Monday night
It’s looking increasingly like the Greens will win Ballina but Lismore will stay with the Nationals, while Labor appears to believe it has won Gosford and The Entrance. That suggests a final score of Coalition 54, Labor 34, Greens three and independents two.
Lismore
A commenter at Antony Green’s blog, whom I take to be Graham Askey of Help End Marijuana Prohibition, says based on his observations from scrutineering that the Greens stand to receive 65% of Labor preferences with 6% goign to the Nationals, while other minor candidates’ preferences are going 20% Greens and 30% National. This suggests a Nationals win by about 51-49. Furthermore, Nationals scrutineers reportedly put the Labor flow to the Greens quite a bit lower, at around 55%. Absent votes have been bit better for the Nationals than I was budgeting for, resulting in current primary vote totals of Nationals 42.6%, Greens 26.4% and Labor 25.6%, compared with my earlier projections of 42.2%, 26.7% and 25.6%.
Ballina
The aforementioned blog post also relates from Greens scrutineers that they are getting 63% of Labor preferences with barely over 5% going to the Nationals, which is easily enough for them to win the seat. As in Lismore, the Nationals have done better than projected on counting of absents so far, but not by so much as to disturb the general impression.
Gosford
A very strong performance by Labor on the batch of absents added on Friday has caused them to pull into the lead by 51 votes. Kevin Bonham relates that Labor tweeted on Friday that it had won by 76 votes, which is puzzling because it is not reflected in the results on the Elections NSW website.
The Entrance
Labor has claimed victory here as well, with a current lead of 145 and presumably few if any votes outstanding.
Wednesday night
In The Entrance, the first batch of absents has gone 171-153 in favour of Liberal. You would expect absents overall to be more favourable to Labor, but the counting of them tends to proceed erratically as batches from different places are added to the count. Together with other increments of votes, mostly postals, the Labor lead has worn down from 157 to 74, with a large number of outstanding absents to decide the issue. In Gosford, there were 864 absents and 196 postals added to the count, and the absents are perhaps surprising a little in failing to give Labor the fillip they needed, thus far breaking 500-459 in favour of Labor. Nothing today in Ballina, and only 191 postals in Lismore. In East Hills the Liberals lead by 768, which I’ve got coming down to 638 after plugging the gaps between the primary and two-party counts. There should be at least another 3500 absent votes to come, but clearly Labor aren’t going to get there. I’m projecting the Liberal winning margin at 0.9%.
Tuesday night
I’m still behind the eight-ball on The Entrance, which is unfortunate because Ben Raue is projecting there’s three votes in it. Will get some modelling of my own done on that tomorrow. In Lismore, the Nationals had another big fillip courtesy of the Tenterfield pre-poll booth, where they scored 797 out of 1313 formal votes (60.7%). On top of that another batch of 253 postals were roughly as favourable as those previously. The Greens’ lead over Labor has narrowed still further, from 1.04% to 0.54%, but I’m projecting final primary vote totals of 42.2% for the Nationals, 26.7% for the Greens and 25.6% for Labor, factoring in a strong performance for the Greens on absents. Only a trickle of postals were added to the count in Ballina, but here I’m projecting Nationals 36.9%, Greens 26.7% and Labor 24.9%, which still looks like a Greens win to me. In Gosford, Labor still has its nose in front by 37 thanks to a 394 gain from the 5603 votes at the Woy Woy polling booth, which all but cancel out 1922 postals which favoured the Liberals by 442. However, the trend on postals is menacing for Labor, with at least 1000 more likely to be outstanding. Against that are about 3500 outstanding absent votes to add to the small sample of 307 accounted for already, which were very strong for the Greens but otherwise only slightly favourable to Labor. Nothing new in East Hills.
Monday night
Kevin Bonham and Ben Raue are doing more and better work than me here. I don’t have time to account below for The Entrance, which still looks very close, or Gosford, where the Liberals have firmed. I should start to get on top of things from tomorrow evening. The quick takeout is that late counting has transformed the situation in Ballina and especially Lismore, and while they’re probably still to be favoured in the former, the latter is a three-way bet. The Liberals should get home in East Hills.
Lismore
The Greens (26.3%) are falling so far back on late counting in Lismore that it’s no longer clear they’ll finish second ahead of Labor (25.3%). Should Labor pull ahead, it will then be a hard-to-call race between the Nationals (41.1%) and Labor, rather than Nationals and the Greens. Antony Green observes that on election night, “the flow of Green and minor party preferences was 8% to National, 62% to Labor and 30% exhausted”. But given the later counting has much fewer Greens votes, it would probably be a bit flattering to Labor to project those totals across them. If you do it anyway, Labor end up 0.6% ahead. With respect to how preferences might flow between the Nationals and the Greens, we’re completely flying blind. For what it’s worth, Antony calculates that using the Greens are 0.7% ahead if Labor preferences happen to behave the same way as Greens ones. Today we had nearly 10,000 pre-polls added, together with 2578 iVotes and 1588 of late-reporting election day votes. The disparities between each vote type continue to astound, with the Nationals scoring 56.9% on postals, 47.1% on pre-polls, 42.4% on iVotes and 39.8% on ordinary booth votes. The Greens scored 29.2% on the day and 27.1% on iVotes, but 21.4% on pre-polls and just 13.7% on postals. The remainder of primary vote counting should be a see-saw between about 3000 absents and 2000 postals, which were respectively run heavily in favour of the Greens and the Nationals.
Ballina
All the trends noted above for Lismore apply in Ballina too, and here also they’re sufficient to place the Greens’ presumed win in doubt. But as Kevin Bonham notes, the trump for the Greens in comparison with the Lismore count is that they’re likely to score well from the preferences of independent Jeff Johnson, an ex-Greens councillor.
East Hills
There are no 2PP updates on non-booth votes, so I’m going to have to extrapolate booth vote preferences on to primary votes for late counting. The Liberals had a 352 vote lead on booth votes, and 2466 postals have added another 454 to that. Labor clawed back 135 on 5400 pre-polls, but they’re 537 in arrears all told, and the record of absents in 2011 provides no indication Labor can expect them to ride to the rescue.
Sunday night
This thread will progressively be updated over the coming week or two to follow the progress of late counting in close seats for the New South Wales election. It seems the Coalition has won a clear 52 seats, with the Liberals on 36 and the Nationals on 16, with Labor on 32, the Greens on three and independents on two (Greg Piper in Lake Macquarie and Alex Greenwich in Sydney). That leaves a fairly short roll call of four seats in doubt – the Central Coast seats of Gosford and The Entrance, where Labor respectively leads by 0.5% and 0.6%; East Hills in southern Sydney, where the Liberals are 0.6% in front after a very strong result in a seat where their existing margin was just 0.1%; and Lismore, where the flow of preferences from a 25.3% Labor vote will decide if the Greens can overhaul a primary vote deficit against the Nationals of 29.2% to 40.1%.
Due to the other distractions, Lismore was the only seat I looked at closely yesterday, as an apparent Greens win had been thrown into doubt by the counting of 886 postal votes, 56.9% of which were for the Nationals. This was 17.5% higher than their polling booth vote, compared with only an 8.2% difference in 2011. No indicative Nationals-versus-Greens preference count is being conducted in this seat – the lineball result on the ABC site is based on Antony Green’s guesstimate of likely preference flows. The NSWEC has pulled its original Nationals-versus-Labor preference count and is telling us we won’t get anything back until “the Distribution of Preferences has been completed for all Districts and candidates have been declared elected”.
Lismore
The afters tend to favour the right more than the on-the-night.
Last time the Greens got 20% on the night and only 18% of the afters. Nats got 59% on the night and 62% of the afters. Last time there were 45,666 votes in total. To get to that total this time the afters will need to be about 18,000 (up from 11,000). This suggests that for the Greens to win the Labor vote will have to break down to 60% Green, 15% Nat and 25% exhausted.
In 2011 the two Sydney seats where Labor preferences came in to play went 27% Green, 8% Lib and 65% exhausted.
DOVIF – I don’t even begin to understand the coffee analogy, and whether your are scum is a matter for you.
However, as I said, we are all forced to operate in the world we are given. That means we inevitably make compromises. But that doesn’t mean we should all just nod our heads and say we’re living in the right world.
Certainly, one of the most distasteful features of our society is the way that finance wizards, landlords, captains of industry and other wheeler-dealers are massively overcompensated for the contribution and effort they make.
Out of curiosity, would you regard Gina Reinhart as DESERVING all of the wealth that she has?
I am picking Thomas George to retain Lismore for no better reason than I was once on a commercial flight to Lismore with him and his working of the plane was awe inspiring even though I was only a fly in worker he treated me like his best mate. That sort of personal interaction and incumbency has a part to play among those who use postals and pre-polls
Thomas George is known by most in the Beltway to be the most effective and caring MPs in Parliament. He is a cracking bloke. My Nat spies started to get more confident by lunchtime yesterday, and as a sitting MP his postal vote campaign will be immeasurably stronger than the Greens. He should hold on.
In terms of the others, my present view is that the Libs win East Hills and Gosford, and the ALP wins The Entrance. That would leave it at 55/33/4. If people like Bruce Hawker thinks that means the ALP on the cusp of Government, then I’d love some of that kool aid!!
Here is a scenario for 4 years time.
Baird standing outside completed hospitals and transport links and with hard hat on in front of construction sites. He will be saying “The price of electricity from privatised poles has risen less than it has for those remain. I don’t want our country cousins to miss out on the benefits so we will privatise the remainder. We will be improving Parramatta Rd at Balmain, upgrading Lismore Hospital and free ice cream for everyone on the central coast”
The end result of this election is as I guessed it would be about two years ago, with Labor winning about 15 seats (though the Greens have shaved some of that, they are still “Left” seats), and the government losing about the same. This would have been the result under O’Farrell v Robbo or any other combination of leaders, and probably would have been the same with or without electricity as an issue.
2015 can seen really as something of a status quo election, with the Coalition coming off the unrealistic highs of 2011, and Labor winning the seats that they normally win every election (but didn’t four years ago).
The whole campaign has decidedly low-key, and I don’t think people really engaged with it that much, and in such circumstances, a moderate government (which Baird largely is) will usually get re-elected. Foley was correct to note that the state wasn’t yet ready for a Labor government, and this is reflected in the final result.
2019 is certainly winnable for Labor, as the Coalition government will then be eight years old, and electoral gravity will start to weigh on it (as it does for all governments). The Libs will certainly have all manner of shiny new infrastructure to point at during that campaign, but they won’t necessarily turn into votes.
NSW is demographically more aligned to return Labor governments (since 1941, a period of 74 years, Labor has been in power for 52 of them), with banks of seats in Newcastle, the Illawarra and south-west Sydney providing a firm base, and in 2019 they will only need to win about a dozen seats to form government. But of course, all of that is a long way away.
Hugoaugogo – can’t really agree with your analysis.
Lets look at individual seats – such as Drummoyne, Parramatta, Penrith, Riverstone, Heathcote, Holdsworthy Oatley and even Kiama. The ALP is as far off winning these (which they have always held when in Government) than they were on Friday. They need to win these seats to win Government and all of these seats will see significant infrastructure benefits from the Polls and wires lease back.
I can’t see any of them being easily won in 2019.
[2015 can seen really as something of a status quo election, with the Coalition coming off the unrealistic highs of 2011, and Labor winning the seats that they normally win every election (but didn’t four years ago).]
I don’t understand this. What does this mean from the perspective of the voters? That it was (to use our PM’s term) “absent-mindedness” to vote for O’Farrell in 2011? Or a one-off punishment? That Labor has learned its lesson and earned back a signicant proportion of its “default” vote?
Kevin one seventeen.
I have superfund money and my fund manager (evil banker) invests them for me, they invests in bhp the banks airports and agl electricity. It earns about 7% returns a year on average. Last few years has been good 15-20%. In 2008 it was down 30% which was horrific. For me to risk my own wages, which is what superfund money is, I think I should get my fair share of profit. If you think people investing so other people have jobs are scums. Feel free to donate all your superfund earnings into a charity, that way you won’t be a scum according to your own definition.
Re Lismore: there appear to be more than 10,000 votes yet to be counted. I think the only remaining question is how many of these might be absentee votes. In Tasmania, the Greens tend to get a disproportionately high percentage of the absentee votes. I wonder if Lismore is the same? If it is, the vote should remain close up to the end. But one would have to feel the Nats are in pretty good shape: the proportion of Labor preferences would need to be higher than one would imagine under OPV (the Greens would presumably be a shoo-in under full preferential voting).
If George is returned, I would feel that the odds would be pretty good for the Greens in 2019. By then, George will be 70 and might not run again: even if he does, the processes of demographic change in the region that are turning it Green will have had four more years to do their work.
mimhoff @#8. What I mean is that 2011 was an extreme outcome, a reaction against decaying and seemingly corrupt long-term government, whereas the result on Saturday was a return to normal, something that was always on the cards. And it’s my view that leadership or policies made no difference. To use your dichotomy (a somewhat false one, but I’ll run with it), 2011 was “one-off punishment”, and now normal service has resumed.
What contributors to blogs like these often forget is that the average punter isn’t much interested in politics and will tend to vote “on the “vibe”, rather than particular policies or personalities. In general, there are only two “vibes” – it’s either “time for a change”, or “not yet”. Saturday was an example of the former, but things may be different in 2019.
Cameron Murphy in a quick grab this morning on ABC saying that he is considering his options about the shenanigans played in East Hills.
ifonly@1
[The afters tend to favour the right more than the on-the-night.]
It depends on which way the electorate was swinging in the leadup to the day. In Victoria the early voting was better than on the day.
LNP appeared to have a significant swing to them in the last week, i dont think the full extent of that will be represented in early voting.
Postals are different and seem to always favor LNP because the demographic that use snail mail (old people) are also a strong demographic for LNP.
LNP 346 Ahead in East Hills with 85.2% counted.
ABS has it as ‘Likely LNP gain’ rather than ‘In doubt’ even though its closer than other “In doubt” electorates…
meher baba@10
I won’t pretend to say I know about Lismore, but with being a regional seat, I wouldn’t be surprised if the distribution around postal votes are a bit less contrasting here than in metropolitan electorates.
The Greens vote there has had a slow build up over time and did not just come in overnight.
I too am not too sure about Lismore. My gut feeling (based on nothing solid) is that the Greens will do better on Labor preferences there and in Ballina (not that Ballina is in doubt) than in the rest of the state. “Putting the Nationals last” was, from what I heard, a significant part of both parties’ campaigns. Of course, if the postals continue to be quite so pro-Nat, the situation may change.
Links to my threads:
http://kevinbonham.blogspot.com.au/2015/03/new-south-wales-decisive-win-for.html
New South Wales: Decisive Win For Coalition
General overview and analysis
http://kevinbonham.blogspot.com.au/2015/03/new-south-wales-postcount-thread.html
New South Wales: Postcount Thread
At this stage, Legislative Council, The Entrance, Gosford, East Hills
http://kevinbonham.blogspot.com.au/2015/03/new-south-wales-postcount-lismore.html
New South Wales Postcount: Lismore
Decided it deserved its own thread.
After ifonly posted a similar comment to #1 on my site I had a close look at the breakdown from 2011 and discovered that the Greens did particularly badly and the Nats particularly well on the prepolls cast then. The difference won’t be nearly as great this time as the Greens will have made a much bigger prepoll effort, but just that detail is enough to make me slightly sceptical about the Greens winning.
bug1
[ABS has it as ‘Likely LNP gain’ rather than ‘In doubt’ even though its closer than other “In doubt” electorates…]
Lord I hope that they get enough preferences to get over the line I may just say three Hail Mary’s.
http://www.crikey.com.au/2015/03/29/predictable-not-spectacular-nsw-labor-fails-to-win-back-the-heartland/ (paywalled)
[The Coalition parties say “yes”, Labor, the Greens and the Shooters and Fishers say “no”. Fred Nile’s Christian Democratic Party is potentially in favour of power privatisation, and its support will be made easier if Nile becomes the next president of the upper house on a $273,660-a-year salary.]
Is giving Fred Nile the position of the President of the Legislative Council a way to free up the vote that would be locked by the LNC if they appoint one of their own as speaker?
Sorry, I mean president @19
Tally Room coverage of Legislative Council count:
http://www.tallyroom.com.au/26153
With the current LC count from Antony Green the NLT is on .4 of a quota and Coalition on 9.49. I was concerned that the NLT might get up based on the donkey vote but then I realised that the count is the above the line votes. Typically a party gets 1-2% below the line. So the below the line vote for NLT will boost it to .404 and the Coalition will be 9.59. (approximately)
The Nationals have a huge primary lead in Ballina after the postcount votes added so far. The Greens are still second but not clearly so though they will likely pick up on absents. Need to have a closer look at this one.
Just had a look at Gosford from the NSW electoral commission. The Ivote and postals are in the first preference totals but don’t seem to be in the TPP. Interesting.
The Greens seat targeting strategy working in inner-city Sydney means that the Greens are unlikely to come third in Grayndler and they may not come third in Sydney either. They may put more effort into Richmond and Page as well.
http://kevinbonham.blogspot.com.au/2015/03/new-south-wales-postcount-ballina.html
Postcount: Ballina
Still a likely Greens win despite the Nat postcount surge but not calling it yet.
ifonly@24
ENSW updates are really slow and often the ABC has official figures well ahead of them. The catch is that in Ballina, Lismore, Wollongong the ABC two-candidate figures are not real numbers, just the ABC’s projections.
ifonly@22
The test is what they sum to. On the ENSW site they include unapportioned BTLs and also informals in the percentage total. But as far as I can tell so far the ABC’s don’t. When the BTLs are added to the ABC’s count some parties (that do well on BTLs) will go up, some (that do poorly) will go down. There won’t be that 1-2% inflation of the ABC’s figures as they currently do sum to 22 quotas.
If dubious guesses were valuable, this site would be a treasure trove.
Results updated on ABC now, gone from under 60% of vote counted to 80%, and now a comfortable Nat win against Labor by a margin of 2000 or so, 52.6 vs 47.4% 2PP. That’s quite a shift in one update isn’t it?
Besides the Cook by-election (Queensland state, date TBD) is this the last election until th Northern Territory in August 2016? The ACT isn’t until October…
ACT election October 2016 that is.
30
That depends on the leadership of the Commonwealth Parliamentary Liberal Party. An early election is likely just after or just before (if Abbott gets wind of it and decides to go to an election as PM, rather than be dumped by his own party) a leadership change.
harley stumm@30
It’s possible Labor will be second in Lismore but I don’t think the ABC knows that; an advantage could be that for Labor second at least some of the 2PP figures are official and not just estimates.
Anyway it’s slipping away from both challenging parties; I think the Nationals will retain it.
As ifonly pointed out on my site Gosford is about to have a big revision when the 2PPs from the prepolls hit the fan. Labor may well fall substantially behind.
That’s 55-33-3-2 on my reckoning. At this rate Bob Carr will be 79 when Labor returns to government in NSW.
Sorry bob will be 77 in 2023.
Antony Green on Ballina and Lismore
http://ab.co/1Dc5mwU
@ Tom, 25
The Greens may very well win Grayndler on Liberal preference leakage at the next election. Sydney is a bridge too far though, I think.
Ah thanks sprocket_
So Antony says he broke the database and the ABC results for Lismore are wrong wrong.
Ok OC the magic Six:
Hugh McDermott
Sophie Cotsis
Peter Zangari
Nick Lalich
Noreen Hay
Steve Kamper
Labor will win comfortably in sydney and grayndler whilst tanya and albo are running. Good local members. When they retire the greens will be in play. More so grayndler than sydney.
Less confident about Lismore for the Nats after reading Antony’s piece.
Not so sure good left local members can hold off Greens. Verity Firth and Penny Sharpe among Labor’s better ones, if not the best, but comprehensively thrashed just now, 60/40 on 2PP to Jenny Leong over Penny Sharpe. Maybe you can make a case that Federal Labor has more appeal to progressive voters than Obeid’s state colleagues. Maybe. If you look away from Manus Island, metadata, etc etc.
43
Grayndler had a margin of less that 5% in 2010 (the Liberals got back ahead of the Greens in 2013, so not ALP versus Greens 2CP was calculated).
ESJ – The only one of those I have heard of is Noreen (and then mainly because of the lap dance)
This may indicate that I only have a peripheral interest or it may indicate that after a nomenklatura has been in place for asignificant time, the policy of promoting the ineffectual and brain dead means that when the party is over you are left with the dregs.
@43, Albanese and Plibersek have an incumbency advantages, Sharpe and Firth did not. Also CPV hurts the Greens if Liberals don’t finish Top 2, and there’s a rising Liberal vote in Plibersek’s electorate anyway.
@ Tom, 44
I can’t imagine the margin would have been anything more than eight or nine percent.
A five percent swing of primaries from Albo to the Greens would be enough to defeat him, I should imagine.
moderate @ 7 – your Liberal bias is compromising your analysis. Your assumption that poles and wires is going to be a clean win for the government is a highly dubious prospect, assuming they even get it through the LC in the first place.
As for the seats you mentioned, Riverstone, Heathcote and Penrith recorded big swings to Labor. Seats like Holsworthy, Monaro and Mulgoa are naturally marginal seats that will go Labor if 2019 is a Labor year. Kiama, Parramatta, Oatley and East Hills are former safe Labor seats that have still not forgiven Labor’s past misdeeds.
On top of that, seats like Terrigal, Upper Hunter and South Coast all swung big to Labor on Saturday and the Coalition will have to watch its back in those seats. In particular it should be remembered that poles and wires is hugely unpopular in seats like Upper Hunter and South Coast.
Drummoyne is the one seat where genuine demographic change is turning that seat into a Liberal seat.
Also you incorrectly said that Gosford will go Liberal @ 4. Labor is 0.5% ahead with 72% counted. Labor has to be favoured to win Gosford.
Well put there Jim !
Polls and wire is only unpopular because of an “clutching at straws” dishonest scare campaign ran by the alp. When iemma and Keneally both tried to sell similar assets and half of the alp spoke out against such dishonest scare campaign. I would be surprise if it is even an issue at the next election.
While some people can be fooled, most of sydney saw straight through the scare campaign. The alp is basically non existent in Sydney atm. The is 1/2 a dozen seats where the alp won’t even be in 2pp and 10 where the alp will register less than 20% in Sydney
When some previously safe alp seats are getting big liberal majority and popular local liberal members and changing demographics. It won’t be easy for the alp the next time in Sydney.
When seats like Coogee, East hills and Oakley move further into the liberal column and seats like parramatta Penrith and ryde stay safe liberal. The alp have lots of issues and a mountain to crime. 45% 2pp is a disastrous result