Final counting latest: Herbert recount and Tasmanian Senate result

Labor ends a Herbert recount process 37 votes ahead with one more check of preference votes to go, and the Greens sneak over the line for a second Senate seat in Tasmania.

Saturday, July 30

The preference distribution process in Higgins has resulted in tiny changes, never more than one vote in either direction per polling booth, that have collectively added three votes for Labor and taken three from the Liberal National Party, increasing the Labor margin from 35 to 41. The last word from the AEC was that this would be finalised tomorrow.

In other late counting news, One Nation candidate Lynette Keehn has overtaken Labor to reach the final count in the regional Queensland seat of Maranoa. This is a feat no party candidate other than Hanson herself was able to achieve at the party’s high-water mark election of 1998. However, the Nationals-aligned Liberal National Party candidate, David Littleproud, has 49.2% of the primary vote and will easily win the seat, which is vacated by the retirement of Bruce Scott. Labor edged One Nation on the primary vote by 18.3% to 17.8%, but One Nation pulled ahead after distribution of preferences. The Greens achieved in a similar feat in Tony Abbott’s seat of Warringah, pulling ahead of Labor after trailing 14.8% to 12.2% on the primary vote, with Tony Abbott on 51.6% and independent James Mathison on 11.4%. A two-party count has now been completed in the seat, giving Abbott a winning margin over the Greens candidate of 11.6%.

In seats where non-traditional two-party outcomes were correctly anticipated by the AEC, we are now at the stage where Labor-versus-Coalition preference counts are being conducted, which will ultimately allow a national two-party preferred result to be determined. Such counts have been completed for Denison (a 15.3% margin for over Liberal) and Kennedy (a 6.9% margin for the Liberal National Party), and are in progress in the three Labor-versus-Greens seats in Victoria, Melbourne, Batman and Wills (barely started in the first case, nearly finished for the second and third).

Both factors have caused an illusory surge for Labor in the published national two-party preferred tally published by the AEC. Warringah and Maranoa are excluded from this tally for the time being, but we know the results favoured the Coalition by 52,923 to 33,743 in Warringah and 60,771 to 29,228 in Maranoa, and that these numbers will ultimately be added back into the count. Furthermore, the seats awaiting to be counted on a Coalition-versus-Labor basis are almost all conservative (Barker, Grey, Higgins, Indi, Mayo, Murray and New England), the sole exception being Grayndler. When all votes are added to the count, the Coalition should have a final two-party preferred total approaching 50.5%.

Thursday, July 28

Latest:

• The early stages of the preference distribution in Herbert, which is expected to be completed over the weekend, has resulted in Labor losing a vote at the Kelso booth and the LNP losing one at Riverside, leaving the Labor lead unchanged at 35 votes.

• I’m hearing that the button the Senate count in Western Australia will be pressed on Monday.

• Psephologists are having a field day with the publication of complete preferences for all Senate ballot papers from Tasmania, my own contribution being a paywalled Crikey article observing patterns of voter behaviour and their implications for yet-to-be-determined counts in other states. Money quote:

Particularly striking is the failure of voters to have followed how-to-vote cards, even in the case of the major parties who had the base of volunteers needed to disseminate them … fewer than one-in-ten Liberal voters chose to be guided by the party’s card — which, remarkably, recommended a sixth preference for Labor — while the share of Labor voters that did so barely even registered. It should not be presumed, however, that voters reluctant to toe the party line instead gave expression to finely calibrated rational choices. Ballot paper ordering had a substantial influence on preferences, leading to a kind of “soft” donkey voting, in which those who find their favoured party near the front end of the ballot paper tended to remain there when allocating subsequent preferences.

Part of my homework for the article included the development of this spreadsheet (note there are separate worksheets for the total result, above-the-line votes only and below-the-line votes only) which identify the frequency with which voters for each party (in rows) included each other party (in columns) in their top six. Kevin Bonham has put precise figures to the meagre rate of how-to-vote card adherence for the various parties, and David Barry has a nifty tool for exploring preference flows with greater precision than my own spreadsheet.

Wednesday, July 27: Tasmanian Senate result

The Tasmanian count ended with Richard Colbeck dropping out, and the final result being determined in favour of Nick McKim over One Nation by 141 votes. Result: 1.Abetz (Lib), 2.Urquhart (ALP), 3.Whish-Wilson (GRN), 4.Lambie (JLN), 5.Parry (Lib), 6.Polley (ALP) 7.Duniam (Lib), 8.Brown (ALP), 9.Bushby (Lib), 10.Singh (ALP), 11.Bilyk (ALP), 12.McKim (GRN).

The full distribution of preferences can be viewed here. Above-the-line votes alone were enough to elect the top three Labor (Anne Urquhart, Helen Polley, Carol Brown) and Liberal (Eric Abetz, Stephen Parry, Jonathan Duniam) candidates, and the lead candidates for the Greens (Peter Whish-Wilson) and the Jacqui Lambie Network (Jacqui Lambie) had a quota when their first preference below-the-line votes were added to the above-the-line total. That left four seats outstanding, which were not determined until the final stages of the count, which are summarised thus:

2016-07-27-tasmanian-senate-count

Richard Colbeck’s below-the-line support wasn’t quite enough to keep him ahead of One Nation’s Kate McCulloch after preferences. Colbeck began the count with 13474 votes to McCulloch’s 8641, but McCulloch was the direct beneficiary of above-the-line preferences to One Nation, whereas above-the-line preferences to the Liberals were soaked up by David Bushby, who held the place above Colbeck on the Liberal ticket. By the key point in the count, McCulloch’s vote had swollen to 18136, whereas Colbeck had to rely entirely on below-the-line preferences to reach 16918, 1218 astern of McCulloch. Colbeck’s exclusion then unlocked a flood of preferences that were easily enough to elect Bushby, but also to just push Lisa Singh over the line with a gain of 2171 – evidently she garnered substantial support even from right-of-centre below-the-line voters.

Then came the distribution of the fairly substantial Liberal surplus, from which Labor did remarkably well, gaining 4412 votes compared with 2242 for One Nation and 1269 for the Greens, with 2816 exhausting. Presumably the Liberals’ remarkable decision to recommend a sixth preference to Labor had a fair bit to do with this. However, this was not decisive, and purely influenced the size of Catryna Bilyk’s margin over Nick McKim and Kate McCulloch in taking the eleventh seat (notably, fourth-placed Bilyk was elected later in the count than sixth-placed Singh – fifth-placed John Short lost out altogether). That left the twelfth seat as a race between McKim and McCulloch that began with McKim leading by 43 votes, ahead of the distribution of Labor’s 593-vote surplus. Those votes went 234 to McKim and 136 to McCulloch with 221 exhausting, and McKim carried the day by a margin of 141.

Tuesday, July 26

The recount of the primary vote and the indicative two-party count has now been completed with the latter showing Labor 37 votes ahead, after adjustments to nine polling booths cut Labor back by 34 votes while reducing the LNP by one vote; the pre-poll count added four for the LNP and reduced Labor by three; and two was added to Labor’s total on postals. Now the count will proceed to a full distribution of preferences, beginning with the last placed Palmer United, who were pretty bold fielding a candidate given the local circumstances (he polled 316 votes, or 0.36% of the total). In theory, this should end by confirming the result of the indicative count, but the process of reviewing preference votes will surely turn up further minor anomalies. Should Labor’s win be confirmed, the Coalition is gearing up for a legal challenge based on suggestions up to 85 defence personnel stationed in the electorate were deprived of a vote because insufficient voting facilities were provided during an exercise being conducted South Australia, and 39 Townsville Hospital patients were denied a vote when they attempted to do so during the final hour of what should have been the polling period on election day. Michael Maley, a former Australian Electoral Commission official, has noted in comments that Section 367 of the Commonwealth Electoral Act would set a high bar on the defence personnel issue especially. The hospital issue could prove more problematic, depending on what the circumstances prove to have been.

Equally excitingly, it appears we are now finally to get to the business end of Senate counting, with Kevin Bonham hearing informally that the button will be pressed on the Tasmanian result tomorrow afternoon – although the AEC is being a little more circumspect publicly. The intricacies of the count have been explored in headache-inducing detail on Kevin’s blog – to cut a long story short, there look sure to be five Labor, four Liberal, one Greens and Jacqui Lambie, with the last seat up for grabs. He deems, without huge confidence, the order of likelihood for the final seat to be a second Green, a fifth Liberal, and One Nation. It appears almost certain that below-the-line votes will overturn the order of Labor’s ticket to deliver a seat to sixth-placed Lisa Singh at the expense of fifth-placed John Short. Richard Colbeck, the fifth-placed Liberal candidate, has also benefited from a backlash against his party’s ticket order, but not to the extent of overtaking fourth-placed David Bushby. However, it’s on the strength of his own votes that Colbeck will linger to the final stages of the count and leave the Liberals in the hunt for a fifth seat. The question is whether he finishes ahead of the One Nation candidate, in which case he could potentially end up ahead of the second Green, Nick McKim, if a generally right-of-centre pool of micro-parties preferences favour him with sufficient force – although it would be a tall order. If Colbeck drops out, it comes down to McKim versus One Nation, to be determined mostly by Liberal preferences, which would need to flow massively to One Nation for McKim to be defeated.

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.

237 comments on “Final counting latest: Herbert recount and Tasmanian Senate result”

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  3. It will also be interesting to see what the effective exhaustion rate of Senate preferences will be under the new Senate system, which adds another dimension of unpredictably when the proverbial button eventually gets pushed.

  4. Re Herbert. A 35 vote margin in a practical sense is a much higher hurdle to overcome in the Court of Disputed Returns than a small number. Like any other matter before a Court, the outcome will be determined by the evidence.

    Quite apart from that, the LNP talk about disputing the outcome seems to me to be a lot of bluster. Turnbull would have little to gain but a lot to lose in the event of a substantial swing to Labor eg, the catalyst for further instability.

    We will learn a lot more in coming months about whether the reelected Government is stable, or not. I am inclined to think the self preservation instinct will kick in to suppress the troublemakers, which is the benefit of a narrow majority, but it also means that Turnbull will only pursue a limited agenda. Maybe not a bad thing!

  5. I thought we would get an official result for Herbert tomorrow, but my reading of this tweet is that it won’t be declared till Friday at the earliest:
    AEC ‏@AusElectoralCom 14h
    Electoral Act next requires full distrib of prefs, prepare Wed, distrib Thurs & takes at least 2 days. Confirms final margin #ausvotes

  6. triton @ #5 Wednesday, July 27, 2016 at 10:37 am

    I thought we would get an official result for Herbert tomorrow, but my reading of this tweet is that it won’t be declared till Friday at the earliest:
    AEC ‏@AusElectoralCom 14h
    Electoral Act next requires full distrib of prefs, prepare Wed, distrib Thurs & takes at least 2 days. Confirms final margin #ausvotes

    I imagine that the difference is that scrutineers no longer have the opportunity to challenge the validity of votes. This is a purely AEC process, but could still throw up some sort of minor or (cat forbid) major error in the counting process to date.

  7. It would be highly embarrassing if a major error is discovered after two counts (though I will remain anxious till the result is declared).

    P.S. Is it cats that forbid now?

  8. Would the 124 ‘missed’ votes make a difference anyway? They could have, but they would have to split more than 2:1 in favour of the Coaltion to overturn a Labor lead of 35 votes.

    Now the 39 hospital patients would be likely to reflect the overall electorate. In fact, for them, health and Medicare would most likely be more front of mind. The 85 armed services personnel would be expected to favour the Coalition. I am sure that there would be no talk on the part of the LNP of taking the matter to the Court of Disputed Returns if it had been 85 public school teachers, for example.

    Now if the hospital patients had split close to even, the armed service people would have needed to favour the Coalition by about 3 to 1 or more to overturn the result.

  9. triton @ #7 Wednesday, July 27, 2016 at 11:35 am

    It would be highly embarrassing if a major error is discovered after two counts (though I will remain anxious till the result is declared).
    P.S. Is it cats that forbid now?

    I think dogs get it too good in the English language, just because dog is god backwards. Cats were once gods too.

  10. @ Steve – the Armed Forces were given 2 weeks to vote, 14 times as long as most people got. If they chose not to vote, they should be fined.

    The hospital votes would have needed to break roughly 92% to the Coalition to change the result. While people in hospitals tend to be old, and thus conservative, they wouldn’t have broken that strongly to the Coalition.

  11. Now the 39 hospital patients would be likely to reflect the overall electorate. In fact, for them, health and Medicare would most likely be more front of mind.

    Actually if you look at the hospital votes that have been counted so far, they favored the LNP by about 2:1. However the LNP would need more like a 9:1 margin from the 39 outstanding hospital votes to win, which seems immensely implausible.

    I think the military votes are a non-issue, as I don’t see how a protest there would make it past Section 367 of the Electoral Act. Basically it sounds like they have to prove that each disenfranchised person tried to vote but was unable to. I can see that working for the 39 hospital votes (assuming all 39 agree to give a statement to that effect?), but doesn’t seem like it would work with the military votes. Presumably the personnel knew they’d be deployed on election day, had options in terms of arranging postal/prepoll votes, and simply chose not to do so.

    Also, is it just me or are there a lot more ads than normal appearing on this page all of a sudden?

  13. Re Herbert and military personnel: if the AEC had booths set up for voting there on the day and the soldiers expected they would be able to vote on the day then the fact that they could have voted earlier or by post is irrelevant; they were entitled to rely on the facilities made available. So the question is proving that these soldiers did attempt to vote by the methods made available but were denied the opportunity to do so in a way that prevented them voting in time.

    Outsider: in my model based on preference sampling the exhaust rate for Tasmania is 3.2%. That’s the percentage of all votes cast that actually exhaust, not the percentage that could have exhausted.

  14. Malcolm was with Ewen Jones with the troops in Townsville yesterday. George has been scrutineering. Obviously the Libs mean business.

    Labor should be enrolling the young, activating Palm Islanders and sending Mike Kelly up to camp at Townsville.

    Back in 1990, when Liz Harvey lost Hawker by 17 votes, Labor did not even call for an recount.

  18. Thanks Kevin Bonham. I had a concern that the Senate exhaust rate might end up higher than your projection, so it is pleasing that most votes will end up counting, one way or another.

  25. Tasmanian Senators
    1.Abetz
    2.Urquhart
    3.Whish-Wilson
    4.Lambie
    5.Parry
    6.Polley
    7.Duniam
    8.Brown
    9.Bushby
    10.Singh
    11.Bilyk
    12.McKim #auspol

  26. @ Outsider – Exhaustion rate is likely to be highest in states that have the most parties.

    Tas, ACT and NT should have lower exhaustion rate than NSW, VIC, QLD

  27. Before the election, shock jock Hadley was repeatedly telling his listeners to “just vote 1” above the line for the Senate. I think most of his listeners are in NSW and Queensland so it would be interesting to see if he had any appreciable influence on voting patterns in those states.

  28. I wonder if they have a sort of informal pecking order in the Senate, where the order of election determines who gets the best office, the best seat in the chamber, the last slice of pizza, etc.

  29. citizen @ #27 Wednesday, July 27, 2016 at 2:22 pm

    Before the election, shock jock Hadley was repeatedly telling his listeners to “just vote 1” above the line for the Senate. I think most of his listeners are in NSW and Queensland so it would be interesting to see if he had any appreciable influence on voting patterns in those states.

    One can only hope.

  30. I wonder if they have a sort of informal pecking order in the Senate, where the order of election determines who gets the best office, the best seat in the chamber, the last slice of pizza, etc.

    Doesn’t order of election essentially determine who gets short terms vs. who gets long terms? I think the major parties use that to great effect to shaft independent and minor party candidates.

  31. It won’t happen all the time but the Tas result is a good one for people who believe in the new voting system and shows criticism of system hyped. Not much doubt that under the old system there would likely have been one more Lib/RW minor elected and 1 less Labor/Green.

    It will be really interesting to get a handle on what % of minor party voters followed the suggested party ticket. My guess is probably less than 10% which will really show up the power (and in the end abuse) of the Group HTV under the old system.

  32. @ Wakefield – it doesn’t work that way.

    The intent of these changes was to take a group of people that receive 25% of the vote and 17% of the seats, and reduce how many seats they win so that minor party voters are disenfranchsied more severely than they already were.

    Of course, a double dissolution lowers the quota, which helps minor parties.

    So you can hardly use the DD results to conclude whether the voting changes achieved either the real, or stated intention.

  33. Scott – the GVT allowed all parties to direct preferences right through the list. Bogus right wing groups appeared with the sole purpose of Senate GVT manipulation.

    Voters could do what the minor parties wanted but the evidence will be overwhelming that they have done their preferences differently. There will be plenty of learning for voters and parties after the preference results can be studied but it will be clear that the old system did not reflect voters wishes.

  34. @ Wakefield

    I can only assume you are deliberately ignoring this.

    People do not care if their vote, which initially went to the Shooters and Fishers, ends up with the Motoring Enthusiasts, or the Outdoor Recreation Party.

    It is important in Democracy, that we have genuine choice. North Korea allows people to vote to support the candidate or reject them. Americans can vote between Hilary or Donald Trump.

    It scares me to see how little resistance was put up cc9c,40

    The current system means that, when you have voted for the 1 -6 parties that you could be bothere

  35. scott bales @ #32 Wednesday, July 27, 2016 at 2:54 pm

    @ Wakefield – it doesn’t work that way.
    The intent of these changes was to take a group of people that receive 25% of the vote and 17% of the seats, and reduce how many seats they win so that minor party voters are disenfranchsied more severely than they already were.
    Of course, a double dissolution lowers the quota, which helps minor parties.
    So you can hardly use the DD results to conclude whether the voting changes achieved either the real, or stated intention.

    People’s intent in supporting the changes varied depending on who they were. But for those of us with expertise in the area who were encouraging politicians to make these changes, it was not about eliminating minor parties, and predictions that it would eliminate micro-parties have been shown to be bulldust and would have also been bulldust under a half-Senate election with the same votes.

    It was about ensuring that if micro-parties are elected they are elected by genuine voter choice, not by dodgy deals and coercion. And it was about ensuring elections were not wrecked if electoral office errors affected some tipping point way down in the count that had no business changing the overall outcome of one seat let alone two (a la WA).

    If anyone had stood with me and watched the Tasmanian preference flows they would have seen that the old Group Ticket Voting system with its 100% preference flows was a monstrous lie about the voters’ true intentions, that could only be maintained by the use of unjust coercion to make it impractical for the voters to use their preferences to express their true wishes.

    The idea that “micro-parties” receive 25% of the vote so they should get 25% of the seats works fine if every micro-party voter prefers every other micro-party to the big three. But if you have seen what I see, and what everyone will see when the preferences are uploaded, then you will know that this is about as far from reality as the earth is from galaxy GN-z11. You just cannot determine what is the right seat share for micro-parties until you take that into account. I told people all along that micro-party voters do not just preference other micro-parties, they preference the big three as well. If micro voters only preferenced other micros then the micro-parties would have today won three seats in the Tasmanian Senate instead of one – exhaust rates notwithstanding.

  36. I agree Wakefield. Scott Bales, I don’t know what you are going on about, you’re as bad as We Want Paul.

    “…a group of people that receive 25% of the vote and 17% of the seats, and reduce how many seats they win so that minor party voters are disenfranchsied more severely than they already were.”

    That’s a good argument if, by “group”, you mean to somehow lump together a group encompassing Family First, Fred Nile, One Nation, the Sex Party and the Marijuana Party and argue that all their voters are all somehow “represented” if any one of them wins a seat.

    The Tasmanian result is a triumph for democracy. Voters have righted an egregious wrong in the demotion of Lisa Singh to 6th on the ticket by electing her not just ahead of Short, but of Bilyk as well. (If there were enough fully-informed voters down here, she’d have beaten Urquhart, Polley and Brown as well!)

    Jacqui Lambie has been elected, not on the basis of rolling preference deals by a vote whisperer, but by getting a quota in her own right because – like her or hate her – she’s worked her butt off and been brave in promoting the interests of her constituents.

    The Greens have won two seats which seems fair given that their primary vote was down because Labor’s appalling preselection process made it essential for many Greens-leaning voters to potentially sacrifice McKim at the altar of making sure Lisa was re-elected.

    Colbeck didn’t quite make it but, despite the unfairness of the preselection process which saw him dumped to 5th, he really wasn’t that wonderful so I’m not crying too much.

    Sure, Abetz came first, but there are some problems that no Senate voting system can solve.

    And there was no Family First, no Sex Party and no other nutters of any type.

  37. ugh, keyboard managed to malfunction a tad there.

    Scares me to see how little resistance was put up to the Coalition legislating away minor parties. They are the thing that makes our democracy better than the USA. We can choose 3rd parties.

    The current system means that, when you have voted for the 1-6 parties that you could be bothered, your vote is distributed amonsgt all remaining parties in proportion to what fraction of a quota they currently have. Vote Greens and only voted 6 numbers? After that it gets distributed to One Nation.

    Group Tickets aren’t perfect, but they are a hell of a lot better than this travesty.

  38. Scott Bales: “People do not care if their vote, which initially went to the Shooters and Fishers, ends up with the Motoring Enthusiasts, or the Outdoor Recreation Party.”

    Don’t they? How do you know that?

  39. @ Kevin – I know people like you, Anthony Green etc have different intentions. Can you honestly tell me you believe that the Coalition would have passed it for all those noble reasons if it was expected to hurt their electoral chances. I 100% agree that the old system had flaws and gave people limited choice. My preferred voting system is ‘number any number of boxes above or below the line, any you leave blank will be filled in by the GVT of whoever you put in as number one’. Maximises the power given to voters, no exhausted votes, and has GVT as a savings provision that is closer to right than the coin toss we have now. Ironically, I feel that all of the experts were presented with two bad options for voting systems, and made to pick the least worst.

    @ MB – that’s the joy of %ages, they add up to 100% regardless. If some group is under represented, then someone is over represented. I can rephrase it to ‘The Liberal party earn more seats than they deserve, based on the % of votes they receive.’ and ‘The Labor party earn more seats than they deserve, based on the % of votes they receive.’. I hope you don’t mind me group all the Liberals together, I know they are a broad church.

  40. Scoot B – your argument has descended into chaos. Best have a review of your previous contribution re Greens, One Nation furphy.

  41. ” Can you honestly tell me you believe that the Coalition would have passed it for all those noble reasons if it was expected to hurt their electoral chances”

    Well, it doesn’t seem to have helped their electoral changes in Tassie to any great extent. Perhaps the old system would have seen One Nation, or perhaps Family First or Mrs Fred Nile, elected ahead of the Greens. Would you perhaps have preferred that result?

  42. Scott, you’re starting to sound like an ally or flunky of Glen Druery – we all thought you knew much better than that! Wakefield and Dr B are dead right – GVTs were a device to herd voters, and the way Druery used them was designed to make people think that there was a large group out there who just wanted anybody – left, right, middle or nowhere much – instead of the majors. (Is that the way you think yourself? Hard to believe…) The actual preferences on the Senate ballots as reported by Dr B make it clear that this was JUST NOT TRUE! Long live a system that lets voters express their real, personal, preferences.

  43. @ MB – I don’t know how many times I will have to say this before you read it, Double Dissolutions reduce the quota required for re-election and thus results from the 2016 election cannot be compared to 2010, 2013 etc to determine the results of the change in voting system.

    Regardless, what I expect our politicians to do is make our voting work to reflect the will of the Australian population, not their own, or my own, political views. Your question is irrelevant.

  44. scott bales @ #37 Wednesday, July 27, 2016 at 3:13 pm

    ugh, keyboard managed to malfunction a tad there.
    Scares me to see how little resistance was put up to the Coalition legislating away minor parties. They are the thing that makes our democracy better than the USA. We can choose 3rd parties.
    The current system means that, when you have voted for the 1-6 parties that you could be bothered, your vote is distributed amonsgt all remaining parties in proportion to what fraction of a quota they currently have. Vote Greens and only voted 6 numbers? After that it gets distributed to One Nation.

    That’s not even true. If your vote runs out of parties it is not distributed further at all, let alone proportionally.

  45. @Scott Bales
    The Coalition has not legislated away minor parties. The Senate crossbench has actually grown as a result of this election. The new Senate will contain representatives from The Greens, One Nation, NXT, and an assortment of other minor parties.
    The new system means that votes go where voters tell them to go, and nowhere else. If you voted 1-6 above the line, then if your ballot exhausts, it doesn’t go anywhere. No travesty to be seen here, just democracy.

  47. Thanks Airlines. 62 pages – urghhh! May sort through it sometime when I have absolutely nothing else to do… (Yes I know the really interesting bits will be at the end, but for now I think I have other things to do.)

  48. From preference distribution: Final margin for McKim (Greens) over McCulloch (One Nation) was only 141 votes. Expected close elimination between McCulloch and Colbeck (LIB) was not close at 1218 votes.

  49. @ Kevin – mathematically identical.

    Lets say parties have 10000, 5000, 5000 and 2000 votes. Quota is 11001. Party A has 0.9 quota, B and C have 0.45 and D has 0.2.
    The party on 2000 is excluded, and all the votes exhaust.

    Distributing them in proportion to votes gives us 11000, 5500, 5500. So party A has 0.9999 quota and the other two have 0.49999 each.

    Exhausting them reduces the quota to 10001, so party A has 0.99999 quota and the other two have 0.499999 each.

    Note, I probably got the exact number of 9s wrong. Regardless, the two systems (distribute in proportion to current vote and exhaust) are nearly identical.

    @ Steve Gardner – as mentioned 30 thousand times already, a DD election is easier for minor parties. You cannot compare 2013 to 2016 to determine the impact of the voting changes. Regardless, your vote exhausting helps parties in proportion to the current share of the vote they have, see above paragraph.

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