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”.
Steve
Of course I mean Labor and yes we are open to all who want to comment on but do you need to be such a pedant.
Raaraa@99
The overall flow has Labor gaining about 22 votes per 100 preferences in Gosford and about 18 votes per 100 preferences in The Entrance. But that includes other parties including Christian Democrats.
Wouldn’t surprise me if the flow from Greens was something like 48-12 with the rest exhausting in these seats but I don’t have a breakdown.
I’m looking at the way the absentee votes are flowing. So far I can see Gosford and The Entrance but haven’t found any others where there has been a count.
So far the Entrance has 360 valid votes that went 171 Lib, 153 Labor 36 Exhausted. Last time total absent was 6200
Gosford 1138 valid votes 500 Lib, 459 Lab, 179 Exhausted. Last time total absent 3730.
Whilst there is still silent and new to come their numbers are normally insignificant. It would seem that absentees are the only significant block left to come. If absentee votes continue to break the way they have been so far then both seats will go to the Liberals.
ifonly@103
They will only do a public count of the 2PPs for the absents in the few very close seats. The rest they will count the primaries for them but not bother reporting the 2PP until the preference distribution is done.
There is always a danger in extrapolating from absents. A parcel of absents comes from a particular polling place outside an electorate. An electorate might have some boundaries that are Labor-leaning and some that are Coalition-leaning. The absent votes from near the former will skew to Labor and those from the latter will skew Coalition.
As a result a given batch of absents isn’t always a valid sample, which is why I haven’t been using the absents so far to try to project the outcome. But I think the Liberals should increase their lead in Gosford while The Entrance is so close that anything could happen.
kevin@104
Gosford has now got a total absentee count that is 1/3rd of last time so it is probably getting to the point of being a significant sample. The Entrance whilst a small sample compared to last time is following the same pattern as nearby Gosford.
Do you know of any electorates with Absentee vote counts aside from these two…not the 2pp just the first preferences.
ifonly@105
It’s significant mainly in that it reduces the number of votes outstanding. But in a predictiveness sense, it could be just two polling places – one of which strongly favoured the Liberals and the other of which was 50:50ish. Not that the Liberals being ahead 52:48ish on absents is any real surprise compared to last time, but it’s not like having a random sample of that many votes.
No I haven’t seen primary Absent counts for other electorates yet so I suspect they are speeding up Gosford and The Entrance because they are so close.
Strathfield is another, recording 567 formal absents as such:
LIB – 210, 37.04%
LAB – 224, 39.51%
GRN – 87, 15.34%
NLT – 17, 03.00%
CDP – 29, 05.11%
Interesting difference from total electorate votes so far:
LIB – -6.44%
LAB – -2.82%
GRN – 6.58%
NLT – 0.77%
CDP – 1.90%
Looks like 55-33-3-2 is where it lands. Comfortable working majority which should be good for two terms barring major disasters during the term.
Interesting that young Clements is already unpicking the community preselections in today’s tele, more centralism less democracy in the democratic centralism.
Peter Jones (NLT) just interviewed on RN.
1. He is being bankrolled by some very rich individuals (many with ties to the Liberals)
2. The results of the LC election will be challenged because I elect initially left NLT off and a new election will be ordered unless “the judge is on the take or Crystal Meth”
55-33-5 is spookly identical to the ALP wins in 1999 and 2003 which were considered, at the time, to be right royal thrashings.
Peter Jones presumably is oblivious to the idea that whatever you say may make it into evidence before said judge.
The NLT hasn’t got much chance of a challenge. They were left off the top of the ballot paper when 19,000 votes were cast. For starters, a challenge would only be possible if the 19,000 would have changed the result and then you would have to argue about the potential that all 19,000 were for NLT.
At present the Electoral commission is only showing the above the line vote (about 92% of the total). If you take the current displayed percentage and divide by 92 and multiply by 100 you get an idea of likely total percentage of FP.
NLT is on .39 of a quota and the libs have the candidate above them with 9.58 of a quota. The difference of .2 of a quota is about 30,000 votes. Preference flows will move these FP numbers around but can’t see the 19,000 being enough to push them above the Libs.
The 19,000 number won’t be relevant. We know that the party got less than 2% across the state. It presumably got less than 2% amongst all the other iVotes across the state. The votes by party in the 19,000 and amongst all iVotes can be easily compared as the Commission would be able to identify them.
To argue before a judge that those 19,000 votes amongst five million would see the party poll so much better just isn’t going to carry weight.
2% of 19,000 is 380. Unless the final seat comes down to fewer than a thousand votes, the case would be very weak. The possibility of getting a costs order could discourage an application.
Given what appears to be NLT’s parlous financial position, the Electoral Commission may seek costs of any court case be secured.
Anyway, the parties that didn’t have the boxes were Animal Justice and Outdoor Recreation. The No Tax Party was not disadvantaged by the error.
So did the NLT candidate say on RN that he was paying for his booth workers with money from property developers? That’s what the SMH said. Isn’t that illegal in NSW? Has he just incriminated himself? Somebody help me understand how that is allowed.
If it’s micro-close (like, say, five votes) NLT might try arguing that some voters who would have otherwise voted Outdoor Recreation instead voted Liberal above the line thus disadvantaging NLT. I’m not even sure they’d get anywhere with that but that’s the only way they might challenge successfully.
Note that Ben Raue is projecting the Coalition vote to come down a long way on absents – http://www.tallyroom.com.au/26166 – such that it could still be very close between the Coalition, NLT and Animal Justice, especially with AJP being likely to get some kind of boost from Green preferences. But I agree with Antony that the margin of litigation is likely to be hundreds for AJP rather than 19,000.
114 & 116
It is not just the primary vote that the lack of an above the line box can stop votes with because New South Wales have above the line preferencing. This is especially an issue with the Animal Justice Party (AJP) because the Greens are directing preferences to them and so more than the AJP primary needs to be counted there. It would also be a potential issue if the ALP were needing the Green preferences because some voters may have missed a preference in the sequence because of the missing box and thus had their vote exhaust earlier than they intended.
ALP back in front in Gosford
shellbell@120
Yes, off the back of an increased number of new enrolment votes, which I expect there won’t be any more of.
Kevin
Has East Hills been finalised?
MTBW
Libs are 600-700 ahead and it is not on the scale as a doubtful seat
shellbell
Thank you but bugger!
shellbell
I have the feeling there will be more to come on East Hills with friends like Michael Finnane and Phil Boulten I would not be surprised to see an investigation into the games the Libs played as Cameron referred to early in the campaign.
Any upper house updates ? abc news triumphantly bleated a few minutes ago libs/nats 10 legislative council seats – gee that’s good news for NSW. But if that’s the case then its effectively a case of children in the lolly shop. Wish us luck please mr charisma is not his dad, and he has ugly cohorts.
Keyman #126 Yes it will almost certainly be 10 Coalition, 7 Labor, 2 Green, 1 Christian and 1 Shooters. So the Coalition has 21 out of 42. If a Coalition member takes the presidency they would still need one other to support. Fred Nile is the Christian and has been in parliament since 1981. He may well be interested in the presidency which as you suggest would give them a majority.
Still life in the Legislative Council count according to projections of the Coalition vote coming down as more absent votes are included. If the Coalition lead comes down to something really insubstantial the AJP might threaten them on preferences. But it’s currently at .2 of a quota, ie nearly 1%. I’ll be surprised if that closes down.
The CDP will have two seats so the result of the final seat does not affect the CDP and Shooters each being able to pass Coalition bills by themselves.
Lismore’s starting to look a bit over with the available info on scrutineering flows. Nats should retain it:
http://kevinbonham.blogspot.com.au/2015/03/new-south-wales-postcount-lismore.html
NSW Labor twitter feed reporting that they have won Gosford by 76 votes. Unable to find any official confirmation but it’s possible it’s all done as the NSW legislation only allows four days for postal votes.
The ALP looks to have only won 3 seats on swings of >6.8% despite the massive correction expected this election after the rout last election.
Lets assume it ends up being 55 (Gosford Lib and The Entrance ALP).
The LNP would need to lose 9 seats to lose government in their own right in 2019 (although they could still form minority government with this outcome). There are 16 seats on <10%.
The first 9 seats would be:
Gosford 0.1%
East Hills 1.1%
Upper Hunter 1.9%
Lismore 2.0% (vs. Greens)
Monaro 2.4%
Coogee 2.9%
Tweed 3.1%
Penrith 6.2%
Holsworthy 7.0%
But to win government in their own right, the ALP would need 14 seats. So they would need 5 of these (they only won 3 this time):
Oatley 7.1%
Kiama 8.6%
Myall Lakes 8.9%
Seven Hills 8.9%
Terrigal 9.5%
South Coast 9.7%
Mulgoa 9.9%
So I make it 7% swing + for minority government
And a 9.5% swing to form government outright
Looking like a 12 year government at the very least, what with rivers of gold to splash around in the next 8 years…..
The Entrance ditto.
Well, thats interesting!
There were 12,646 formal declaration votes in The Entrance in 2011 and only 4954 listed on the NSW Electoral commission webpage. Given the LNP won them 60% to 40% in 2011 I was thinking The Entrance might still be in play….
Happiness@133
In 2011 prepolls were counted as dec votes. In 2015 they are not. Vast increase in prepolls and also increase in ivotes has seen a corresponding decrease in other forms of dec votes.
I’m surprised to see some updates in the results today.
Ah, well that explains it.
If you add the pre-polls to the declaration votes on the NSW EC webpage you get 12,034 which is similar (although still slightly down on) 2011.
Perhaps its all done then: 54-34-3-2?
The absent votes in Gosford finished up 1175:1174 to Liberal, having been running 52:48 to Liberal earlier. Hence my caution about projecting off absents to other absents. I was expecting about 51:49 to Liberal on absents based off last election but in the end Labor outperformed even that.
So Labor won all the Hunter and Central Coast seats except Terrigal
Docantk: Upper Hunter went to the Nats. Lake Macquarie went to Independent. Not sure if you would include Hawkesbury which went Lib
Wat r chances of a by election in East hills?
Unitary State@140
Can’t see it happening unless it can be proven that the incumbent was behind the smear. Otherwise candidates who were losing close races could arrange to have smear campaigns run against them to try to get a by-election.
The election results were a disaster for labor. End of story. Labor needs to grow up on the issue of power privatisation and wave it in the upper house in which case it will thankfully be unable to stop.
When people like keating, Carr, iemma, ferguson, borger and Egan are all agreeing on the merits for infrastructure of privatisation, you cannot deny the party needs to break out of its narrow minded dreamland and adopt the policies that are most productive for the state.
It is disappointing to see so many labor candidates also campaigning against forced council amalgamations. Of course the state government needs to intervene and merge them, each councillor in every tiny lga is only concerned about their own patch. Of course they are going to say no.
43 councils is not the way to run a true metropolitan entity. Sydney should have fewer than 10 councils at the very most.
What r the chances of labor overtaking the greens in Lismore and goin on to win?
We hope to get Lismore DoP done first. We expect before Wednesday CoB. Lismore is the only close district without TCP so DoP is the only real way forward.
Unitary State@143
Haven’t seen any scrutineering figures but I’d think low. They currently need to gain 393 off 2569 primaries but those include Animal Justice prefs that should favour the Greens and CDP prefs that should mostly go National or exhaust. No Land Tax will probably splatter.
If they did manage to get over the Greens it would then be very close. Labor were getting a gain rate of .54 on the night of Green and minor prefs combined.
141
Would it not be better that instead of requiring proof that the winning candidate was involved, only proof that the loosing candidate was not involved?
This would further discourage smear campaigns will still providing a barrier against self-smearing.
Tom the first and best@146
It’s impossible to prove such negatives. Even if it appeared to be done by a third party, it’s always possible the loser could have encouraged it in some way.
I’m not aware of any case where an election outcome in Australia has been overturned because of either vandalism of corflutes or unauthorised electoral material. That although both are relatively common events.
It all gets very complex when you look at Newcastle in the 2011 election.
The smear was undertaken by rogue elements in the smearee’s party, without her participation and not to force a new election but mearly because they were on an earner fron the boganaire.
Gosford: the Two Candidate preferred has labor ahead by 58.
There are 49 postals and 101 provisionals that are in the first preference count not yet in the TPP, if these go the way the counted ones have it will favour Libs by about 30 votes I think.
The count check of first preferences booth to booth comparison +13 Other, +4 Green, +22 Lab and -2 Lib.
At a guess I’d say Labor is ahead by just under 50.
http://www.crikey.com.au/2015/04/07/what-news-corps-john-black-got-wrong-about-the-nsw-election/