Live publication of results, updated by the minute with full booth results, swings and probability estimates, can be found here. Commentary of the progress of the count follows below.
12.50pm. John Pesutto now leads by 53 votes in Hawthorn, and I’m also now projected the Liberals to hold Caulfield. So without wishing to take anything away from the scale of Labor’s win, a big part of the election night story is that Liberal voters voted early. I’ve now got Sandringham back down as a confirmed Labor gain, but with no pre-polls or postals there yet, I certainly wouldn’t take that for granted. I will be off line for the next half an hour, and my results won’t be updating in that time.
12.18pm. Things continue to look less bad for the Liberals. My model now has the Liberals with their nose in front in Mount Waverley and Nepean, and is no longer giving away Sandringham, Bayswater and Hawthorn — though it’s still calling it for Labor in Ringwood, Caulfield and Box Hill. Over the past hour, the statewide Labor swing has come down from 3.7% to 3.2%.
11.35pm. The notion that some of the more freakish results would be overturned on late counting is looking good. The Liberals are now home in Brighton, after hardly any swing was recorded on pre-poll and postal votes. My seat projection has come down over the last few hours from 59 to 56 (which really means 60 to 57, because a bug is awarding Preston to the Liberals — though equally, it may be wrong about the Greens winning Prahran).
9.30pm. The Greens, as ever, are living on a knife edge — they could win four, they could win nothing. The ABC projects them with leads of 2.2% in Melbourne and 1.0% lead in Brunswick, while they’re 1.0% behind in Northcote. The only thing the Prahran two-party count tells us is that they will definitely beat the Liberals if that’s what it comes down to, but with nothing to separate Labor, Liberal and the Greens, they may drop out in third, or lose to Labor if it’s the Liberals who do so. The one thing that is clear is that they have not won Richmond, despite the Liberals’ decision to give them a leg-up by not fielding a candidate.
9.07pm. Plenty to feast on in the ABC’s seats in doubt list, on which twelve seats are listed. Labor has only the gentlest of leads in Brighton, which one suspects will not stick; they are slightly further ahead in Sandringham, which remains very much in doubt; a Labor win in either would be astonishing. Both were vacated by sitting members, and male candidates (a conservative young turk in the case of Brighton) were chosen for both of them.
9.02pm. There are nine seats listed on the ABC’s “changing hands” list – Bayswater, with a 2.0% Labor lead and 42.8% counted, may not be nailed down yet, but the others look fairly solid. The only ones that were widely thought a shot for Labor in advance were Bass, South Barwon and maybe Burwood. The others are remarkable for being affluent and historically blue-ribbon Liberal seats: Box Hill, Caulfield, Mount Waverley and Ringwood. Then there is Nepean, which is a semi-rural seat neighbouring Bass, where the Liberals had a retiring sitting member and may, as in Bass, have been hampered by the retirement of the sitting member, not to mention the party’s uninspired choice for his successor.
8.24pm. Rather extraordinarily, the ABC computer has Labor ahead in Brighton and Sandringham. Either the backlash against the Liberals by well-heeled voters has taken on hitherto unanticipated dimensions, or the high pre-poll vote is turning up static.
8.08pm. Labor has retained Richmond, where the Greens showed characteristic persistence with a dud candidate, but the ABC has the Greens retaining Melbourne and Northcote. Brunswick has been going back and forth — currently it’s down as Labor retain. Prahran is a three-way contest that will be determined by the candidate who drops out in third.
7.53pm. Burwood took a long time to report a result, but not it has, it’s looking like another possible gain for Labor … and indeed has been called for Labor by the ABC as I type.
7.49pm. Ringwood and Mount Waverley looking very solid for Labor now, and Labor looks to have gained South Barwon. The ABC calling Box Hill and Nepean for Labor, but I wouldn’t give those away yet. Less unexpectedly, Labor to gain Bass. Looking close in Ripon, which was thought a lot more likely to go to Labor than the aforementioned.
7.48pm. The ABC computer is now calling Mildura an independent gain, but it shouldn’t be because it’s far too close.
7.38pm. Independent Suzanna Sheed comfortably returned in Shepparton. The ALP is calling Mildura a Nationals retain, but it looks close to me, with independent Ali Cupper a show. The ABC computer apparently doesn’t expect Darryn Lyons to get very strong preferences in Geelong, but I’ll be keeping an eye on it. Ditto Benambra, where Jacqui Hawkins looks competitive against Liberal Bill Tilley. Independent Tammy Atkins is running second behind beleaguered Nationals member Tim McCurdy in Ovens Valley, but his primary vote of 43% looks high enough.
7.36pm. The ABC computer has wound Forest Hill back from Labor gain to Labor ahead, but the Labor leads in Mount Waverley and Ringwood look rather formidable.
7.34pm. Prahran now looking a near three-way tie on the primary vote, as it was in 2014. The Greens are struggling to hold Northcote; still early days in Melbourne and Brunswick; nothing yet in Richmond.
7.32pm. The ABC computer is calling Benambra Liberal retain, but this assumes a Liberal-versus-Labor contest, and independent Jacqui Hawkins is well ahead of Labor in second place. With a primary vote barely north of 40%, Liberal member Bill Tilley is another in trouble.
7.31pm. Small swing to the Greens from the first booth in Melbourne.
7.30pm. Antony Green picking three unheralded Labor gains in the eastern suburbs: Forest Hill, Mount Waverley and Ringwood.
7.27pm. The ABC guesstimate says Labor shouldn’t be troubled by Darryn Lyons in Geelong, but the primary vote numbers look pretty soft for them to me, being just north of 40% and with Lyons clearly placed to finish second.
7.24pm. I’ve been tending to focus on boutique regional contests, but the big story is of overwhelming success for Labor in eastern Melbourne. They’re bolting it in the sandbelt seats, and putting the Liberals under pressure in normally solid seats. Though I reiterate the note of caution that there may be a lot of Liberal vote outstanding in the pre-polls, which will come through later in the night. Even so, it’s clearly a question of how far Labor.
7.18pm. Labor’s good early figures in Ringwood, which I found hard to credit, appear to be sticking.
7.16pm. One bit of good news for the Liberals is there’s an early swing to them in the endangered country seat of Ripon.
7.15pm. The Liberals look like they will run third in Prahran, rendering the notional Liberal-versus-Greens preference count academic. So the result will come down to the flow of Liberal preferences between Labor and the Greens.
7.13pm. The second booth in Brunswick is better for Labor than the first – there is now a 1.0% swing in their favour. Nothing else in from the other potential Greens seats.
7.10pm. The ABC is covering Geelong, where it actually seems to me that independent Darryn Lyons is doing a lot better than he deserves — he’s matching it with the Liberals on the primary vote, and Labor is only on 36.2%. However, the primary vote swing to Labor is 3.5%, which would keep them safe if consistent.
7.07pm. An interestingly huge swing to Labor in the first booth in from Albert Park, whose Wentworth-ish demographic might not be too thrilled with the Liberals right now. The Liberals came close to knocking it over in 2010 and 2014, but not this time by the look of it.
7.06pm. First booth in from Brunswick is a 3.7% swing to the Greens, which exceeds the 2.3% Labor margin.
7.04pm. Independent Jacqui Hawkins polling strongly in Benambra with 25.1%, and Bill Tilley’s 43.1% is low enough to make it touch-and-go for him after preferences.
7.03pm. Early days, but Nationals member Peter Crisp is under pressure from independent Ali Cupper in Mildura.
7.00pm. The first electorate with over 10% counted is Gippsland South, with a 3.7% swing to Labor. It should be cautioned here that the dynamic in play may be that the upsurge in pre-poll voting has disproportionately involved conservative voters. If so, some of these swings will come back later in the evening.
6.58pm. The ABC election results page (they need to make this stuff easier to locate) paints an impressive picture of across-the-board swings to Labor in all those electorates where two-party votes are in.
6.56pm. Russell Northe, the Liberals and the Nationals are almost exactly level in Morwell, all on around 17%, with Labor on 28.3%. Only a few small rural booths, 1.5% counted.
6.53pm. James Purcell, the upper house micro-party member trying to win South-West Coast as an independent, trails Labor 21.2% to 17.2% with 4.3% counted. The Liberal is on 42.0%, so he might be competitive if he closes that gap.
6.50pm. The ABC’s booth-matching is picking up a 6% to 7% drop in the Coalition primary vote, although there is only 0.6% counted.
6.35pm. A few peculiarities with the VEC’s approach actually, such as media feed updates only coming through every five minutes. However, they have picked the notional two-party counts I would have expected, having been guided entirely by what happened last time. So Nationals versus independent counts in Shepparton and Mildura, Nationals versus Labor in Morwell and Liberal versus Greens in Prahran.
6.25pm. An unforeseen peculiarity in the way the AEC does its media feeds means I won’t be able to get my results reporting facility to work until every electorate has a two-party preferred result in, which should take a while.
5.30pm. Half an hour before polls close, a YouGov Galaxy exit poll gives Labor a lead of 55-45. While exit polls don’t have a brilliant record in this country, this does add to a formidable picture of a strong result for Labor. For my part, I’m currently sweating over how my live results reporting and projection facility is going to operate in a real world environment, so stay tuned for that. It should be up in one form or another at about 6:15pm, with the first results to come through shortly after.
Alpha Zero
The interviews I saw on the ABC with G figures had one thing in common. They whinged about Labor. On a night of disappointments they blamed Labor for their poor results; campaigned against Labor.
They are perennial whingers.
ALP looking at 19 in upper house, means they need 2 more for a majority out of
Left: Green 1, AJ 1
Middle: Reason Party 1, Hinch 4
Right: LNP 10
Special: Transport Matters 2, Aussie Battler 1, Liberal Democrats 1,
So they need two of a center left block of Green, AJ and Reason for progressive legislation.
Hinch for moderate legislation.
Deal with 2 of the 4 specials provided the legislation isnt their niche.
Should be relatively easy.
I was right about Morwell. There was bugger all swing due to Hazelwood.
The ALP only get to 19 if Reason doesn’t get up. But with BTL rates like this anything is possible
‘That there’s not much of a swing in the pre-polls suggests to me that there was a last minute swing to Labor not picked up in the polling.’
I think Andrews’ strong condemnation of the Greens in the last week boosted Labor in the eyes of conservative voters and damaged the Greens in the eyes of Greens supporters. There’s a lesson in that for federal Labor.
bug1 @ #652 Saturday, November 24th, 2018 – 11:41 pm
Nats may not be in coalition with the Libs. So, they might be willing to work with Labor on some issues. Labor’s strategy was to have multiple ways of obtaining a majority in the Upper House rather than relying on the capricious Greens.
Like everything else this election, it has worked a treat.
areaman says at 11:44 pm
“But with BTL rates like this anything is possible”
woohoo, at least 1 in 13 people are capable of repudiating of the group ballot system.
Donski I agree with you on the Prahran count. I hadn’t even seen the postal count when I posted my last response either.
There are probably about half the postal votes still to count which will just extend Labor’s lead over the Greens even more… However the wildcard is really 5000+ absent votes that will be counted on Wednesday, I believe. They could very well even up the ALP/Greens counts, and will also likely knock 1-2% off the Liberal PV too (though not enough to knock them out of the top 2).
If I was Antony Green though I’d likely be changing the seat prediction to ALP, the odds are very much stacked in their favour.
Wow, i just noticed ALP has 80.3% 2PP in Footscray, must be some sort of record.
(EDIT: oh, Broadmeadows 81.2%, so not a record)
Confessions says:
Saturday, November 24, 2018 at 10:58 pm
briefly:
The Libs need policies rather than ideology. The absence of policy is letting them down at the state and federal levels.
I think their problem is even deeper. They design policies while facing and talking to each other. This gives their policies a top-down and highly static character. By contrast, Labor listen to voters first and then design their policies on the basis of what they hear from the electorate. This is bottom-up politics.
The Liberals believe politics is about telling people what they should believe. It is inherently undemocratic and shallow.
Bit of the surge to the independent in Mildura, for whom my model is now calling it.
“michael says:
Saturday, November 24, 2018 at 11:40 pm
Baywater/Caulfield/Hawthorn/Mount Waverley/Nepean/Ripon/Sandringham could still flip to the Libs.”
Looking at the postals and prepolls in so far, you are probably right. I suspect the ALP final count will be around 50 – not the 61 Antony Green was projecting from on-the-day voting.
bug1 @ #659 Saturday, November 24th, 2018 – 11:50 pm
Check out Broadmeadows.
I don’t think John Pesutto’s dead yet. If the pre-polls and postals follow the pattern they did in Brighton, the Labor lead will disappear.
GG….exactly right. A great campaign, almost perfectly executed.
The biggest winner might be Glen Druery’s bank balance.
Need careful analysis before saying a late swing to Labor. Equally possible that Liberal voters were out early trying to give their party some mythical momentum which was never there. Especially grumpy Liberal voters.
GG
Excellent tipping on your part. You never wavered from your view that Labor would win easily and you were right.
Spence @ #667 Sunday, November 25th, 2018 – 12:00 am
Could be that pre-polling favoured the Lib profile of voters and that on the day voters were more Labor oriented.
Labor now back ahead in Brunswick:
https://www.abc.net.au/news/elections/vic-election-2018/guide/brun/
William your Nepean and Mount Waverly position is wrong on the results table?
ALP now down to 50 seats. Ripon is now tight. Don’t know whats going on in Caulfield, Labor vote just went berserk and has 57% of 2PP.
Antony has updated results on ABC website with ALP 50 LNP 20 OTHERS 1 IN DOUBT 17
briefly @ #665 Saturday, November 24th, 2018 – 11:59 pm
I reckon Labor deliberately did not change the Upper House voting system because they twigged they could smash the Greens.
All Drurey did was get the independents to agree to swap their preferences among themselves and not deal with the major parties and the Greens. Without preference partners, the Greens couldn’t build a quota. Worked a treat.
Overall the ALP has done very well, although not in Melton. It has a very high and, on primary vote, very unfocused protest vote against the ALP. It looks like 7 candidates (including the ALP, Liberals and Greens) are going to get their deposits back, with 4 candidates (including ALP and Liberals) in double figures. There is also an 8.96% informal vote, which is high even for a 12 candidate race.
The 4 candidate preferred count could be interesting!
https://tallyroom.vec.vic.gov.au/vtr/MeltonDistrict.html
William
Back from gathering. I claim the ‘wooden spoon’ for worst most conservative projection of Labor 48. My only correct projection was 2 independents (Shepparton and one other somewhere), and my brief stop in Mildura this morning and reading of the “Sunraysia Daily” convinced me that Ali Cupper could well be the second independent to get up.
I suppose I also predicted 10-12 micros with at least one in every region – which seems to be the case on the early counting. But I am amazed at the below the line voting rates. At our gathering some people did comment on how long many people took to vote, probably an indication of doing lots of preferences. So these ‘current’ estimates on Antony’s calculators may change dramatically.
Phenomenal result but what a mess in the LC (for the conservatives)!
There seems to have been a pronounced move to Labor in the last hours of the campaign. Whenever it occurred, it certainly eluded the polling.
I think the attempt to sentimentalise and politically exploit murder was particularly sleazy. The Liberals sought to profit from grief. Perhaps they earned the contempt of voters….contempt they amply deserve. This profiteering was most conspicuous in the closing days of the campaign and was the particular work of the Liberals’ headline act, Morrison.
Voters have seen a lot of Lib attempts to exploit cruelties, tragedies and bereavements. They deserve every ounce of repudiation that is served up to them.
Kevin Bonham:
Looks like ABC has turned off the projection at midnight- a bunch of seats just changed margins and became “in doubt”, some of them unnecessarily. #vicvotes
Melton was tough, high profile candidates, crowded field, DLP, last minute change of candidate, ex MP was disgraced over entitlement scandal so I don’t blame people there for throwing a protest vote.
GG….I think you’re spot on regarding the LC voting system. For the first time in a long time Labor prefs will not elect parasitic G MPs who will set out to defeat Labor anywhere and anytime they can.
In the meantime, Labor’s PV is climbing back to its historic level. Excellent.
Rocket Rocket @ #675 Sunday, November 25th, 2018 – 12:16 am
RR,
Not really.
A few of the Greens posters were absolutely insistent that there was no logical way for Labor to get to a majority in the Lower house and that “Green Momentum” was about to make them the masters of the Victorian Universe.
They were swinging on the chandelier. But, not wearing any underpants.
briefly
I am stunned. But it does remind me of WA where I was confident Labor would win but never expected the landslide you got over there.
I know Liberal people here who just could not believe Labor’s ‘ground game’ in the 2014 State election, and again in the 2016 federal one, and again this time.
“Advance Australia” will just never get enough boots on the ground or phones – unless there are many more anti-semites who believe Maurice Newman than I think there are.
GG
Yes I had a shudder when I saw someone post that “50” but looking at them I feel that is very conservative. Mildura for instance has been put back in doubtful, but with over 80% counted the National would have to win over 56.5% of the other 20% to win – can’t see that happening.
Hawthorn just flipped. Libs just in front.
RR, the process works. It’s people-based, it’s interactive and has organic momentum and is democratic.
I agree…..it’s really awesome 🙂
“The biggest winner might be Glen Druery’s bank balance.”
No, the biggest winner tonight was the Australian Labor Party.
They likely have a thumping majority and up to 19 lower house seats with perhaps 11 cross benchers of which as few as one will be a green.
This sets Labor up nicely. Next redistribution will help Labor and projects are humming along nicely to deliver to the community. Solid majority and it seems manageable upper house. State finances are in good position and Labor has already laid down plans for next term’s agenda.
Scale of victory will be smaller once all the postals come in etc but it is still a landslide given the seat distribution and electoral pendulum.
Well blow me down. Truth begins to emerge.
The Angry Goddess
@Bishop64
3h3 hours ago
More
One senior Liberal MP told Fairfax Media that Mr Dutton’s claim in January that Victorians were “scared to go out to restaurants” because of “African gang violence” had caused enormous damage in the state. #VicElection2018 #auspol
Democratic interaction beats ideology every single time.
With the greens on .8 of a quota in southern metro and 13.7% of people voting below the line there I’d think they are still a pretty good shot there.
Roger says:
Sunday, November 25, 2018 at 12:29 am
……the biggest winner tonight was the Australian Labor Party.
They likely have a thumping majority and up to 19 lower house seats with perhaps 11 cross benchers of which as few as one will be a green.
Quite right. Labor’s antagonists have been politically disabled.
I’ve fixed the Preston problem (on the main display page, at least). This turns out to have been the VEC’s fault — I’ve put in a fudge to correct for a peculiarity in their results feed.
briefly
The 2013 Federal election may eventually be seen as a turning point. Labor’s ground game since then has generally blown away the opposition. Leading to much narrower Coalition wins when they were expecting blowouts (NSW 2015, Federal 2016, Tasmania 2018), and likewise Labor winning some elections much more easily than predicted (WA, Vic, NT). And of course the most stunning comeback ever in Queensland 2015.
The only Labor governments to fall in that time have been Tasmania 2014 and South Australia 2018, both after 16 years of Labor government.
briefly @ #691 Sunday, November 25th, 2018 – 12:37 am
It’s like that operation that race trainers use to make colts more tractable and genuine.
Labor lead by 72 votes in Brunswick
John Pesutto (LP) in Hawthorn is now at 50.09% of the 2PP vote with early and postal votes now counted.
GG…. they have been scratched 🙂
Caulfield just tightened. Labor on 50.9%
Pesutto has enough presence of mind to lead the Vic Libs….
Doubtless, he will therefore never get the gig even if he survives the election.
And that’s before Absentees, which the greens normally do well in.