Thursday
Pardon me for missing an exciting day’s count in Mawson, where Leon Bignell appears to have held on – since my last update two days ago, the votes have broken 1003-909 his way, increasing his lead to 184. Only a small trickle of postal votes should be outstanding at this point.
Tuesday
Labor’s lead in Mawson now down to 90, as today’s update breaks 536-437 to Liberal, in near identical proportion to the first batch of 1940 declaration votes yesterday.
Monday
As the table below illustrates, things are going heavily the Liberals way in all five seats. It was a particularly good day for Rachel Sanderson in Adelaide, who now looks set to hang on, and Newland, Heysen and King are now beyond doubt. The only real question now would seem to be Mawson, where Labor member Leon Bignell’s lead diminished from 415 to 189. If that trend continues his lead will slip away shortly, but it may not do so – in particular, I would assume the votes added to the count are pre-polls and perhaps postals, with the absent votes, which should be more favourable, yet to come. I’m projecting a Liberal winning margin of 271, but there’s a lot I don’t know about the count.
Sunday
Yesterday’s late counting action was limited to rechecking and adding to the count incomplete ballot papers that are “saved” under the state’s unique provision in which missing numbers get filled out according to the favoured preference order of the party who received their primary vote. This has turned the Liberals’ 67 vote lead in Adelaide into a deficit of 116, and reduced my projection of their winning margin from 447 to a dicey 192. Conversely, their lead in Newland is out from 298 to 388, and the projection from 595 to 713; and Mawson is little changed, with Labor’s lead up from 387 to 415, and my projection of the Liberal winning margin down from 239 to 205. As noted yesterday though, Labor may well do better on late counting this time than last time, as they will have put more effort in in those parts of the electorate that were formerly in Finniss. No new counting was conducted in King, which I’m still tracking although the Liberals are all but certain to win. Much more progress should be made in today’s count, as the action moves on to the very substantial pre-polls.
If Rachel Sanderson ultimately gets returned, it will be interesting to see which ministry she gets, as my spies tell me she was happily telling people at the polling booth on Saturday she was going to be Minister for Education.
Sanderson: chickens & roost.
If Jo Chapley gets up, she will have in part the excellent Greens candidate Robert Simms to thank, his preferences appear to be flowing around the 90% mark to Jo Chapley (perhaps a bit higher).
can someone please explain how the “saved votes” thing works?
“saved votes” ONLY applies where a voter marks “1” (or equally valid X or tick) for any candidate on the House of Assembly ballot paper AND that candidate has lodged a “Voting Ticket” with the Electoral Commission.
These Voting Tickets are effectively then considered how that voter has voted as if they had personally completed the ballot paper 1, 2, 3, 4 etc.
Virtually all Lower House parties/candidates lodge one, as it of course ‘saves’ votes for you where otherwise it would be considered informal.
“Saved votes” for House of Assembly seats are dealt with by s.93 of the Electoral Act 1985.
s.93(2) states:
“Where—
(a) a voter marks a ballot paper by placing the number 1 in the square opposite the name of a particular candidate and indicates no further preference; and
(b) there is 1 voting ticket registered for the purposes of the election in relation to that candidate,
the ballot paper will be taken to have been marked in accordance with that voting ticket.”
There are a series of similar saving provisions that deal with further incomplete allocations of preferences (basically these are also treated as “ticket” votes based on the first preference allocated) and split tickets (half of the “saved” votes get counted under each of the split ticket preference allocations).
Note also s.76(3) which provides that “For the purposes of this Act, where a voter places a tick or a cross on a ballot paper, the tick or cross will be taken to be equivalent to the number 1. ”
The combined effect is to significantly reduce the number of informal votes. It’s amazing how many people think it’s ok to just put a tick or a cross or a “1”on a ballot paper, and that’s it. These are the votes that get saved. Curiously, in the booth where I was scrutineering, the number of saved votes for the Liberal and SA Best candidates was significantly higher than for the Labor candidate – and this was in a booth that Labor “won” by 2-3% on 2PP. So much for the assumption that the savings rule is deigned to favour Labor – evidently, from my sample of 1 booth out of 700+ across the state (!!!), that is not always the case.
Thanks Besty and Outsider.
Anything that helps make a vote count is a good thing in my book.
Interesting that it “helped” a Liberal candidate. The Tories always seem to be keen to find ways to exclude from the poll people they think might vote Labor so I guess they would have opposed this measure when it was introduced.
How did the Greens and SAB pref / registered ticket?
I’m assuming the Lib v SAB 2pp count is provisional, but if the Greens had Lab above SAB then Lab should make the last count easily.
Then it’s down to SABs prefs and they only had 1 & 2 on their HTV cards so you’d think a fair few would end up being saved.
rossmcg
The ‘Savings Provision’ was introduced in 1985 due to the high informal vote in the House of Assembly in 1982 (5.8%) and that, combined with the introduction of political party names (or the word Independent), under the candidates’ names, saw a reduction to 3.3% of informal votes.
My recollection is that the savings provision was suggested by a parliamentary committee and was endorsed by all 3 parties at the time, Democrats holding the balance of power in the Upper House at the time.
Hope that helps.
ratsak
The ‘savings provision’ only applies to the Lower House, and the voter must put a ‘1’ only – voting 1, 2 makes the ballot paper informal (unless per chance there are only two candidates) in the electorate.
I think you are referring to the SA BEST Upper House HTV Card which said “Vote 1 SA BEST, Vote 2 Dignity Party”.
Besty
It dates back that far? Not heard of it before. You are an enlightened lot in SA. Enjoyed living there for a while in the early 80s and have a son as a reminder of those days.
BTW, a little prediction here:
New Labor leader in SA will be Tom Koutsantonis.
Ta Besty,
But do you know who the Gs and SAB preffed (if at all – I know SAB didn’t) or had on their registered ticket?
Ratsak
All the HTV cards are on ECSA website https://ecsa.sa.gov.au/voting/how-to-vote-cards for HA. These are the ones for saved votes.
The Greens preferenced different parties/candidates depending on the electorate.
It looks like Labor should review allocation of resources/candidates for election. Of the 18 seats Labor is winning (all existing Labor seats) – there is a swing to Labor v Lib in all these seats. Sort of exception is Taylor where SA Best was second and nominally a swing to SA Best but very likely a swing to Labor v Lib also here.
In the 10 additional seats where estimated margin for Lib was less than 5% – the seats with a swing to Labor are Mawson Adelaide and Elder. Black Colton Dunstan Gibson Hartley King and Newland show swings to Libs of 1 to 5.6%. Bragg Flinders and Waite also swings to Labor plus probably a few of the SA Best second seats.
Thanks Wakefield.
So assuming all the Dignity and Cons votes followed the HTV (which of course they won’t) I make it that Labor needs 89% of the Greens prefs on current numbers (again assuming no G prefs go to the Libs before SAB). A bit of leakage from the Dignity prefs towards Labor or the Libs and any Greens leakage to the Libs makes that percentage smaller.
Then if SAB underperform their election day result in prepoll and postals that percentage should tighten even further.
That’s not the sort of preference numbers that would be out of the question. Especially for a Labor government so strong on renewables.
Labor would then need about 80% of the remaining prefs to overtake the Libs, which isn’t feasible but SAB making the final distribution isn’t a given.
Note that for Adelaide there was no SAB candidate, just Labor, Liberal, Green and Dignity.
1156 new votes in Newland pushes Liberal lead out from 1.2% to 1.8%, so I’d say that one’s in the back of the net for them.
Also some new figures from Mawson which roughly halve Bignells lead. I don’t think we know whether these are prepolls or absentees though? Prepolls I guess.
In Mawson, Labor lead down from 415 to 189 as new votes break 1083 to 857 to Liberal. I projected the Liberals would do 5.4% better on declaration votes, but so far they’re actually doing 7.1% better. However, this is hard to read because ECSA doesn’t break declaration votes down into pre-polls, absents etc. I assume they aren’t doing absent votes at the moment, and those will come largely from the Labor-voting urban end of the electorate.
What’s the chance of SAB finishing third in Heysen once Green preferences are counted? Meaning the LIB would defeat the ALP easily when SAB preferences are counted.
Pre-polls my guess too — Antony said they would be counted today. Might be postals in the mix though.
I don’t think it likely, Kyle. You’ve got an 11.1% Greens vote, and at least some of that will go to the Liberals, leaving you with about 10% with which to close a gap of 6.5%. That leaves you needing about 80%, which is about what you get between Labor and Liberal, but I wouldn’t expect it between Labor and SA Best.
Speaking of which, they’ve added 1282 votes in Heysen, and they’ve broken 663-610 to SA Best. If they continue improving at that rate, I would project them to make up 120 votes — a lot less than they need, which is 599.
Same issue in Hartley – that could see Xenophon finish third – behind Libs and ALP once Greens and Others preferences are distributed. Its possible but not likely.
From the Advertiser (paywalled):
http://www.adelaidenow.com.au/news/sa-election-2018/liberals-take-the-lead-in-counting-for-seat-of-adelaide/news-story/88ec03ed5642f4d948fb36f660389986
“LIBERAL Rachel Sanderson has retaken the lead in the battle to win Adelaide, as more votes were counted on Monday.
The seat is still too close to call but Liberal strategists are confident they will hang on after all postal votes are counted.
Ms Sanderson, the incumbent MP since 2010 and the Liberals’ child protection spokeswoman, edged in front of Labor rival Jo Chapley by more than 250 votes late yesterday.
At the start of the day, Ms Chapley had held a slender 116-vote two-party preferred lead over Ms Sanderson.
Ms Sanderson told The Advertiser the count was “looking positive but I’m not ready to declare yet”.
————————
These votes are yet to appear on the electoral commission website yet.
Everything from the numbers today indicates that it is going to be 26-18-3, although Mawson is not quite over yet, perhaps 27-18-2 by the next state election depending on what happens to Troy Bell. A comfortable, if not large, majority for the Liberals.
@caf
Re your post in relation to a NZ MMP proportional representation model as the recommended model for a reformed SA House of Assembly, I don’t believe MMP to be an especially good PR model. Yes, it can deliver a very proportional outcome, and that is its key selling point, but there are a number of problematic aspects associated with this model.
1. It creates two classes of MP’s within a single chamber of parliament – Electorate MP’s and List MP’s. I’m not sure that there is any sense to this.
2. You would most likely require some form of threshold, probably between 2 and 5%. The problem with thresholds are that they are a bit arbitrary (& also a bit undemocratic) and they are inconsistent with preferential voting. So you vote for only one party from the list and (if it’s not a major party) you hope it gets over the threshold, so that your vote doesn’t get wasted.
3. The party vote is a closed party list system, so it’s the party not the voter who decides which MP’s get to be elected. OK – you can argue that our STV-PR system is also a de facto closed party list system too, but that’s not really the case. Just ask Lisa Singh, Labor Fed. Senator for Tasmania (at 2016 Fed election).
4. The number of MP’s elected from each party is based on the proportion of the party vote, not the electorate vote. And here is where the flaw in the model is most obvious. Winning an extra electorate, does not win the respective party an extra seat! – all that happens with an additional electorate win is that you knock out your lowest eligible List MP, since the final outcome must be proportional. So if an MP or candidate of a larger party is unpopular, they don’t need to worry as to whether they win their electorate seat or not if the party has positioned them high on the List. This creates all sorts of bizarre situations – I can clarify further if you are interested.
I think SA would be better served by a Hare-Clark PR model of either 5 or 7 member electorates in a unicameral parliament, as I explained in the previous thread.
Comfortable but not unbeatable. It all depends on the next four years (both how they govern and how Labor acts in opposition) but anybody who thinks they’ve automatically secured themselves a second term are kidding themselves.
Have to say, this idea being floated around about having Tom Koutsantonis take over as Labor leader, if true, is a massively bad idea. He’s a polarising figure (and not in a good way) and ultra-conservative to boot. Also, he’s a face of many of the things people negatively associated with the Rann-Weatherill years. He should follow Weatherill’s lead and quietly go to the backbench and retire at some convenient point. I’m sure there’s a board or two that will have him.
Don’t get me wrong: I am not trying to be wildly idealistic and demand a total lefty as leader. I know how reality works (although, I think the rigid factionalism should be decreased and if a good PLUS MP looks like a good prospective leader, they should be chosen, regardless of factional numbers) but I don’t think Tom Koutsantonis has the appeal to convince the electorate to go back to Labor in 2022.
William, the Liberals have turned around a 0.4% deficit in to a 1.5% lead in the space of a day. I must admit I don’t usually follow the post-election day counting enough to know what type of votes would have been added to cause such a turn around for Rachel Sanderson.
Would you expect the remaining outstanding votes to now favour Labor and fall back down towards what you predicted? Or are the Liberals performing much better in the post-election day counting than they did last time around?
vale SA labor 🙁
Rational Leftist, I meant comfortable for governing, I was saying nothing about the next election. Labor almost came back from the massacre of 1993 to win in 1997, so it certainly possible that Labor will win the next election.
Max, I know I am not William but Rachael Sanderson is doing much better on the declaration votes this time than she did last time. The ECSA does not break down declaration votes into postal, pre-poll and absentee votes so it is hard to know which type have been counted or whether Sanderson did particularly well in one of the them at the last election. Perhaps someone who is more in touch with the process might know which votes have and have not been counted.
They are counting postals and prepolls at the same time.
Today I saw the process.
They identify how many declaration votes they have in total (all types combined) and then they decide what a manageable batch would be that team for that shift.
1500 was decided for one particular seats count team based on staff allocated and the fact there was still about 3000 to count total.
Does that help?
Anyone else tipping Frank Pangallo to join the Liberals before his term is up?
Big Blind Dave, a little, thank you
They kind of said ‘hey we’ve got 3000 declaration votes of all kinds here and 4 of us to count them. How should we go about it?’
The RO said something like ‘lets fo a bit of everything. Get to 1500 of the 3000 today and we’ll do the rest tomorrow’
Not exact quotes but that was the gist.
I dont think there are as many declaration votes left in Mawson as William is predicting by the way.
I think its going to be a lot closer.
It appears that Labor, over the most recent elections, has been exceptional at “sand bagging” their marginals – and at negotiating, hence a former Liberal Party State leader in their last cabinet.
With the boundary changes, Labor “marginals” became “notional” Liberal and that has been the result.
Except, as the count drags on, those “notional” Liberal seats, instead of having margins above “marginal” are indeed now “marginal” Liberal seats courtesy of a swing to Labor measured against the prior election, including in the “notional” Liberal seats.
Government is won on the seats.
The incoming Liberal government now has the challenge to “sand bag” its marginal seats noting the swings to Labor in those seats has delivered the “marginal” status in the first instance.
What is the 2PP swing required by Labor to deliver government at the next election?
And in particular seats?
No doubt, also, being politics, 16 years on the Treasury benches played at least some part in the result both at the previous election and at this one – noting also there was a swing to Labor regardless in this election.
The next election will be very interesting.
Labor, for its part requires strong leadership, unity and focus on policy along with a bit more work in what are now the Liberal “marginals”.
Via the Oz:
Nick Xenophon’s SA-Best party will seek a Court of Disputed Returns hearing into the result of Saturday’s South Australian election where it won two upper house spots but no lower house seats.
Former current affairs TV reporter Frank Pangallo, who is likely to secure the second upper house position for SA-Best, yesterday accused Labor of misleading voters with advertising at polling booths with a “pile of lies”.
“It was extremely dirty — we are now looking at some action to the Court of Disputed Returns over some of the advertising material, some of the corflutes that went out last Saturday by the ALP,” he told Sky News yesterday.
“They (Labor) put up corflutes at primary schools where there were polling booths, making claims that this particular school had a certain amount of money cut by Nick Xenophon. Well we want to know what the proof of that was and whether they can really put up or shut up.
“We all know politics is a dirty game, but I think there needs to be truth in advertising when it comes to politics.
“You just can’t get away with telling the electorate a whole pile of lies and that’s what we got from the ALP, and to a certain extent from the Liberals.”
A former reporter and producer from Today Tonight (and before that from the News Corp stable) complaining about truth in advertising? You couldn’t make it up.
Anyway, we all know that there ain’t no law that requires truth in political advertising, more’s the pity, so I suspect this is just a candidate shooting their mouth off and it wont go anywhere once they actually talk to a lawyer, if they even get that far.
Particularly since Xenophon did vote for the Coalition’s education funding package which did reduce funding to some schools relative to Labor’s package, so to go from there to “Xenophon cut money to this school” is only barely a stretch let alone a massive pack of lies. Bit of a glass jaw, which might explain why SA-BEST imploded when the heat went on.
Don Russell, a former top adviser to Paul Keating when he was Prime Minister, has been dumped as South Australia’s top public servant in a big purge by new Premier Steven Marshall who also terminated the jobs of three other chief executives in various departments.
Mr Marshall, who was sworn in as South Australia’s 46th Premier on Monday, said he wanted to depoliticise the top levels of the public service after 16 years of Labor governments. Payouts to the four will cost taxpayers a combined $2 million.
“We won’t be putting in our mates like Labor did over such a long period of time,” he said on Wednesday.
Dr Russell was the chief executive of the Department of Premier and Cabinet under Jay Weatherill when he was Premier. Michael Deegan, who was chief executive of the Department of Planning, Transport and Infrastructure, has also been shown the door.
http://www.afr.com/business/infrastructure/steven-marshall-dumps-don-russell-as-top-public-service-ceo-20180321-h0xrds
ALP now out to 198 ahead in Mawson. Not many left to count either.
BBD – there could be around 2000 votes to count. Gilfillan will need a higher return from declaration votes than achieved to date but if postals are a higher proportion of remaining votes then that is quite possible.
From my observations in a different district tally room it is likely only late arriving postals and maybe (but less likley) some absentee votes will be left to count.
There is some priority being given to the closer counts which i believe means every vote that was available to count (especially prepolls and on time postals) has now been counted.
It is just my educated guess but there aren’t any big boxes full of votes left to count in Mawson.
Even if there are another one thousand votes they would need to break 60/40 to Libs to change the lead.
I am not personally invested in the outcome either way. Just speculation for self amusement really.
BBD: I’ve heard that in Florey the postals/pre-polls/declarations are breaking 60/40 to Bedford.
If this continues, she will beat Labor on First Preferences as well as Two Candidate Preferred.
Is that correct?
Chinda – only about 20-25% of likely dec votes on SAEC website as yet – these are running 67/33 for Bedford so your suggestion is very likely.
BBD – last time in Mawson the final vote tally was about 92.2% of roll. Currently at 85.2. So if 2018 replicates 2014 turnout that’s about 7% remaining to count ie about 1750 votes. I don’t know whether KI will have an effect. Wouldn’t be surprising if the KI participation rate was lower but also perhaps more postal voting. We will know soon. If Bignall were to lose narrowly he might be a donkey vote victim. He had the donkey vote in 2014 but not this time. Donkey vote is probably worth at least 0.6% so that is about 140 votes that should be deducted from Gilfillan tally. So the real swing to Bignall should add about 1.2% to get an apples for apples comparison cf 2014.
How an independent could even come close to winning the primary vote in Florey when Pooraka and Ingle Farm were added to the seat nnd make up half the electorate now (nearly 60% ALP primary in those four booths last election) is remarkable. The ALP right really screwed the pooch on that one.
Every dollar, man hour and election promise the ALP contributed to Florey should have been spent in Newland.
Wakefield you may be right about the Mawson count.
It just doesn’t match the approach the SAEC are taking in the tally rooms I’ve been in this week.
That maybe because of heavier scrutiny in Mawson perhaps.
For what it’s worth (probably not much!) my guess is also that there are around 1700 votes to go in Mawson (based on 2014 turnout), but possibly a few less because of the extension of the electorate boundaries to KI. These would need to break 55/45 to the Liberals for Gilfillan to win. Its more likely than not that Gilfillan will fall short. I presume we will know by Saturday?