State of confusion

Seeking some clarity about the federal election result? Join the club.

At the end of the evening, a surprising election result hangs in the balance, with a remarkably long list of seats still up for grabs. What looked a slightly disappointing result for the Coalition early in the evening kept getting worse as the night progressed, with a number of seats that looked okay for them early on moving Labor’s way late in the night. Anything is possible, but I would now rate a hung parliament of some kind the most likely outcome, and it’s by no means impossible that it won’t be the Coalition forming the minority government.

At the 2013 election, the Coalition won 90 seats, Labor won 55, and others won five: one each for the Greens, Palmer United and Katter’s Australian Party, and two independents. Redistributions then took place in New South Wales, which lost a seat, and Western Australia, which gained one. In New South Wales, the Labor seat of Charlton in the Hunter region was abolished, but in the resulting reorganisation, Charlton’s neighbour Paterson went from Liberal to notional to Labor, as did Dobell on the Central Coast and Barton in southern Sydney. The three notionally Labor seats are now actual Labor seats, bringing the Coalition down to 87. In Western Australia, the new seat of Burt had a notional Liberal margin of 6.0%, but Labor blew the hinges off that with a 14% swing. Now let’s take a Coalition-centric look at what happened state by state.

In New South Wales, the Coalition has lost Eden-Monaro, Macarthur, Macquarie and Lindsay, and are going down to the wire in Gilmore. That brings them down to 83, with one on the endangered list.

In Victoria, there is little or nothing in it in Labor-held Chisholm and Liberal-held Dunkley. So that brings the endangered list up to two, but also brings one on to what I will call the opportunity list (which won’t be getting any longer).

In Queensland, Labor has won Longman and, following a late-evening turnaround, Flynn. Capricornia and Herbert look better for Labor than the Coalition, but I’ll nonetheless assign them to the endangered list, along with the genuinely lineball Forde, and Dickson where Peter Dutton will probably but not definitely make it over the line. Not surprisingly, Fairfax, which Clive Palmer won in 2013, goes back to the LNP. That brings them to 82, and intensifies the headache in trying to assess the situation by making it six on the endangered list.

In Western Australia, besides the previously noted Burt, Cowan could go either way. Now we have seven on the endangered list.

In South Australia, Mayo has gone to the Nick Xenophon Team as expected, bringing the best case scenario for the Coalition down to 81. Furthermore, the endangered list gets still longer with Hindmarsh lineball; Grey looking to me like a show for the NXT, with their candidate second and the Liberal member on an unconvincing primary vote of 41.6%; Boothby a less likely but still possible gain for NXT, if their candidate overtakes Labor by doing 4.6% better than him when the 13.4% Greens-plus-others vote is split three ways on preferences. Now our endangered list blows out to ten.

Tasmania at least is neat and tidy, with a surprisingly poor result for the Liberals costing them all of the three seats they gained in 2013, with Bass going on a second consecutive double-digit swing. And Labor won the Darwin seat of Solomon in a result that bodes ill for the Country Liberal Party government at their election in late August.

That brings the Coalition down to 77, which they can hope to push up to 78 if they win Chisholm. But then there’s that intimidatingly long endangered list of ten, and while they can hope to rely on the traditional tendency of postal votes to favour them, they would need to be very lucky to make it to a majority.

As for the cross bench, Andrew Wilkie, Cathy McGowan and Bob Katter were easily re-elected; Adam Bandt retains Melbourne for the Greens, and the NXT wins Mayo; and both NXT and the Greens could gain an extra two seats each with a bit of luck (quite a lot of luck actually, in the Greens’ case).

Ultimately, the spread of possibilities for the Coalition ranges from 69 to 78, while Labor’s is only slightly weaker at 63 to 75. If Labor falls below 65, it will do so by losing seats to the Greens, who would assuredly favour them to form government.

Now for the Senate.

In New South Wales, the Coalition wins five, Labor four, the Greens one and One Nation one, with the last seat up in the air. Based on my somewhat speculative preference model, Labor gets enough preferences for their fifth candidate to compete with the Liberal Democrats for that seat, but that may be overrating the Liberal Democrats preference flow based on their strong performance from top position on the ballot paper last time. The other possibility is that it goes to the Christian Democratic Party.

In Victoria, the Coalition and Labor get to four; the Greens should make it to two; and Derryn Hinch has won a seat. The last seat is anyone’s guess, but I’m inclined to think it will be a fifth seat for the Coalition.

In Queensland, there should be five Coalition, four Labor, one Greens and Pauline Hanson, and another tough call for the last spot. The Liberal Democrats are a surprisingly good show, but I wouldn’t rule out Family First.

In South Australia, four Liberal, four Labor, three NXT, one Greens. Surprisingly, Bob Day of Family First doesn’t look like he’ll make it.

Western Australia I expect will be five Liberal, one Nationals, four Labor, two Greens. In Tasmania, five Labor, four Liberal, two Greens and Jacqui Lambie.

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.

1,544 comments on “State of confusion”

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  2. There’s no way the coalition would’ve won the election if Abbott was still leader. I don’t understand why the media are carrying on about it.

  3. In Forde, Labor ahead by 169 votes. About 9,000 postals to count.

    (These numbers from David Crowe of the GG, so assuming he is tweeting accurately)

  4. Niki Savva living in La La Land about Peter Hendy and Wyatt Roy. Of course they were punished by Conservatives in their electorates for being plotters behind the Turnbull coup.

  5. Laura Jaye is really gagging for the coalition this morning.
    Trying to gee up Dastaryi re: leadershit. Sam laughing at her.

  8. socrates @ #146 Sunday, July 3, 2016 at 9:35 am

    Bemused
    I agree on Credlin. Like Howard I do not like her, but I have to respect her authority. This is where the conservative Liberal rump’s misogyny shoots itself in the foot. They will not consider their most capable person for a leadership role if she is a woman. No Margaret Thatcher allowed for the Aussie right wing boys.

    Yes, I didn’t say she was likeable. 😛

  10. Paul Murray is spewing and just told Sam to shut up.
    Woah Murray is on fire and said to Sam “you are calling David Spiers a liar”.
    These guys on Sky are in dreamland.

  11. Briefly, that was the conventional wisdom after the WorkChoices election too. Yet here we are. The Liberals will be back with more hateful anti worker legislation next cycle, don’t doubt it for a second.

  13. patrick bateman @ #142 Sunday, July 3, 2016 at 9:33 am

    Amazing that with everything going on, there are still Labor right flogs here banging on about the evils of the Greens.
    It would be far less tedious to hear about what happened to Labor in WA, Queensland and Victoria.

    I think you are the first to raise it, but now you mention it….

  14. Don’t think the company tax cut can pass through the Senate now.

    And I think I need to take a second nap. Not sure how I can sit through Insiders.

  15. Yep!

    Peter Brent ‏@mumbletwits 13m13 minutes ago
    Masters of unsubstantiated scare campaign whingeing coz the other side finally got one right.

  19. I would now rate a hung parliament of some kind the most likely outcome

    Which I’ve been calling for weeks now, thank you very much. I hope a valuable lesson has been learned about why previous election preferences cannot be relied upon when the incumbent government has changed. Preferences bias against the incumbent, whomever it may be.

  21. wewantpaul @ #138 Sunday, July 3, 2016 at 9:31 am

    Dunno. The Libs campaigned very hard in Hasluck as well.

    Well when we have the rerun in 6 months or so if the clowns in HQ in Perth could pick a good candidate for Pearce and Hasluck there are in with a real shot of both.

    It’s not only about the candidates. It’s about the campaigns. When Labor can run large enough and long enough on-ground campaigns, it will win.

    Somehow, I doubt there will be a new election this year. The Parliament won’t meet for several weeks yet…possible..but not likely…

  30. sprocket_ @ #156 Sunday, July 3, 2016 at 9:38 am

    In Cowan, Labor ahead by 959 votes. About 5,000 postals to count.

    Thanks Sprocket. This should be enough for Anne Aly. Any absent votes will favour her, I expect.

    Anne gave a very rousing speech at the campaign party last night. She has an army of campaign workers who just love her. She will be unstoppable now. Of course, her team will soon begin to apply themselves to winning State seats in the Northern suburbs. We’ve already begun to assemble the campaigns. We will win the State election too, based on the results in the contestable north metro neighbourhoods.

  32. C@Tmomma, if you actually care about Labor you should see machine men like Feeney as the cancer on the party that they are.

  33. This election was the biggest opportunity for a decade for the Greens. High impact ‘Greens’ issues are all alive and burning. They include asylum seekers, a decades long war, SSM, smashing of the social contract, a fifth of the REEF coral rubble, rampant cruelty in the life trade, and the biggest spurt of dam building for three decades. They were polling north of 15% in the intervening three years. There was a significant swing against the Government.
    And all the Greens and Di Natale could do was increase their vote by around 1%.
    This is close to noise in electoral terms. I acknowledge that in a number of sets the Greens gained double digit primary gains.
    So, all in all, being absolutely reasonable about it, this election is a huge fail for the Greens.
    There is also no doubt at all that the Greens set out to damage Labor and that they succeeded. The corollary is that they helped Turnbull.
    Here is the damage Di Natale set out to do:
    1. He repeatedly asserted that Shorten would form a ‘multi-party’ government with the Greens. This fed straight into swingeing and extended use of the meme by Turnbull, The Australian and others. In other words, Di Natale deliberately fed electoral ammunition to Turnbull. I can understand that the Greens need to tell each other this story because, in the absence of ever being able to form government, there is no other story for the Greens.
    2. Di Natale repeatedly referred to Labor and the Coalition being the same. The pet meme was ‘Coles and Woolworths’ or ‘Colesworth’. This had sub-memes: Liberal and Labor were ‘old’ parties, parties of the past and so on and so forth.
    3. Di Natale told some fairly specific lies about Labor’s policies. He claimed, inter alia, that neither Labor nor the Liberals had said anything about the Reef, for example.
    4. By focussing primarily on Labor-held seats, the Greens forced Labor to put very scarce resources (which would better have been targeted at securing conservative marginal) to holding what should have been safe seats.
    So, it is inarguable that the Greens damage Labor.
    So, where to for the Greens?
    What is the vision, going forward?
    There can now be very little reasonable doubt that the Greens will not form government in Australia.
    This leaves the Greens, on current trajectories, with trading off occasional BOP situations (and marginal improvements on their pet issues) at the cost of generating permanent damage for Labor and, permanent (if wilfully denied) and tacit, support for the conservatives.
    As previously noted, it is hard to go past that the worst thing that ever happened for the Australian social justice and for the Australian environment is the Greens Party.

  34. The journalists self importance is taking away from any sort of professionalism it is quite sad but not surprising!

  35. Postals might differ from the 2013 election ie 5% to Coal, the polls a week out appeared to favour the ALP a little more I thought but I guess we will see.

  36. patrick bateman @ #161 Sunday, July 3, 2016 at 9:40 am

    Briefly, that was the conventional wisdom after the WorkChoices election too. Yet here we are. The Liberals will be back with more hateful anti worker legislation next cycle, don’t doubt it for a second.

    Oh, that is given. But this time they have been halted.

  39. Wow, people are actually surprised that the media is trying to stir up Labor leadership rubbish. How naive are you?

    Next time Labor is in they MUST act to break up the News Ltd monopoly and restore true editorial independence to the ABC. The current situation is a huge threat to our democracy.

  40. California does the right thing on gun control.

    Won’t be long before that ends up before the Supreme Court. Interesting approach with regulating/tracking ammo, however. Don’t think the court has ever tested whether the 2nd Amendment includes the right to buy whatever ammo you want for all the arms that you’re bearing. Would be funny if U.S. law ends up being “yes, you can buy whichever guns you want, but bullets are illegal”.

  41. Well my inclination was right that the new Senate was likely to be more unwieldy than the previous one.

  44. Oh good, Boer’s meds have worn off and we’re to be treated to another day of delirious raving about the evils of the Greens.

  49. OK, Patrick – why shouldn’t we talk about the Greens performance?

    1. They’ve gone backwards in terms of seats.

    2. Despite one of the highest ‘a pox on both your parties’ votes in living history, the Greens have virtually nothing to show for it (see 1). This is an election where the Greens should have improved their position, not weakened it.

    3. The Senate ‘reforms’ hasn’t seen – as the Greens promised – fewer RWNJ candidates elected to the Senate. Indeed, Pauline Hanson has attributed her win to the changes.

    Green commentators here have never been shy of pointing out Labor’s failings – there’s a plank in your own eye you might like to pull out.

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