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.
Ven: I was onto it yesterday when Labor scrutineers started making noises but the main issue with Caulfield is a massive increase in the absent vote. For some reason unknown to me, absents in Caulfield jumped from 3287 to at least 5563. There was only a swing of 3% in these absents but having all those extra absents at 60-40 apiece makes a big difference.
This sort of thing is why I’ve been just calling seats “apparently won” and not “called”.
Over the years it has struck me that the Victorian Liberal Party is a fundamentally lazy organisation and that 2018 is the year when the electoral chickens have really come home to roost. They seem to have made no effort to build up support in outer Melbourne in particular. Areas with similar demographics in Sydney would be voting Liberal – even in a bad year. The difference is about 10% points. Pakenham does not seem dissimilar to Camden say – and the Libs in Camden at the 2016 election were in the mid 60s and in Pakenham at about 52. The Libs have allowed Labor to build up massive majorities in the western suburbs – if Point Cook was in Sydney – it would be (have been) voting Liberal comfortably.
And there are places where they used to be competitive – Ballarat and Geelong come to mind – which now seem to be Labor fortresses.
The NSW Libs made a concerted effort from the 80s to push into the western suburbs – in the 70s Penrith was a Labor stronghold and is now the election setter.
Who knows it might be terminal?
Yeah I think there is a pretty characteristic wishful thinking on behalf of the Greens and their fellow travellers going on here
In terms of the inner city lower house seats:
-the Greens vote has been growing over the last decade or so in significant disproportion to its general vote on the back of gentrification of those seats (and to a lessor extent narrow casting and heavily skewing its campaign resources in that seat. there have been four more years of gentrification in those seats
-the Greens have in the previous two elections been disadvantaged by the Libs directing preferences to Labor, which they didn’t do this time round. For some reason people, on no evidence, are asserting that Libs voters have just directly voted for Labor instead.
Also the SSM and another four years of younger cohorts that disproportionately vote Greens should also have lifted their base vote
As someone who lives in inner Melbourne, I know multiple previous Greens voters who have now shifted to Labor, mostly likely for keeps. It is the politically disengaged “rusted on” Green voters that, in my experience, have been less likely to shift back to Labor.
As much as a shocker of an election, the apparent inability of the Greens to soberly assess their situation should be a big cause for concern for them. At a state level, for the next four years, they are barely relevant
Leaves behind a basket case.
”
Ven says:
Friday, November 30, 2018 at 12:08 pm
The difference in Brighton is 676 in favour of Libs as of 30 minutes ago
”
Now the difference is 642 with 84.2 % counted.
In Caulfield Libs are leading by 7 votes with 82.6% counted
Kroger leaves the Victorian Liberal Party in worse shape than he when found it, and it was in pretty bad shape then.
On the plus side for him, he’ll have more time to shop for Burberry trench coats.
Caulfield update
Two candidate preferred vote
Candidate Party Preferred votes % of preferred votes
SOUTHWICK, David LIBERAL 18097 49.84%
GRASSO, Sorina AUSTRALIAN LABOR PARTY 18215 50.16%
ntony Green
Verified account
@AntonyGreenABC
10h10 hours ago
More
Labor have won 30 seats on first preferences (up from 15 in 2014), the Liberal Party six (down from 23) and the Nationals an unchanged five. Labor won 10 from 2nd place on preferences in 2010 and 2014, look to be about same number (in different seats) in 2018 #vicvotes
@roger – ‘shocking’ is perhaps an overstatement.
Greens went from 2 lower house seats at last election to (probably) 3 at this election. A swing against them in total votes 0.8% at the moment but the swing has been dropping as absents come in. I suspect (with no evidence) that most of that swing was to AJP and would return to the Greens in a 3CP tally in the lower house.
Where the Greens has a shocker was in dealing with Druery
Ultimately, the lessons the Greens need to learn are not what I suspect you think they should learn.
1) like all the other parties, talk down your chances. Under promise, over deliver.
2) fight Glen druery. Set up alternative alliances on the left. Whatever you need to do.
3) Vet your candidates better. Find dirt on Labor candidates so it’s not so tempting for labor to find or make up stuff on greens candidates.
Voice Endeavour @ #310 Friday, November 30th, 2018 – 8:50 pm
Anyone remember the Democrats?
Neither do the voters.
The problem with fighting Druery is that the Greens are innately disadvantaged in playing the preference-harvesting game. The main reason they are disadvantaged is that they get too many votes and therefore nobody wants to do preference deals with them because they rarely get excluded. It is more profitable to deal with other micros, especially since you will get cut out of deals involving other micros if you don’t. So even Green-leaning micros will often deal with right-leaning micros in preference to dealing with the Greens, because they are more likely to win seats that way.
Maybe organised infiltration of left micros by Green spies??
If I could work out a way to wreck Druery preference harvesting within that system it would give me great satisfaction to make it freely public at no charge. However I don’t think there is one. May just have to wait until Victoria gets a government and upper house that wants to change it.
Ben Raue’s most recent podcast quoted an ALP member (I forget which, but it was one of the western suburbs MPs) saying unofficially that he reckoned there was bipartisan support for reform before 2022.
There were still more absents added to the count in Caulfield which means absents there very nearly doubled even with the rise in pre-poll voting. This doesn’t seem to have happened in surrounding electorates and is currently quite baffling.
Expat – it was Cesar Melham. Ben’s guests also made the point, similar to Voice Endeavour, that overall the Greens’ performance electorally in 2018 was hardly changed relative to 2014. There was a big difference in the LC outcome – primarily due to the Druery factor.
They’ve done the full throw in Melbourne and the Reason preferences went 929 vs 644 to the greens, which would probably push Hibbins over the top if replicated in Prahran.
The VEC table has a glitch – it doesn’t show that the Liberal candidate also received 320 when Close was excluded. That means the Green gain on those votes (with Liberal and Labor still in the field) was 0.15 votes per vote.
Yesterday I did a projection for Prahran which had the Greens over Labor by 190. If I plug in the preference flows from Melbourne for AJP and FPRP that drops to about 50. The Labour DLP flow and how much of it is donkey vote is hard to estimate.
Kevin,
The way to wreck Druery is to act like Durery. You just need enough candidates to form enough political parties. The Australian Democracy sausage alliance Party, etc. Do not disclose your affiliations and ensure that your preferences go through all of the other related parties that you have and make sure that Druerys lot are last. Ensure that you have 3 or more groups of groups to out number Druery. I reckon that will work. Once and only once.
Laura Tingle in the Fin Review…
Something feels like it has snapped in Canberra this week. Years of sometimes bizarre rhetoric from the right of the Coalition, arguments about how it was going to lose because of the threat from the right and One Nation, about how it was in trouble because it had moved too far to the “left”, have fallen silent.
“No one is talking about the threat from the right and One Nation just now.
While the government insists there are no lessons from the repeated wallopings it has been receiving in federal and state elections and byelections, the threat is from the centre ground of politics, a place to which the Coalition appears to have lost the co-ordinates.”
It is government imploding before our eyes. One should takeno pleasure in this. Australia is a laughing stock on the world stage. A government thats only prepared toshow up in Parliament for 10 days in the next 8 months. The onlyupside is the more they dig in the more they consign the LNP to a footnote in Australian political history of the 2020s.
I’m taking pleasure in it and I’m damn right to do so. The destruction the Libs are bringing on themselves is no where near what they deserve for their disgraceful behaviour over the past decade. The only way they or any other political grouping who heads down the path of destruction for base political gain will ever learn not to go there is if the voters give them an utter thrashing for their troubles.
We should all rejoice that such a thrashing seems to be awaiting nothing but the date for delivery. And then rejoice again during the act of delivering it, and rejoice again in the aftermath.
“Let’s hope that Hibbins (GRN) defeats Pharaoh (ALP) in Prahran.”
Let’s not.
Ok Ratsak… I get where you are coming from. What gets me is the trashing of our status on the world stage. We are a low to middle ranking state that historically has punched above our our weight. But this Gov has trashed that reputation. It will take years to rebuild some semblance of credibility on the world stage.
Anyone remember the Benny Hill show? I get the same guilty pleasure watching Sky After Dark. Its kinda addictive , they couldn’t possibly go any lower, could they?
Rossmore
A change in government will restore our credibility
The updated VEC results look like Caulfield’s scrutineers were right, 118 vote lead to Labor now. Wow! That really came out of nowhere today. Off the radar as a comfortable Lib retain yesterday, looks like a Labor win today.
A change in government will restore our credibility
Very quickly. And a political annihilation for the fools who trashed it so large that the thought of repeating the folly makes them catatonic will be the best way to ensure that credibility is never trashed again.
Caulfield is as blue blood as you get. And Hawthorn’s gone to the ALP. For years it seemed like QLD ex Brisbane was where federal elections were decided. Not any more, co e on down Melbourne …
And considering the Libs have only held onto Brighton by 0.9%, who knows what would have happened if Labor invested more than $1700 and a 19 year old into the contest!
All the young Tories, the Parly secs, the Chiefs of Staff and advisors are thinkING now, maybe I should have taken tha job at EY, KPMG, DELOITTES…
Not sure if this has been picked up on, but this could explain Labor’s performance in Hawthorn.
John Kennedy!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Kennedy_Sr._(footballer)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Kennedy_Jr._(footballer)
Unfortunately Hayne has not accepted the invitation to amend the Terms of Reference and to call for more time
Those who went to the trouble of attending submissions have been thanked – but ignored
The banks rolled over, going to their government supporting a RC but on their terms and conditions being self reporting – and adding Industry Superannuation Funds looking to hang an attack on Unions to their belt
And Hayne has stuck to the script set by the Major 4 banks and their Chairs
What we have seen however is that incompetence is the Hall mark of the Industry, from Chairs to CEO’s (so what chance have staff got?)
I trust that upon election Shorten re-establishes the RC with the Commissioner beyond reproach
Simply, the banking industry is just far, far too important to the economic and social goals of the Nation and its citizens being Corporate and individuals (including proprietors of Firms) to not be put onto a sustainable and responsible platform of operation
No one has detailed the operation and responsibilities of the banking industry and that absence has been the most telling indictment on Hayne and the RC
What we have heard is white noise, repeated, repeated and repeated again
We have not heard what the Mission Statement of our banks should be
Bankers assess and manage risk – and where the answer is “No” the answer is “No” with the reasons given
The assessment criteria is not and should not be “private business” for the bank
The presentation that Bank executives nervously await the Hayne recommendations (enforced how and by who?) is abject nonsense
If they are not aware of the requirements already they should stand down
Mind you I would not be a Director or a CEO of any bank – the responsibility is just far, far too onerous and exacting
The reason is the sheer number of decisions made by the sheer numbers who make those decisions
So consistency is an impossibility
Hence an independent resolution process is required and where the banks cannot rely on the depth of their pockets to intimidate legal resolution
Those sitting on such a tribunal should be former bankers with pristine reputation
Internally the banks once had a peer group review process in respect advances defaulting into bad and doubtful debt provisioning – and, without notice, the RBA could knock on your door and review a selection of the lending you managed passing comment to the Executive
These processes need to be reestablished
Which comes back to the proper expectation of banks, what they do and why
In the interests of the economic well being of the Nation (so mitigating against any provisioning by rigorous management)
The education of bankers is paramount – they simply have to be cleverer than Accountants because Accountants prepare
Bankers analyse
Before the election there was much talk of the large population of Jewish people, lots of them fairly orthodox, in the Caulfield electorate and whether Morrison’s ‘captain’s call’ on Australia’s Embassy in Israel would affect the outcome.
I have heard from a few sources that it possibly did affect the outcome, though not in the way that the pentecostalist Morrison had assumed.
https://www.pollbludger.net/2018/11/26/victorian-election-photo-finishes-2/comment-page-7/#comment-3016273
The Democrats, like the DLP before them, were in the centre of politics and thus had to walk a very high tightrope of not taking one side or another, although in later years with the centre squeezed by the rightward movement of the ALP an increasing number of Democrats were to the left of the ALP and this created a tension that destroyed the party. The Democrats however lasted longer as a political force than the original DLP, who went from a significant political force that achieved a significant vote getting a Senator in 3 states at the 1970 half-Senate(-only) election to not quite getting a single Senator at the 1974 double dissolution election.
The Greens are to the left of the ALP and thus it is much easier for them to not drive away their voters.
The Democrats and original DLP had much smaller state and local government presences, including never getting elected to the Victorian Parliament in the Democrats case and only once in the original DLP`s case (Richmond 1955, sitting MLA who was previously an ALP MLA), although that was before the reform of the Legislative Council.
The Greens could have had exactly the same vote they had last time in the upper house, and they still would have lost most of their seats entirely due to preference arrangements. This is why the system is stupid.
This was clearly not a great result for the Greens, but it also wasn’t anything like a death knell. The fact that we are talking about them being disappointed with two or three lower-house seats and 10% of the vote is a pretty strong indication of the opposite – this is still a stronger result than any non-Greens minor party has ever achieved anywhere in the country, with the exception of One Nation’s freak 1998 result in Queensland. There’s plenty to gloat about for the anti-Greens crowd without making stuff up – like more solid evidence after Batman that the Greens’ march through the inner city is not so unstoppable after all.
It’s times like this, when I’m a bit unsober and contemplating the effects of that parasite Druery, and the fate of democracy in general, and my optimism levels are not quite as high as perhaps they should be, notwithstanding the Liberals getting the hiding they deserved, and I get to use a word like “notwithstanding” which I don’t get an opportunity to do very often, and my sentences become really long and disjointed, that I seek solace in a Danish rendition of an absolute classic movie soundtrack (the soundtrack is a classic, not the movie). And it helps that the conductor is a spunkrat.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KkM71JPHfjk
The DLP are not and have never been a party of the centre.
The DLP`s voters were largely in the centre, although the party was probably a to the right of most of its voters, possibly more so than most political parties and that is probably part of why it did not last as a significant force for long with an ALP government.
Tom, You obviously weren’t around for the great split or for any of the DLPs initial existence
For your enjoyment:
https://youtu.be/IQwo4bpqO_E
Win or lose, the swing in Caulfield is going to be small by the standards of the southeastern suburbs: around 5% compared with 8+ elsewhere. Looking at the detailed results, I’d interpret that as the Jewish population remaining strongly pro-Liberal whilst the rest of the vote behaved much as the remainder of the region did; the swings at the booths in Caulfield itself were modest (noting that orthodox Jews won’t have voted at booths), and there was no swing at all on postals, whereas booths at the western end of the electorate were more in the 6-10% range.
I presume me with 95% of the votes counted in Prahran, it looks like Greens will retain the seat after preferences. Reason party votes would go to ALP but the rest DLP Animal Justice etc go to Greens or is it more convoluted. ALP not head enough in primary votes or are they in with a squeak still.?
The last place that DLP preferences will go is the Greens. Some will go to Labor but most will end with the Libs and have no role in the end result
I think it will be close with labor favoured
There was bipartisan support in 2014 to reform the undemocratic upper house voting system.
All talk no action then.
Labor’s political strategy to not make moves to reform the system before the 2018 election has paid off by ensuring Greens numbers in the upper house are down from five to one.
Given such positive reinforcement for supporting an undemocratic system, why would Labor want to reform it?
As long as the Liberals surrender to the left they will doom themselves. A case in point is yesterday’s ‘children’s crusade’ about climate change in the CBD. The media’s enthusiastic endorsement of these kids tells us why the indoctrination of our kids in this way is little more than glorified child abuse but where are the Liberals decrying it? If these kids were asked what is C02 I’m willing to bet they would tell you it’s a poison or they don’t know. Equally, if you told them that Co2 was essential to all plants and they would die without it what would there response be? They clearly didn’t write their signs. Can we assume that our education bosses would be just as happy if these kids attended a Reclaim Australia rally or wanted to see Lauren Southern? Of course not. The feds should be suspending education funding if the states don’t stop allowing kids to be used as political pawns like this. No apology. But the Libs won’t of course. They are far too timid and intimidated.
Peg – yes that’s also a view that was expressed on the same podcast. Needless to say these things are all about political calculation, and it was pointed out that the ALP has taken the view that it has a better prospect of getting things through the LC by dealing with individuals representing a number of groups, even very right wing groups, than having to deal with a single bloc of Greens. However the comment by Cesar Melhem was made in the context that people in the ALP were pretty spooked by Druery’s likely success on this occasion and the fact that one person could have such a large influence on the future of the State. I also think that sooner or later the ALP will regret having to deal with a phalanx of conservative Upper House MPs. Had GTV not been around, this last election would most likely have resulted in a clear progressive majority in the LC. However whether the ALP pushes, or allows ,reforms will all come down to political calculation – and regrettably most likely short term political calculation.
It has merit reforming the upper house system in Victoria. The problem I have is the Greens are proposing it.
There are Greens who also propose proportional voting on the House of reps for state and federal. This is where I switch off from the Greens where they basically support reforms that will maximise their electoral advantage rather then being sincere about improving the system.
Caulfield’s voters aren’t particularly rusted onto the Liberals. They definitely lean Liberal but are happy to vote for a Jewish (and particularly pro-Zionist) Labor candidate.
Federally, Caulfield has never been in a Liberal seat I don’t think. It moved from Hotham (Labor) to Melbourne Ports (Labor) in the early 1990s if I’m not mistaken, and while the Caulfield booths still lean Liberal in federal elections, they are a lot closer than in state elections showing the voters will swing to the right Jewish Labor candidate.
(Disclaimer: The “right” candidate being subjective obviously as most people in Melbourne Ports thought Michael Danby was garbage, but he obviously had a Caulfield-centric following that was successful in minimising the Liberal vote in a naturally Liberal area)
Re: Prahran – I’m not going to bother trying to predict it now until the preference distribution is done. It’s way too close to call. I have a feeling a lot of minor preferences will go to the Liberals (DLP, Sustainable, Battler) therefore reducing the pool of preferences to be split between ALP & Greens which should keep it extremely close even if they break favourably for the Greens.
Following on from my Caulfield comments, that means if Sorina Grasso goes onto be successful and win the seat, which it increasingly appears that she will be, it may not be as easy as people expect for the Liberals to win it back.
Incumbency seems to be a big deal in Caulfield as Michael Danby showed. A strong Jewish incumbent on either side of the political spectrum might be hard to unseat if she proves herself to be a strong ally like Michael Danby did, which is something David Southwick didn’t seem to achieve.
There was a federal election which Danny won, where the then seat of Caulfield, on matching booth figures had a Labor majority.. I can’t remember which one it was thou
Didnt DLP preferences flow 75% to ALP in Longman ? There is clear evidence almost half the people who vote DLP do so because of name confusion.
Assuming most people prefer a PR voting system in the upper house, why not copy the German system of requiring all minors/indies to reach a threshold of, say, 4-5%? Such a system would eliminate the micros and is much more democratic when the Greens get just 1 seat with 10% of the vote under the current system. If you fall short of the threshold, your vote then gets distributed.
Also, do we need PR twinned with regional electorates? Why not have PR on a state-wide basis akin with the Senate vote? This would eliminate assorted ratbags such as Vote 1 Local Jobs and anyone advocating a new shooting range in Nar Nar Goon South. Surely the lower house caters best for local issues and the upper house seems better suited to minor parties – not micro parties. Thoughts anyone?
BTW, I’m not – and never will be – a Greens voter, but their situation seems an appalling travesty.