at the final count at 190,430 (14.57%) to 183,002 (14.00%), or 7428 votes, which is lower than yesterday because of some tinkering I’ve done with the model. Putting the raw vote into the ABC calculator, Reynolds now leads 189,988 (14.54%) to Pratt’s 183,443 (14.04%), increasing the margin to 6545 from 3407 yesterday. The postal results have been consistent with the contention that the Joe Bullock story breaking the day before the election caused a shift in support from Labor to the Greens, Labor’s postal vote (24.64%) being higher than its ordinary vote (21.83%), while the Greens are much, much lower (6.98% compared with 15.78%).
Thursday morning
The addition of 11,138 out of what should be at least 90,000 postal votes has blown a hole in Labor’s hope that votes cast earlier in the piece will be relatively favourable for them, making a Louise Pratt victory look increasingly unlikely. With numbers reported from Brand, Curtin, Durack, Hasluck and Perth, the results respectively show the Liberal vote 11.1%, 11.1%, 10.3%, 13.4% and 9.6% higher than the ordinary vote, equalling or exceeding the similarly large differentials in September. Putting the raw votes into the ABC calculator previously showed Pratt in the lead, but now Linda Reynolds holds a lead of 3407 votes (0.26), or 188,421 (14.42%) to 185,014 (14.16%).
On the model I’m using to fill the gaps in the count, Reynolds finishes 8499 (0.65%) clear with a lead of 190,963 (14.61%) to 182,474 (13.96%). For pre-polls, postals and provisionals, the model assumes parties’ vote shares will differ from ordinary votes to the same extent that they did in September, producing percentage figures which are applied to estimated totals based on declaration vote data published by the AEC (1653 absent votes were added today from Brand, but as absent votes tends to bounce around depending on where they were cast, I will continue using the aforesaid method until a large number of votes are in). For postals, the party vote shares recorded so far for each of the five electorates for which votes have been counted are extrapolated to an estimated total, likewise based on the AEC data. For electorates where results have not yet been reported, the method is the same as for pre-polls, postals and provisionals.
The Liberal margin will come down by perhaps around 3000 if Palmer United’s position improves to the extent that it doesn’t need HEMP preferences to get elected, in which case HEMP votes will be passed on to Labor at their full value rather than a much-reduced transfer value. However, the improvement in PUP’s position needed for that to happen is a not insubstantial 0.3% going on the modelled figures.
Wednesday morning
I’m not going to do serious number crunching until we start seeing pre-polls, absents and postals, but the Liberals gained at least 1500 votes on yesterday’s re-checking and the addition of special hospital results as such, Kevin Bonham putting their lead at 2504 based on the current numbers. Kevin also observes that Labor’s position might improve by “thousands of votes” depending on the arbitrary fact of whether Palmer United reaches a quota after Liberal Democrats preferences are distributed, or whether the job still needs to be finished with the subsequent exclusion of Help End Marijuana Prohibition. In the latter case, HEMP will go into the mix of votes to be distributed as the Palmer United surplus at a fraction of their value. Otherwise, their preferences will transfer at full value to their next party of preference, namely Labor. However, the odds are in favour of the Liberals on either scenario.
Tuesday morning
Rechecking and perhaps a few delayed booth results yesterday added 2161 votes in Durack, 1076 in Forrest and 152 in Hasluck, to the extremely slight advantage of Labor. The West Australian reports counting of postal votes “may get under way today”.
Monday morning
Nothing new on the counting front yesterday, which the AEC presumably devoted to very carefully transporting votes to the divisional offices where the primary vote totals will be rechecked over the coming days. Ben Raue at The Tally Room observes that “the numbers of absent, provisional and pre-poll votes have dropped to 20-33% of the 2013 levels, while the number of postal votes has increased” – which would seem to bode ill for Labor, given how heavily postal votes traditionally favour the Liberals (47.6% in September compared with 38.8% on ordinary votes).
Sunday morning
For those of you who have just joined us, the WA Senate election result looks to be two seats for the Liberals, one each for Labor, the Greens and Palmer United, and with the last seat a tussle between the third Liberal, Linda Reynolds, and number two on the Labor ticket, Senator Louise Pratt. Both major parties were well down on the primary vote to make way for a surge to the Greens and Palmer United. Scott Ludlam was handsomely re-elected off a quota in his own right, while Palmer United’s Zhenya Wang will get there with preferences from a range of sources, the most handy of which are HEMP, Shooters & Fishers and Family First. The following quick summary of the results shows the raw percentages, and how I’m projecting them to look after pre-polls, absents and postals are added. There follows projections of the race for last place as derived by plugging both raw and projected results into Antony Green’s Senate election calculator.
As I write, 38 booths out of 814 are still to report results. The only electorate where all booths have reported is Moore, where 69,323 ordinary vote have been cast compared with 72,507. This makes turnout difficult to calculate, but it seems to me to have not been as bad as some were suggesting. The number of ordinary vote cast in Moore amounts to 70.14% of enrolled voters, compared with 74.59% at the election last September. In Brand and Fremantle, which in each case have had all booths report but one, the totals are 70.6% and 69.8%, compared with 77.7% and 75.1% at the election.
Saturday
11.39pm. Back from my ice cream break to find the count at 937,396 (63.3%), with 62 out of 814 booths still to report. The latest projection puts the Liberals on 33.8% and the Nationals on 3.2%, Labor on 21.3%, the Greens on 16.0% and PUP on 12.2%. On the ABC computer, third Liberal Linda Reynolds’ lead over second Labor Louse Pratt at the final count has narrowed to 14.84% to 13.73%.
10.05pm. Count up to 661,954 (44.7%). My statewide projections are the same as Antony Green’s, so I’ll drop the metropolitan model and work off those instead from now on. I’m projecting 39.2% for Liberal, 3.4% for the Nationals, 21.1% for Labor, 16.1% for the Greens and 12.2% for Palmer United. Plugging that into the ABC calculator has third Liberal Linda Reynolds beating second Labor Louise Pratt at the last exclusion 15.1% (1.0553 quotas) to 13.49% (0.9446 quotas). Kevin Bonham and Truth Seeker think Labor are doing a little better than that: I’ve no idea about their methods, but I suspect it’s because they’re going off the raw vote totals, whereas I’m going off swings.
9.36pm. Count up to 526,235 (35.6%), Liberal projection down a shade to 2.93, Labor up to 1.57. But Labor’s position in the race for the final seat hasn’t improved since my 9.00pm update, because the Greens vote has come down slightly and reduced the size of the surplus available to Labor.
9.24pm. To explain all that in vote terms, the Greens vote is variously projected at 17% or 18%; Labor’s at a bit below 21%; Liberal at 34.5% plus Nationals at 3-4%; PUP at around 12%.
9.15pm. I have two models on the go here: the one I’ve been quoting, which extrapolates metropolitan swings across the rest of the state, and one which looks at the swings of all electorates, the problem with which is that non-metropolitan electorates should improve for Labor later in the night as bigger booths from regional cities report. But with the count now up to 367,945 (24.9%), the difference between the two seats of figures is diminishing – apart from the Greens, who are on 1.24 quota in the statewide model and 1.34 in the metropolitan-only model, and PUP are a bit higher in the former (1.18) than the latter (1.12). But both pretty much have the Coalition about 0.03 short of a third quota, and Labor on about 1.55.
9.00pm. With the same caveats applied in my 8.43pm comment, I’m now having Labor narrow the gap a little: Liberal 2.94 quotas, Labor 1.55, Greens 1.36, PUP 1.13. With the Greens surplus pretty much all going to Labor and PUP pretty much all going to Labor, the score at the final count would have Liberal winning 1.07 to 0.91, but with the numbers still certain to keep shifting around as the count progresses, and perhaps still the outside chance of both losing out to a micro-party boilover.
8.55pm. Antony observes current numbers in fact find that final vote going to Voluntary Euthanasia, but the statistical chance of that sticking would be low. Nonetheless, it should be emphasised that the final seat which I’ve been representing as a race between third Liberal and second Labor could be less predictable than that.
8.43pm. The picture isn’t getting any better for Labor as the count moves up to 121,082 (8.2%). My present projection based on metropolitan area swings has the Liberals on 2.96 quotas, Labor on 1.51, Greens on 1.36 and PUP on 1.14. That would easily get the Liberals to a third seat when the PUP surplus was distributed. Still plenty of room for caution though: the swing may be quite different outside Perth, and the swings I am calculating are derived not from booth-matching, but by extrapolating from the current electorate totals from metropolitan seats with their results from last September.
8.33pm. “Most of my modelling is based on the Perth vote”, suggets Antony, indicating my belated idea to run off the metropolitan swings gels with what he’s doing. With over 5% counted, very big transfer from Labor to Greens looking sticky.
8.23pm. Count up to 47,611, or 3.2%. Metropolitan swing projections: Coalition down 7.1%, Labor down 5.7%, Greens up 8.6%, Palmer United up 6.3%. Applying metropolitan swings to 2013 statewide results is the best rough guide I can come up with, because metropolitan booths do not have the issue with regional ones that a relationship exists between their size and their partisan tendency (i.e. these booths that are reporting early from O’Connor, Durack and Forrest and very conservative rural booths). Doing so confirms the picture noted previously, with a very close race between third Liberal and second Labor for the last seat.
8.11pm. Sam Dastyari concurring with my assessment that it’s likely Liberal 2, Labor 1, Greens 1, PUP 1, with the last seat a battle between a third Liberal and a second Labor.
8.08pm. Antony Green projecting a perilously low Labor vote, but the data available to him isn’t as good as usual and there’s still on 2.2% counted. My crude early projections for the metropolitan area are a 5.4% swing against Labor, 7.0% swing against Liberal, 6.2% towards Palmer, 9.3% towards Greens.
7.57pm. My early indications are of a 7.0% Palmer United swing in the metropolitan area, and all on the ABC News 24 are talking of a Scott Ludlam win as an accomplished fact. So you might start punting on a 2-2-1-1 result, unless Labor ends up doing badly enough that it comes in at Liberal 3, Labor 1, Greens 1, PUP 1.
7.34pm. With the count up to 5718, my PUP swing projection is now at 6.7%, which is a winning score for them. I’ll be interested to see what Antony’s next projection for them says. The lower micro-party vote is making a HEMP win look unlikely.
7.26pm. Antony Green’s data-matching off the earliest fraction of the vote – which is still a lot cruder than what he’s usually able to do – concurs with a drop in the micro-party vote.
7.18pm. Count now up to 2459. We’re at least getting evidence of a lower micro-party vote: I’m crudely projecting solid drops for parties such as the Liberal Democrats, Australian Christians and Fishing & Lifestyle.
7.11pm. To illustrate that point, an increase in the vote count to 1586 has been enough to push my PUP swing projection up to 4.0%.
7.07pm. Vote count up to 1216. The least useless of my projection figures based on the available data is the Palmer United swing, which I have at a less-than-expected 2.9%. Still pretty useless though.
7.03pm. Keep in mind that big unwieldy Senate ballot papers are slower to count than than lower house papers, so it’s to be expected progress will be slower than we’re used to.
6.56pm. Five small booths in from O’Connor, which would not even be representative of that electorate never mind the rest of the state, since they offer no insight on the larger towns. Also a booth from Pearce, for a grand total of 355 votes counted. Much talk from political operatives about a drop in turnout of about 15%, putting it in the high seventies.
6pm. Polls have closed in Western Australia’s Senate election. Absent any media commitments, I’ll be closely following the results as they come in on this post. I’m still unclear as to whether the AEC will be publishing booth results, but at the very least will be able to analyse the figures based on crude matching of reported results at the division level to the 2013 figures. Antony Green will be covering the results on ABC News 24, but I’m not exactly clear what format that will take.
CC – do you at least get the point that to systematically defraud the current system requires a significant conspiracy involving physically inserting/”adjusting”/replacing a large number of physical bits of paper.
To defraud an electronic voting system requires a clever hacker identifying a vulnerability.
The former requires many people in a conspiracy to have any tangible effect on the outcome of an election, and is thus basically guaranteed to be discovered and result in political oblivion for whoever is gaining an advantage.
The latter does not require many people to be involved and can potentially remain undiscovered.
World at Noon just now – Abetz being very nice saying that the Libs would be more than happy to do deals with PUP.
Palmer giving nothing away!
CC@897
Online voting should be an option for the “Special Hospital Teams”, like a spacial “mobile voting booth” or something so its “supervised” online voting to ensure physical security.
[but reasonable levels of security already exist.]
‘security’ is not a generic concept.
There are reasonable ways of securing end-to-end communications, which can be cracked but are unlikely to be due to the effort involved.
The threat with an electronic voting system is the wholesale and potentially very subtle manipulation of figures with no way of verifying what the original votes were. Not someone hacking into one particular person’s vote, which is the closes analogy to hacking someone’s bank account, say.
You only need to figure out a way to produce a 1-2% change, which might look exactly the same as a perfectly ordinary swing, to effectively rig a close election. Nothing in the nature of a Putin-esque 99.9% win is needed.
Basically, you need to be able to do a manual recount. Which probably leaves you with some kind of paper trail which is generated and verified by the voter as they vote.
[ I just don’t see who would invest the time and effort trying to conduct voter fraud on an electoral system. ]
Can I nominate this as the silliest post of the year so far on PB?
One thing is for certain!
Every voter who wanted to vote Loon turned up, every one Jerry, every one 😎
Three or four years ago Steve Bracks John Faulkner and Bob Carr spent months working on a review of the ALP.
They presented it the Party’s Head Office put it in a drawer and it has been there since.
To think that the only elected Senator for Labor in WA was bloody Joe Bullock is a disgrace.
The party has to make real and substantive changes to its structure and the time is now.
“who put it in a draw”
Compact Crank #899
The advantage of optional pre-printed voting is that you wouldn’t get away with cracking it.
A system that simply takes the voters numbering and prints it out (preventing double ups) gives the voter a written record before they vote. I am not saying that everyone would read their own printout. Most would read their lower house vote and enough would read their upper house to make any fraud bound to be detected.
Someone could potentially change the bar code but this isn’t used for the official count, just the count on the night so high risk and no benefit for the perp.
MTBW @ 907
Maybe Labor wanted to attract the “old vote” 😯
I just thought of another benefit of optional pre-printed voting.
The web site you go to to record your numbers could have not only a name for the party but a link to their electronic equivalent of a flier.
No longer would voters see a party “Stand Up Australia” and wonder whether they policies addressed chivalry on public transport, exercise in the home or regularly playing the national anthem.
Who would have voted for Bullock ahead of Ludlam?
Even I would have preferred Ludlam if I had of bumped my head on the way to the polling booths.
PO @905 Typical lefty comment – most on-line bank frauds are related to being able to get individual customer information and defrauding individual accounts. To defraud the bank as a whole is a completely different challenge – and time, which is money, is invested in this becaus ethe risk-reward trade off is seen as worthwhile. I am unaware of it ever succesfully occuring. With on-line voting fraud, there might be the occaisonal individual style frauds, probably no different in scale and impact to current levels of voter fraud. Systemic fraud would be much more difficult and therefore expensive and I just cannot see who would believe the risk-reward tradeoff would be worth such a massive investment.
centre
They have apparently attracted the moron vote in voting in Joe Bullock.
Does anyone know what union Joe belongs to?
Please don’t tell me it was the AWU!
centre
They have apparently attracted the moron vote in voting in Joe Bullock.
Does anyone know what union Joe belongs to?
Please don’t tell me it was the AWU!
Centre @912 – about 22% of the population – which I believe we can now set as the rusted on base for the ALP.
SDA
You clearly have no idea what you’re talking about.
CC
Is it really the SDA? That would suit him better than the AWU.
CC
Is it really the SDA? That would suit him better than the AWU.
Crank
Yep, lots of Labor left would have voted Greens.
Apologies for the double posts!
I am going out to buy a new mouse shortly.
Centre
Agree with you on that Ludlam was very impressive.
[ Systemic fraud would be much more difficult and therefore expensive and I just cannot see who would believe the risk-reward tradeoff would be worth such a massive investment. ]
I assume you are excluding every elected government and every political party in every country in the world, plus any media organizations, lobbyists, think-tanks, large corporations, terrorist organization, criminal gang or religious organization?
Actually, even on that basis I would still disagree with your assessment.
Yes, Bullock is from the SDA, who can always be relied on to provide such wonderful Labor candidates.
Crank
But you have to be seriously fair.
Abbott had a shocker!
Who did worse, the LNP or the ALP?
It depends on who loses the seat.
I am not going to buy into the higher percentage fall in the Liberal vote because Labor were coming off a low base.
Whoever loses the sat – loses the election 😎 no spin 😯
Ludlam wasn’t impressive. The swing is a combination by-election effect and the shark issue. Watch the vote collapse back to 10% next real election.
What was impressive was Kroger ripping Ludlam a new one on national TV on Saturday night.
Centre @926 Disagree. it wasn’t a “shocker” given the average swing against Governments is about what occurred and that the swing ended up with PUP who will support Abbott’s key policy issues. I’m happy to say it would have been preferable for the LNP to have done better but I’m unsuprised and unconcerned.
I’d much rather be Abbott than Shorten right now.
I don’t see any interviews of LNP Politicians and Pundits saying how terrible it was for Abbott, unlike the ALP openly admitting how bad it was for them.
Crank, wrong on both counts I’d say;
1) the Greens will fall back to 9.5% or less in WA in a fair dinkum election, and
2) no, Kroger was abusive to Ludlam and Ludlam put Kroger away in the most impression fashion that I have ever seen.
Ludlam didn’t take any sh!t. If only he could see the light of normality 😈
Yes, Kroger really showed that Ludlam character what for! Imagine a lowly TV host with control over an interview having the courage and decency to spout a lot of partisan crap. I’m glad Kroger has the telepathic power to work out what was going on in the minds of most of the people who watched the youtube footage of Ludlam’s speech.
Crank
Fair enough. But whoever loses that extra seat, loses the election.
Shorten is more favoured to lose it, so don’t wimp it and agree!
7.3% swing against the government
Ludlum wasn’t impressive! ROFL
Centre @931
I don’t see it as a win-lose scenario. All it is a alteration of the number of Independents the LNo have to drag over the line with them. If LNP gets the third seat it is two less independents needed to get over the line.
WWP
Well I think he was in that Kroger interview, as much as I don’t like to admit it.
Whether ludlums very impressive result is because of his YouTube and campaign and how much it was Labors bad campaign he has shown the (lack of) brown factor can be overcome.
Crank
I the Libs lose that third seat they have lost the election. Really the LNP vote was smashed.
Still, although Labor percentage fall was less, they were coming off a low base.
I’d call it that whoever loses that extra seat loses the election.
Why are you wimping it, Shorten is more favoured to lose it 😉
[What was impressive was Kroger ripping Ludlam a new one on national TV on Saturday night.]
Remind me… when was Kroger elected to anything?
Step 1 read link
http://gizmodo.com/200693/how-to-steal-an-election-with-a-diebold-machine/all
Step 2 check out Diebold [or any company likely to be ‘selected’ to provide e-voting systems]
Step 3
Resolve to NEVER allow electronic voting.
The physical attendence at the polls, the manual counting of pencilled ballot papers all make it a personal and community event. It promotes a personal link with our government and goes a long way to binding our society together. It is the one thing we have in common and do as a common group.
To retreat to electronic voting without attending a pollbooth would be a retrograde social step.
To vote via computer at the booths would be both horrendously expensive and a security nightmare. Such a system was part of the illegitimate presidency of GTWB.
The best security is pencil, paper and manual scrutineer-ed counts.
Electronic voting should only be available to people whose disabilities do not allow them to use a pencil and paper. They should be able to electronically fill in a ballot paper, even by voice recognition, which is displayed for them to see before automatically being dropped in a polling box and a different format paper with their vote on it printed for them to take away.
These to be counted as usual.
I agree with you Puff!
Apparently Campbell Newman has been caught up in the AWH scandal.
Here is an option for electronic voting –
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-26847432
Critique away.
I have no confidence in Internet voting. There must be physical evidence that can be checked by ordinary people.
And Mickey Rooney has passed away at age ninety three.
CC you are kidding yourself. The Greens ran a great campaign in WA that swung votes, kicked off by the speech which clearly hit the mark, followed through in the campaign itself. Some great numbers across Perth. It is now up to us to build on this momentum in WA and I believe we have a great opportunity to do that. Plus, I am sure that every time Bullock opens his mouth, the Green vote will go up! :devil:
matt31 – I recommend you prepare yourself to be sorely dissappointed at the next real election when the Greens vote will crash back below 10%.
Crikey has a padlocked article which I can’t access which says:
[The Greens, who outspent Labor and the Coalition, were big winners,..]
Is this true?
The spending part not the winning.
“Given that it was a rerun – I think the Court erred in allowing any new candidates. The only thing that should have been allowed was withdrawal of previous candidates”
The Court only has power to declare an election failed – not to meddle in what follows. I suppose Parliament could overturn centuries of precedent and make such a rule for those v.rare cases where elections fail due to official error. But then you’d be open to candidates dying, getting sick or being paid not to stand, and that party/their supporters being robbed of choice.
Fredex, estimates quoted in this SMH report put the Greens’ spend on television advertising at $114,000 compared with $68,000 for Labor and $53,000 for Liberal.
http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/palmer-spends-to-the-end-in-wa-20140403-zqq9q.html
Objectively there’s only one winner of this circus: the WA Greens.
They didn’t get up on the original count, they argued for the recount (which was granted), notionally slithered over the line on the recount, were on the right side of the court argument (with the AEC) and then blitzed the re-election. Even Palmer did no better than the original result, and at a vast personal expense, of which the public funding will be a small portion. What was the Greens’ campaign cost? They’ll reap about $350k in public funding and said they raised over $100k in donations partly off Ludlam’s splenetic speech.