Victorian election: photo finishes

A closer look at the yet-to-be-decided seats for the Victorian election.

A full display of the election results, with complete booth figures, swings and probability estimates, can be found here. This will be updated with the latest figures at irregular intervals.

Tuesday afternoon

4pm. Ali Cupper has reportedly emerged the winner in Mildura after distribution of preferences by 254 votes.

2pm. No official figures available, but the preference count in Prahran has established that Greens incumbent Sam Hibbins has prevailed over Labor’s Neil Pharaoh, apparently by around 200 votes, with the latter conceding defeat on social media. So the Greens have maintained their lower house status quo of three seats, losing Northcote but gaining Brunswick, although they stand to be gutted in the upper house, where they went in with five and will come out with one or two.

Tuesday morning

Preference distributions will apparently start being conducted today, and it doesn’t seem there are more than tiny handfuls of votes remaining to be cleared up in the primary and two-party counts. So unless the preference distribution process turns up a misplaced bundle, it would seem Labor has won Bayswater and Hawthorn, the Liberals have held on in Caulfield and Ripon, and independent Ali Cupper has scraped home in Mildura. The only significant action in the close seat counts yesterday was in Caulfield, where postals continued to save the day for David Southwick, the latest batch favouring him 145-61 and extending his lead from 338 to 410.

Monday morning

The most interesting development over the weekend from my perch was that 525 postals were added in Mildura, which cut Ali Cupper’s lead from 252 to 189. With the dealine for postals to arrive being tomorrow at 5pm, there will presumably be only one more, smaller batch to go, and very little chance that it will overturn Cupper’s lead. Tiny additions to the vote in Hawthorn and Ripon made no appreciable difference to the situation there, as related in the previous entry. Kevin Bonham has been doing good work following the count in Prahran, where only scrutineers’ reports offer any guidance as to the flow of preferences between the Greens and Labor, which stands to decide the result. Suffice to say that it’s going to be very close. The other potential wild cards when preferences are distributed are Melton and Benambra, which Labor and Liberal respectively have at least some chance of losing to independents. Then there’s the upper house …

Friday evening

Just as my interest in the count was winding down, along comes Caulfield — Liberal member David Southwick led by 1101 yesterday, and trails by 118 today. Southwick is one of three Liberals on very narrow deficits, hoping they might be overturned on the final batch of postals. The damage to Southwick was done on absents — not so much due to the swing, which was actually modest (3.6% to Labor, compared with 7.0% of ordinary votes), but the surprisingly high number cast (5692 as compared with 3130 in 2014). Labor scored over 60%, for a split of 3439-2253. Postal votes have been overwhelmingly favouring Southwick — 2682 to 1030, or 72.3-27.7 — so it will only take a small number of late arrivals behaving according to form to get his nose back in front. But there will very little in it either way.

Provisionals and a handful of pre-polls have made next to no difference in Hawthorn, where the Labor lead goes from 156 to 163. A big day of counting in Ripon (or maybe two — I don’t think I looked closely at the numbers yesterday) has failed to settle the matter — Labor has moved to a razor-thin 73 vote lead due to the latest pre-polls, which they won 2211-2059. There was nothing in it on absents (1296 to Labor and 1289 to Liberal), and Labor made their usual small gain on provisionals (147 to 124).

In Mildura, independent Ali Cupper got a handy 195-144 break on provisionals, cancelling out a 41-22 loss on pre-polls and 20-10 on absents in a race where every vote counts. She now leads by 303 votes, which will presumably be enough.

Friday morning

As the count dries up, the in doubt seats are increasingly looking less so. Labor’s lead in Hawthorn grew from 47 to 156 yesterday, as they gained the edge on absents (281-207), postals (109-86) and pre-polls (27-15). They should gain a bit more when provisionals are added, leaving John Pesutto needing something pretty extraordinary on late postals. Labor’s lead nudged from 236 to 266 in Bayswater, after provisionals broke 120-88 their way and postals went 69-67 to the Liberals. The Greens’ lead in Brunswick grew from 353 to 414 with small additions of absents, postals and pre-polls, at which point you would be pretty much calling it. It no longer seems necessary to continue following Nepean, where Labor leads by 794, or Sandringham, where the Liberals lead by 451. No progress today in Mildura, where independent Ali Cupper leads the Nationals by 281.

Thursday morning

Another good day for Labor overall, who seem to be doing better from votes cast out-of-district, whether as absent votes or pre-polls, than the in-district pre-poll votes that were counted on election night. However, I’m not clear if absent votes are all being added in one hit per electorate, or if further additions can yet be anticipated where results have already appeared. I’m tending to think the latter — since absents are usually the best part of late counting for Labor, a fair bit hinges on this.

In Hawthorn, absent votes turned yesterday’s 235-vote Liberal lead into a Labor lead of 47. Labor got 56.8% out of 2498 absents, above the 53.0% I was projecting. I was also projecting there would be 3792 in total, so I am guessing there are another 1000 or so still out there. These will be decisive if so, but it can’t be said how they might behave — batches of absent votes can behave very differently depending where they were sourced from. The Liberals also got only 50.7% out of 4242 new pre-polls (2150 to 2092) added yesterday, compared with their 56.3% of the first 7148 counted.

Things continue to go Labor’s way in Bayswater, where their lead grew yesterday from 165 to 236. Labor got 55.2% of the absents added yesterday — exactly as I had anticipated, but they were 2705 in total rather than my projected 2054. It was also a good day for Labor in Nepean, where they won a batch of 3673 new pre-polls 1903-1770 — 51.8% compared with their 46.4% from the first 14,903. Labor now leads by 492, and most of the outstanding votes are likely to be absents, none of which have been added, so the balance would seem to be tipping their Labor. My lineball projection as of yesterday is now for a Labor winning margin of 0.5%.

One late counting bright spot for the Liberals is Sandringham, where 4464 new pre-polls behaved very much like the first 9424 in breaking 2489-1975 their way. Furthermore, absent votes were added and while they went 1139-884 to Labor, there were less of them than I was anticipating (2023 rather than a projected 2566). However, I’m not sure if this is all of them or not. In any case, the Liberal lead is now 497, and with only a few scraps still outstanding, this will be hard for Labor to rein in.

The Greens’ lead in Brunswick grew from 218 to 353, but they underperformed my projection out of 2653 absent votes counted in Brunswick, scoring 1475 to Labor’s 1178 — 55.6% compared with my projected 61.8%. However, that’s also about 1000 less than I was projecting, so there are presumably more of these to come. There would seem to be another 2000 of these as well. Labor will need about 56% of what’s to come.

The Nationals have come storming home in Mildura, being overwhelmingly dominant on the small number of absent votes (575 to independent Ali Cupper’s 227), and reversing earlier form to win a batch of pre-polls 870 to 640. This slashed Cupper’s lead from 859 to 281. My earlier judgement was that the number of votes outstanding here was too small for the Nationals to close the gap, and that probably still holds, as I believe there are only a few hundred postals still to come.

Nothing today from Ripon.

Wednesday morning

Labor solidly outperformed my projections yesterday in Bayswater, scoring almost exactly half of 4559 pre-polls added, where they only got 46.1% of the first 8383. They also won 52.1% of 674 postals, after scoring only 39.6% of the 2217 counted on election night, did about as well on absents as anticipated, winning 1132-922. That gives Labor a lead of 165, or 0.2% – with not much of the vote outstanding, my projection has it coming down to 0.1%, but Labor will more likely than not continue outperforming its assumptions.

Better news for the Liberals from Ripon, where 889 postals broke 535-354 to Liberal (60.2% compared with 58.0% in the first 3735) and pre-polls went 393-304 (56.4% compared with 51.0% of the first 3302). My Liberal projection has gone from 49.9% to 50.2%, but here too the number of postals received has exceeded my projection, so if anything it might be understating their chances. That said, the margin is narrow enough that a good pre-poll batch or better than expected show on absents for Labor could up-end it. Swings and roundabouts in Nepean, where the Liberals went below par on yesterday’s postals (360-297 in their favour, or 54.8% compared with 59.2% in the election night batch of 2341), but above par on pre-polls (587-357, 62.2% compared with 53.0% of the first 13,959). Before I was projecting a 134 vote win for Labor, now it’s 26 votes for Liberal.

The Liberal lead in Hawthorn increased yesterday from 53 to 235, but only postals were added, and these were slightly less favourable to the Liberals than those counted on election night, bringing my projected final Liberal margin down from 1.1% to 0.8%. The election night postals went Liberal 1104 (60.4%) and Labor 725 (39.6%), but yesterday’s batch went Labor 1115 (54.3%) and Liberal 937 (45.7%). No further pre-polls have been added, and the outstanding ones may yet surprise in either direction. Then there are absents, which I am projecting Labor to do well on, though evidently not well enough.

The Greens are firming in Brunswick: they won a second batch of postals 442-426, after losing the election night count 950-699, and they won a batch of absents 811-537, exactly the proportion anticipated when I projected them to win by 1.0%.

Tuesday afternoon

Labor leads on the raw count with about a third done in Morwell, but my projection is that this will flip when the outstanding votes are in — Northe is on track to receive about 70% of preferences, in which case he wins 52-48 (I conducted a regression analysis to test whether the existing preference count was representative of the whole, and found that it was). Better news for Labor in Geelong, where Christine Couzens leads Darryn Lyons, and Pascoe Vale, where Lizzie Blandthorn leads Oscar Yildiz 59.0-41.0. In Shepparton, Suzanna Sheed looks seat to emerge with 54% to 55% against the Liberal candidate.

Tuesday morning

With very little counting done yesterday, the chief news is that the Victorian Electoral Commission announced it is conducting new preference throws to indicate the likely winners Morwell (independent versus Labor), Geelong (Labor versus independent), Pascoe Vale (Labor versus independent) and Shepparton (independent versus Liberal), and will publish the results later today. The removal of the two-party numbers from the media feed caused my results reporting facility to conk out, so the figures it show remain those from Sunday.

The only thing I know so far about the new preference throws is that the Pascoe Vale pre-poll count has broken 6059-6008 for Labor’s Lizzie Bladthorn over independent Oscar Yildiz, as related by Richard Willingham of The Age. This suggests the advantage to Yildiz on preferences is only 53-47, in which case Blandthorn would win handily with between 54% and 55%. Independents Russell Northe and Darryn Lyons will respectively need around 72% and 66% of preferences in Morwell and Geelong. The deal in Shepparton is that it’s the Liberals rather than the Nationals who finished second, but unless I’m missing something, it would seem to me that Suzanna Sheed is home and hosed in either case.

The only change in the seven seats where I felt the existing notional counts were following was in Ripon, where a batch of pre-polls broke 587-357 to the Liberals – 63% compared with their earlier 53%. This means my projection has gone from 0.1% in favour of Labor to 0.1% in favour of Liberal. The votes counted totals for the upper house have edged up from the forties to the fifties, but I’m still holding off looking into them in detail.

Sunday night

If you want real detail on the likely course of the late count, Kevin Bonham is your man. For starters, I will content myself with the following projections of how the undecided seats where the correct two candidates have been picked for the notional preference count stand to play out. As explained below, there are methodogical details that one might well think imperfect, but if nothing else, consider it a conversation starter.

This assumes that a) outstanding pre-polls will break the same way as those already counted, and the number outstanding is as indicated by the relevant figures from the Victorian Electoral Commission; b) postals will break the same way as those already counted, with the total number to be counted equal to the total in 2014 adjusted in proportion to the growth in enrolment since that time; c) absent votes will differ from non-absent votes in the same way they did in 2014, with the total number determined the same way as for postals. No account is made for provisionals, which should throw a handful of extra votes Labor’s way.

This makes it clear enough that the Liberals should get home in Hawthorn, Sandringham and probably Bayswater, but Nepean and Ripon will go right down to the wire. The Greens’ traditionally strong showing on absent votes should see them home in Brunswick, and it seems likely independent Ali Cupper will gain Mildura from the Nationals. I was circumspect about this in my post last night, as I expected the Nationals would do well on postals – but it turns out that, for whatever reason, very few postals are cast in Mildura. Indeed, it ranks last in the state for number of postal votes received, according to the VEC’s figures.

Then there are the in doubt seats for which the two-party count doesn’t offer an insight. Prahran will be won by whoever out of Greens incumbent Sam Hibbins and Labor’s Neil Pharoah survives the second last exclusion on preferences, which will be absolutely touch and go. Then there is my watch list of five seats (not counting Mildura) that could potentially be won by independents, as discussed in my previous post. Morwell could stay with Nationals-turned-independent member Russell Northe, and will go to Labor if it doesn’t; the Liberals might lose Benambra; Labor might lose Geelong, Melton and Pascoe Vale.

That leaves Labor with 49 seats nailed down, on top of which they might keep Geelong, Melton and Pascoe Vale, and gain Prahran, Nepean, Ripon and Morwell. The Coalition have 27 seats in the bag, including Hawthorn, Sandringham and (perhaps generously) Bayswater, on top of which they might keep Nepean, Ripon and Benambra. I’m pretty sure the Greens will have Brunswick in addition to Melbourne, and are lineball to keep Prahran. I’m giving Mildura as well as Shepparton to independents, to which it’s at least possible to add another five.

As for the upper house, we’re still at too early a stage in the count for me to be bothered putting my oar in – only election day votes have thus far been counted, and an increasing number of voters have finally got the message about the advisability of voting below the line (requiring the numbering of only five boxes in the case of Victorian state elections). However, it looks fairly clear that there will indeed be a spectacular array of micro-parties on the cross bench, and that the principal casualty of this phenomenon is the Greens.

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.

457 comments on “Victorian election: photo finishes”

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  1. Ven @ 4:17 pm
    What is happening in Caldwell?

    Greensborough Growler @ 5:28 pm
    Caldwell is a Federal Electorate, comrade!

    In fact, the electorate is Calwell, named after Arthur.

  2. Toby,
    So why was Jake Finnegan arrested and not Andrews? Why the little fish and not the big ones?
    Are you seriously suggesting that if the roles were reversed and Guy refused to conoperate with a criminal probe the ALP would have been okay with that?

  3. Just listened to that podcast – yeah, it’s worth a listen, especially Laura Tingle’s comments. Fran’s closing song effort was a bit of a hoot too.

    The opening to the US NPR politics podcast seems to be recorded by a listener each week. This week it was a guy with an Australian accent who explained that he was from Melbourne. He’d just voted in his State election. He’d had to vote, but he got his sausage and all was OK.

    The US hosts on the panel were understandably intrigued by the sausage thing – they were saying: What – so the deal is the Government makes you vote, but they give you a sausage?

  4. James Campbell

    Verified account

    @J_C_Campbell
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    Labor scrutineers are saying they are now in front in Caulfield by about 70 votes after rechecks. There about 1000 or so provisional, absents and postals left to count. Labor claim late postals are breaking their way

  5. Anybody who’s on tenterhooks about Prahran should be just about ready to commit mass murder at the VEC by now. The 2pp figures keep getting updated, but the bit that counts – the primaries – haven’t got past where they were on Sunday. Unbelievable.

  6. The 2pp figures keep getting updated, but the bit that counts – the primaries – haven’t got past where they were on Sunday. Unbelievable.

    They are being updated, but only in the “Primary results by voting centre for Prahran District (Excel)” excel file. With it 83% counted it looks pretty good for the greens, as they’re only 0.85% behind the ALP, which is less than last time, but who knows if preferences will behave the same or differently.

  7. Wow. really something if Caulfield is lost. Guy’s promise to move the trade office or whatever it is from Tel-Aviv to Jerusalem seemed incredibly stupid, but i guess there was so much stupid in their platform it didn’t stand out that much. Seems like they may have had polling data suggesting Caulfield was at risk

  8. Thanks, areaman.

    It’s still unbelievable that such vital info would be buried like that, with completely misleading numbers on the front page.

  9. Ante – I had been thinking the same about Prahran. Why keep just updating the 2PP when that’s not even a race (the Liberals have well & truly been thumped regardless of their opponent) instead of updating the primary votes which will determine their opponent??

    However, I didn’t realise the Excel file was actually being updated. Thanks areaman!!

    Just had a look and the Greens are 338 votes behind Labor at the moment. There are 3384 minor party votes to be distributed at this stage so that’s certainly not an impossible task, but realistically Animal Justice are the only party the Greens are likely to get the majority of preferences from.

    Labour DLP should split between ALP (confused voters) and LIB (genuine DLP support & donkey votes); Reason I expect to be 50/50 between ALP & Green; Sustainable mostly LIB with maybe a few strays to the Greens from voters confused by their name; Battler probably an ALP-LIB split; who knows with the independent but he barely has any votes anyway.

    Based on that I think the Greens would need the AJP votes to break to them somewhere around the 650-200 mark to have a chance to win and ALP would have to be the current favourites..

  10. In Prahran 2014 there were 837 Animal Justice votes and 838 other minor party votes to be distributed.

    This year there are 844 Animal Justice votes and over 2500 other minor party votes to be distributed.

    I think Neil Pharoah has most likely won Prahran based on those numbers.

  11. Last time AJP went 57% to the greens, 19% to the ALP and 23% to the libs which would be a net gain of about 320 votes for the greens.

    Don’t forget there are still probably another 2500 votes to be counted, and do they behave like the early post poll counting, which was good for the ALP, or like the late counting, which has been good for the greens.


  12. max says:
    Friday, November 30, 2018 at 11:35 am
    Wow. really something if Caulfield is lost. Guy’s promise to move the trade office or whatever it is from Tel-Aviv to Jerusalem seemed incredibly stupid, but i guess there was so much stupid in their platform it didn’t stand out that much. Seems like they may have had polling data suggesting Caulfield was at risk

    Trent
    Libs are currently leading by 40 votes in Caulfield. Can you clarify why the total vote count is still 60.7 %

  13. Trent,

    I’m not sure how you arrive at that conclusion.

    Firstly, the gap between Greens and Labor is less than it was at the same stage of the count last time.

    Secondly, when it was called the Sex Party, Reason’s preferences flowed moderately strongly to the Greens, except in Richmond where the Greens had (and still have) an unpopular candidate. Frustratingly, I can’t find if and where Reason directed preferences in Prahran this time.

    Thirdly, voters for unheard-of micro parties have a habit of putting the two major parties last and second last (ask any scrutineer).

    Putting all that together, unless Reason has directed preferences to Labor over some local issue, I would have the Greens as favourites at this point.

  14. Good analysis of Prahran, Trent.

    I initially had Hibbins slight favourites as I had thought that absentees would peg the lead back enough to get him over the top with marginally better preference flows.

    Looking at that primaries spreadsheet, it looks like the advantage on the absentees counted so far has been quite modest, with only a 21 vote advantage.

    Far from over but I think Pharaoh is favourite from here though still only marginally. The AJP flowed pretty strongly to the Greens last time

  15. The 69.7% counted is just primary vote count that has been rechecked and doesn’t include the absents and late portals, while the 2PP count which now has a 40 vote margin includes everything that has been counted so far but not all of it has been rechecked.


  16. Ante Meridian says:
    Friday, November 30, 2018 at 12:14 pm

    You have pessimistic about ALP chances in Victoria from the beginning( i.e.since election is called).
    Are you expecting ALP to win all 88 seats? 🙂


  17. Trent says:
    Friday, November 30, 2018 at 12:17 pm
    while the 2PP count which now has a 40 vote margin includes everything that has been counted so far but not all of it has been rechecked.

    Are you saying that 2PP includes postals & absents but 69.7% only includes just PV on election day?

  18. Secondly, when it was called the Sex Party, Reason’s preferences flowed moderately strongly to the Greens, except in Richmond where the Greens had (and still have) an unpopular candidate.

    Are you sure about that? In the northcote by-election, and at albert park in the 2014 election the sex party votes went slightly to the alp.

  19. So I had a small bet on Caulfield going to ALP but ladbrokes decided seat was a Lib retain amd bet was a loss. What happens if ALP end up winning ? Do they pay it out and reverse earlier decision?

  20. Ven,

    True, provided “pessimistic” means expecting them to be returned with only a one or two seat larger majority. And in my defence, I was basing my predictions on the opinion polls which weren’t entirely accurate.

  21. Roger and Ante – Hibbins hasn’t really had a significant advantage in any of the vote types yet for the remaining votes to do a whole lot I don’t think.

    In regards to preferences, Reason did direct preferences to ALP over Greens but I don’t think that will make much difference which is why I think around d 50/50 or a slight advantage to Greens at best.

    I agree with Roger that it’s far from over but on current counting, ALP seem to have a slight edge.

    One more point is that nothing in 2018 has broken particularly similarly to 2014 so far so I wouldn’t put a whole lot of value in how things flowed in the last election, apart from noting that AJP makes up a far smaller proportion of the “Other” vote this time around.

  22. :
    Gorks says:
    Friday, November 30, 2018 at 12:22 pm
    So I had a small bet on Caulfield going to ALP but ladbrokes decided seat was a Lib retain amd bet was a loss. What happens if ALP end up winning ? Do they pay it out and reverse earlier decision?

    Logically they should pay you because they did not wait till the end. It is better to check with them if and when ALP wins Caulfield. If they don’t pay you sue them

  23. Ven – Re Caulfield’s count, yep.

    The 69% is missing all absents plus a number of postal and pre-poll because they haven’t been rechecked yet; the 2PP includes all of them so is likely over 80%.


  24. Trent says:
    Friday, November 30, 2018 at 12:29 pm

    It will be fantastic if ALP wins Caulfield & Hawthorne because Federal Libs will go absolutely ballistic. Brighton, Caulfield & Hawthorne are like Wentworth. It proves that ‘moderate’ lib voters have deserted LNP.

  25. Ven

    Brighton, Caulfield & Hawthorne are like Wentworth

    ________________________________

    So, not where ‘real Australians’ live! 😀

  26. Gorks, if Labor wins Caulfield – unless the outcome specifies “once Antony Green calls it” – they’ll have to pay up if Labor belatedly wins Caulfield

  27. Yep, particularly Hawthorn which only has a single booth (“Glenferrie” near the university) that Labor would ever win the 2PP in, and even then only narrowly.

    Brighton is a similar story although that one at least contains an entire suburb that leans ALP/Greens (Elwood).

    Caulfield is a little more mixed because it includes quite a bit of marginal (Elsternwick & Glen Huntly) and safe ALP/Greens territory (Balaclava, St Kilda East and its tiny portion of St Kilda), but the Liberal vote is just so strong in Caulfield itself and the postals are such a huge factor there that it’s remained relatively safe until now.

    On the Caulfield 2PP count, provisional haven’t been counted yet and they alone should be enough to erase the Liberals’ 40 vote lead. So if the scrutineer report is right that rechecking is actually shifting more votes into the Labor column and there are still about 1000 votes left which are breaking to Labor, Caulfield’s unexpected shift could be the story of the day!

  28. Ripon is showing the value of a second-term surge in a rural electorate, desperately holding out while seats on much greater margins have been swept away.

  29. It seems surreal that in 4 years time when all the seat profiles for the 2022 election are published, we could be looking at Hawthorn & Caulfield as marginal Labor seats, with the Liberals holding Brighton & Sandringham on margins of less than 1%.

    What a contrast to this election where Albert Park & Bentleigh, both of which will have Labor margins of 12-13%, were considered possible Liberal gains.

  30. Trent,

    Indeed, truly amazing.

    But wait, there’s more. The impending re-distribution may deliver more seats for Labor next time round as well.

  31. At the last two changes of government in Victoria (1999 and 2010), the opposition gained 13 seats. On its own, this stat might suggest the Coalition is in with an outside chance 4 years from now, provided Labor loses a seat or two to independents as well. However, neither Steve Bracks or Ted Baillieu were facing a phalanx of seats protected by the second-term surge.

    Unless Daniel Andrews behaves with breathtaking arrogance, a la Campbell Newman, a third term should be a certainty.

  32. @Torchbearer: “Re Trent- that also highlights the enormous task the Liberals have in 2022 to win a majority…”

    Very much so!

    Although even in a bad election they will almost certainly reclaim seats like Hawthorn & Caulfield (if they go on to lose them) and “make Brighton & Sandringham safe again”, to paraphrase one of their election slogans, the very fact that they will have to put their resources and effort into reclaiming or retaining Liberal territory like Hawthorn, Caulfield, Brighton, Sandringham, Bayswater, Mt Waverley, Forest Hill & Ringwood instead of fighting the traditional sandbelt battle, really shows just how far they have to climb.

    Unless some colossal disaster happens for Labor in the next 4 years, the Liberals will be out of the race in their previously targeted seats like Bentleigh, Mordialloc, Carrum, Albert Park & Prahran until at least 2026.

    And as GG highlights, a redistribution could make that even harder for them. Even small changes such as moving Prahran’s section of Toorak across to Malvern could effectively take them out of the Prahran race indefinitely.

  33. I’d agree that ALP looks slightly favoured in Prahran on current numbers. I certainly expect Greens to get a net gain of a few hundred from all minors combined other than DLP.

    A lot will turn on how many of those DLP votes are ‘confused’ ALP voters (as described above). If as many as 70% of them end up on Lib pile it might be advantage Greens.

    Beating the 31 vote margin (at the ALP exclusion) from last time might be tough but it’s on the cards!

  34. Just out of Interest does anyone have an update on Benambra?

    In relation to Brighton the next redistribution should see it move north as it is under average and Albert Park is above average

    Depending on the actual numbers in 2 years and further projections, Brighton could loose part of its southern end as well

    On election Day figures, Albert Park is 2015 voters above average and Brighton is 1,710 voters under average

  35. @ Trent

    Prahran, on VEC election day enrollments is 3,439 voters above average and will have to lose a lot more electors than that due to its growth rates

    Malvern is 4036 voters under average while Caulfield is 1,712 under average

    I agree that Toorak could go into Malvern and the other option for the VEC is to put part of Prahran into the Seat of Caulfield

  36. CM

    I’m keeping an eye on the Benambra figures. VEC still sticks to Liberal/Labor for the 2PP; I’ve been informed by one of the head office apparatchiks that the ALP scrutineers are calling it 52/48 with the 2PP for the indie.

    However, over the last few days Labor’s vote has improved slightly (and slightly is the word) — which might be enough to keep the 2PP Liberal/Labor.

    Ironically, if that’s the result, officially there will have been little movement, whereas if the Indie finishes in the 2PP it would be closer.

    I haven’t picked up wild excitement from any side and I follow quite a few of the key players on twitter etc.

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