10.28pm. The Nationals look to have gone off the boil in Lismore, in another turn in fortunes for that seat. By this I mean they are trailing Labor in the two-candidate preferred count. But Labor are still coming third behind the Greens on the primary vote, and I think you can give it to the Greens if they stay there.
10.25pm. I’ve been casting around for information on the below-the-line upper house voting rate at past elections. I’ve come up with a figure of 2.1% at the 2011 election, which is lower than I would have thought. If we bump that up to 3%, which is two-thirds of a quota. That leaves well over two quotas for parties whose vote totals we have no idea about. If any one of them — David Leyonhjelm, say, can get about a quarter of that, they should be in business.
10.21pm. Gladys Berejiklian victory speech concluded.
10.16pm. The Legislative Council count is 18.45% through, and while this is completely unmatched and might swing around, we’ve got seven quotas for the Coalition, six for Labor, two for the Greens, one apiece for One Nation and Shooters, and four to be accounted for. The Coalition has enough of a surplus to be in the hunt for one of those; Labor doesn’t, at least on the current numbers. One Nation is in the hunt on the current numbers, but I guess they will fade as more big booths in Sydney report. Ditto Shooters. The Christian Democrats and Animal Justice look possibilities, but I wouldn’t go any further than that. The big wild card is that 2.93 quotas are identified by the Electoral Commission as “others”, that includes not only the outstanding parties, but all below-the-line votes. There is plenty of room in that for David Leyonhjelm, but since it also includes all below-the-lines, we really need more information.
9.46pm. The Nationals now have a handy looking lead in the two-party count against Labor, but the Greens are ahead on the primary vote, and will probably win if they stay there. One way or another, this one’s staying on the watch list.
9.41pm. Michael Daley has conceded to Gladys Berejiklian and will shortly give his concession speech.
9.32pm. The view around the room is that East Hills is falling out of Labor’s reach.
9.18pm. Upper Hunter is very close – I’ve been leaving it off my potential list of Coalition losses. That list has fairly consistently been four or five seats, with its composition changing over time.
9.16pm. Labor have fallen behind in East Hills according to the Nine count, but not the ABC’s (yet). I think you would rather be the Nationals than the Shooters in Barwon at this stage, but nor would you call lit.
9.04pm. Another seat you can’t give away if only because of the slow count is Penrith, where the Liberals are ahead but not by ahead to be definitive about it, with only 22.6% counted on the primary and 12.8% on two-party. Pre-polls could transform the situation here, one way or another, and we may have to wait beyond this evening for a meaningful picture there.
8.58pm. Finally, an update in Auburn, and it’s looking better for Labor now, but will still require monitoring.
8.52pm. Other than that, there have been a number of dogs that haven’t barked. The count in Kogarah is painfully slow, but Labor is in front, and that’s the only evidence of a Chinese backlash effect – Labor has a fairly solid swing in the other supposedly endangered seat, Strathfield. The Nationals have done okay on the northern coast, contrary to expectations. And the Liberals have held up in their south-eastern seats of Goulburn and Bega.
8.50pm. Antony is calling Dubbo as lineball, whereas my sense was that the Nationals were doing okay. So there’s a fifth seat the Coalition might potentially lose.
8.40pm. Hard to identify the six seats that would cost the Coalition its majority. All I’m seeing is East Hills and Coogee to Labor, both only maybes (particularly East Hills). Barwon, under threat from Shooters, is looking better for the Nationals now, but the Shooters continue to look strong in Murray. I would also note that in Auburn, where the count is particularly slow, the very early numbers have the Liberals in the lead.
8.31pm. Labor look like they might win East Hills and Oatley, but beyond that gains for them are hard to identify. Lismore remains a very confusing picture, but the Nationals have strengthened there. Shooters look good in all three of their target seats. Other than that, it looks like a remarkably stable result. The Greens look like retaining their three seats; the two independents have retained their seats, but don’t look like being joined by any new ones. The Nationals have not suffered as expected on the northern coast: Tweed and Upper Hunter look good for them.
8.16pm. I’m painting a somewhat less favourable picture for the Coalition because I’m focused only on seats where the count is seriously advanced, of which there are remarkably few. But the Nationals look okay in Tweed and Upper Hunter, which Labor seriously needed to win.
8.14pm. Antony Green says he thinks the government has been returned, and the only question is majority or minority.
8.12pm. General consternation at the slow speed of the count, or at least the slow rate at which results are being uploaded to the media feed, which also seem to contain some anomalies.
8.05pm. The surprisingly good picture for the Greens seems to be holding: they look like they’ve retained Balmain and Newtown, it looks very encouraging for them in Ballina, and the picture in Lismore remains as before – the Nationals struggling, and an open question as whether it would fall to the Greens or Labor.
8.02pm. Looking very close in Upper Hunter. I’m currently seeing a 1.7% swing to Labor, with a Nationals margin of 2.2%. They
7.52pm. And Labor look to be ahead in Kogarah, although there is a swing against them. Labor’s Chris Minns is down about 4.4% on the primary vote and the Liberals are up 2.5% – not enough for Labor to lose given their 6.9% margin. This is from six booths out of 28 on the primary vote and 13.3% counted.
7.51pm. Right on cue, Chris Uhlmann just said Labor scrutineers say they believe they will win Strathfield.
7.50pm. Encouraging numbers for Labor from Strathfield, given this was expected to be part of any Chinese backlash. Jodi McKay is up about 3% on the primary vote, and the Liberals are down about 4.5%, with seven booths in on the primary vote and 18.8% counted.
7.41pm. From what we’re seeing so far, the Greens seem to be doing surprisingly well. The first numbers in Ballina show a strong swing in their favour; they are in the hunt in Lismore; and Antony called Newtown for them, although perhaps too early.
7.38pm. Really tight three-cornered contest in Lismore. The Nationals are down nearly 5% on the primary vote, on which they will need to improve. Lineball based on current numbers as to whether Labor or the Greens will make the final count against them. Unless the Nationals improve – which they certainly may – the seat will go to whoever wins the Labor-Greens race.
7.32pm. Talking Blue Mountains a lot because the count is progressing particularly well there. It does look like there’s a modest swing to Labor of 3% to 4%, based on eight booths on the primary vote and 17.4% counted.
7.24pm. That big swing to Labor in Blue Mountains has disappeared, but they are still on track to retain their margin of 8%.
7.20pm. Early primary votes looking good for Shooters in Murray, although this could be missing geographic variability.
7.17pm. Antony says the Greens will win Newtown very easily. Latest numbers from Upper Hunter look less good for Labor than the ones I’ve counted earlier — no swing projected on the two-party figures that I’m seeing.
7.14pm. With 5.4% of the primary vote counted in Lismore, the Greens are down about 3.4%, the Nationals are down about 2.5%, and Labor are unchanged. That would get Labor into the final count ahead of the Greens, which they narrowly failed to do last time, and then to narrowly defeat the Nationals.
7.07pm. Based on five booths and 3.1% of the electoral roll counted, Philip Donato has a clear primary vote majority in Orange.
7.01pm. Good early results for Labor in Blue Mountains, with three booths in on the primary vote — Labor is on 48.5%, which compares with 38.4% in the same booths in 2015.
6.58pm. With 4% of the primary vote counted in Upper Hunter, the Nine system is projecting a 3.5% two-party swing to Labor in Upper Hunter, which would be sufficient to get Labor up by 1.3%. However, this is based on speculative preference flows.
6.31pm. First booth from Orange is 288 votes from Spring Hill Public, and there’s a good sign for Shooters member Philip Donato, who is up from 41.1$ to 57.3% on the primary vote.
6.25pm. Mulgoa Electorate Manager’s Office wins the prize for first booth to report. Splits 120-31 to the Liberals, which is a big swing in their favour for what that’s worth (i.e. nothing).
6pm. Let the record note that polls have closed.
5.25pm. The YouGov Galaxy exit poll for the Nine Network has primary vote numbers very similar to Newspoll’s, with the Coalition on 41% (the same), Labor on 36% (one point higher) and the Greens on 9% (one point lower). Two-party preferred is 50-50, compared with Newspoll’s 51-49 to the Coalition. However, the poll is from the state’s 16 most marginal seats, rather than statewide. A set of numbers from the 2015 election is provided for purposes of comparison, so the precise way to read this is to compare the results just noted with the following set of numbers: 53.1-46.9 to the Coalition on two-party preferred, and primary votes of Coalition 45.9%, Labor 36.1% and Greens 9.7%. In other words, the poll suggests a 3.1% swing to Labor, which is almost identical to Newspoll’s 3.3%.
Two-party breakdowns are provided for western Sydney and “regional” – I’m not sure of the precise dimensions of the latter. These have it at 50-50 in western Sydney, a 2.7% swing to Labor since 2015, and 51-49 to the Coalition in regional New South Wales, a swing of 3.5%, which is one point more favourable to the Coalition than the Newspoll result. The sample for the poll is 1666.
5.04pm. The Coogee exit poll has the Liberals crashing from 46.6% to 31% and Labor up from 32.5% to 41%. It does not appear there is a two-party figure, but with the Liberal margin at 2.9%, you can take it for granted that this points to an emphatic win for Labor. The poll was conducted by Lonergan Research for Greenpeace and the Nature Conservation Council from a sample of 1482.
5pm. One hour until polls close. I’m behind the scenes at Channel Nine’s election night coverage – they have YouGov Galaxy exit polling that will go live in 15 minutes. I have it in my hands right now, but I’ll spare you the “wow” routine. Greenpeace has put out a Lonergan Research exit poll of Coogee that apparently shows Labor set to gain the seat from the Liberals, in line with expectations. I’ll have a summary of that poll with you very shortly.
To get the ball rolling, I’ll repaste what I posted last night about how the NSWEC is approaching the count. We will not be privy to as much counting of pre-poll results on election night as we have lately grown accustomed. All we are promised is incomplete progress counts of the primary vote from pre-poll voting centres, which will presumably posted quite late on the night. That means no pre-poll results on two-party preferred, which could well leave us hanging in more seats than usual at the end of the night. Some postals will be counted on the night – I can’t tell you if this will just be primary votes or if it will include two-party totals as well.
The Legislative Council count on the night will be unusual, in that the only things that are specifically being tallied are above-the-line votes for the Coalition, Labor, the Greens, Shooters, the Christian Democrats, Animal Justice and One Nation. Beyond that, an “others” total will be published that will include above-the-line votes for everyone else, and below-the-line votes for all and sundry (including votes that will prove, on closer inspection, to be informal). Among other things, this means those of you hanging on the electoral prospects of David Leyonhjelm will go to bed disappointed.
Yeah Saffin picked up 700 votes over the G from prepolls (so far) after being 340 behind on ordinary votes.
Murphy also has picked up 350 votes on the one prepoll counted so far (but that’s Bankstown so expected)
I’ve met Janelle Saffin a couple of times and admire her. She will be a good member and she may be the only ALP candidate who could win Lismore. But having been in opposition for 8 years it’s time for the ALP to promote the next generation of leaders. Recycling Ursula Stephens and Diane Beamer does not do this
Well, almost got to bed but had a look at Wyong because our candidate was also up against a Chinese-Australian Liberal candidate and we got a 4.6% swing to us. So I don’t think the Liberals, or their Chinese-Australian candidates should get too smug.
Ben Raue:
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/mar/23/nsw-election-2019-the-seats-that-are-still-too-close-to-call
Two key things from this election are that major parties both have problems with ordinary people, basically we don’t trust either side of the divide. Secondly polls are pretty accurate which is a good sign for Labor in May.
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/mar/23/rising-tide-of-minor-parties-stark-warning-for-the-liberals-and-nationals
War room. Nah. Not the place to be after a numbing draw.
I suspect that the same numbers suggest no reason to change. Both major parties should hardly be crowing. Nothing.
Except the LC could yet throw up some surprises.
I obviously don’t understand the result but am not on my own there.
The concern in rural areas and the move to the shooters is understandable and disturbing.
In Sydney I suspect that the voters didnt want to spook the house price Gods and are softly softly.
Stadiums nah, Daleys racism nah. It has to be trust. Gladys is a nice person and puts bandaids on things.
Greens didnt escape the doldrums with nothing gained in their slow ride to nowhere.
The bigest tribe, apathy just doesn’t want to be involved.
Sydney is a prick of a place to live and work without an extra good income and assets.
The voters don’t trust Labor with house prices. House will fall further. A very good election to lose.
Well done Labor.
Would Trish Doyle be leadership material?
Sustainable Future
Thanks for saying this. Dayley should have used the high educational and professional credentials needed to get a job that allows you to live in the inner city, rather than mention race to make his point – I and my OH do take up a house in the inner city, not far from Maroubra, and we both have PhDs, but are of European background, and both born in Oz.
You need to choose your words carefully if you speak in public, and I have a few things I am embarrassed by on the public record, where afterwards you think – “that just sounded terrible”.
However, the relentless attack on Dayley by the MSM and the ABC, and the selective quoting, changed the “narrative / vibe” in that last week, very unfairly. The ABC were still at it at 10 am today.
I fear that Dayley is not “Damaged goods”, but I fear more that the Murdoch / Costello led media, aided by a cowed ABC, can still get Australian people to vote against their own interest.
War room. Nah. Not the place to be after a numbing draw.
I suspect that the same numbers suggest no reason to change. Both major parties should hardly be crowing. Nothing.
Except the LC could yet throw up some surprises.
I obviously don’t understand the result but am not on my own there.
The concern in rural areas and the move to the shooters is understandable and disturbing.
In Sydney I suspect that the voters didnt want to spook the house price Gods and are softly softly.
Stadiums nah, Daleys racism nah. It has to be trust. Gladys is a nice person and puts bandaids on things.
Greens didnt escape the doldrums with nothing gained in their slow ride to nowhere.
The biggest tribe, apathy just doesn’t want to be involved.
Sydney is a prick of a place to live and work without an extra good income and assets.
The voters don’t trust Labor with house prices. House will fall further. A very good election to lose.
Well done Labor.
This result is better for Labor than it first appears. There are swings to Labor in seats all over NSW. They’re not big swings and not enough to move seats. But they are discernible. Given the weakness of the general campaign, this must reflect on local campaign efforts by individual candidates. Good on them.
I read this blog a lot, and I do enjoy it, but I don’t ever comment. That being said, the ill-informed, echo-chamber-esque comments of the past week have been pathetic. Clearly, the Asian immigrations comments killed Daley. If the shoe was on the other foot, and Gladys (or any other conservative in the world) had made those comments, you’d all be yelling racist and saying their compaign was roadkill. Instead, you’ve all been saying how Labor can still win and the Daley dive was all “beltway” commentary…some of you even said it was a strategy! I look forward to the mea culpa entries. But don’t be too sad folks. If nothing else, this will kill Labor’s complacency (which was dangerously real) before the upcoming Federal election, which is probably a good result overall (I’m sick of hearing “when the federal government changes”…there is such a thing as an election first!). Finally, know this: Daley did not deserve to win after those ill advised immigration comments and wobbly his debate performance. Gladys is not a monster like many other conservatives are. More importantly, NSW Labor deserves one more term in Opposition to reflect after their diabolically bad fourth term of government last time around. For me, I will be far more skeptical while reading this blog. I hope you all take some time to provide more reasonable analysis for the federal election (this is not aimed at William, who does a fine job; it’s for the commenters on the blog).
You have to be on Drugs or one to many if you think this is a good result for Labor they have gone nowhere in 4 years and the swing has been in Rural NSW
Damo
Did Drugs win today at Rosehill? Jabakit?
That’s a dandy write up in the Guardian but the lnp still got a primary vote of 41.6% despite a swing against it. Stadiums, dead rivers, infrastructure fuckups and tollroads aside that is a very competent showing. The appetite for an alternative government just isn’t there.
Interesting counter factual on the idea that Daley’s Chinese Whispers cut through late…
In Kogarah Minns was up 800 on the Lib on Ordinary Votes (PV). But the Lib won the prepoll by just over 800 to win the FPTP. The prepoll 2PP counts aren’t in yet so the current 3.5% will likely shrink a bit still.
Maybe the Chinese all hit the prepoll in the last week, but it’s interesting that the numbers went the reverse of how you’d probably expect if Daley cruelled the last week.
The ALP are currently only about a percent in front of the Greens in Lismore, however there is about 2.75% of the vote for AJP and Sustainably Australia, whose voters are likely to preference the Greens at much higher rates than the ALP (or indeed Nationals) and another independent with over 5% of the votes (And I think the conservative preferences are likely to favour the National). The ALP likely need to get further ahead of the Greens on late counting to remain out of third place on preferences. This may happen, although absents results are not in the count yet and they often favour the Greens. This seat could go any one of 3 ways yet.
On the tallies reported so far there are swings to Labor in 51 seats. Where the 2CP contests were Labor/LNP, there were moves against Labor in 22 seats. Labor has lost, quite obviously….but they made up some ground. It’s going to be a very tight Parliament.
Coming from the other side of the country, I’m glad I didn’t have to vote at these elections. The Daley comment that came to light this week was totally antithetical to my values. I also understand his debate performance was underwhelming (although debating ability does not necessarily equate to governing ability).
“I look forward to the mea culpa entries.”
Don’t hold your breath.
https://www.pollbludger.net/2019/03/23/new-south-wales-election-live-3/comment-page-14/#comment-3109098
As shown in the Victorian election and Wentworth by-election, prepolls are increasing Liberal leaning and that means that that result cannot be sensibly analysed as being evidence against a swing against Daley`s racsist comment without a deep statistical analysis of prepoll voting tendencies.
If disgraced former Wagga MP Daryl Maguire wasn’t dodgy, the Coalition would have a majority by now.
Daniel, only a tiny minority of posters have made excuses for Daley. Most recognize that he is an idiot to say that and that he is not leadership material. I must say, I laughed out loud at a couple who ‘blamed’ the Murdoch press. Seriously? Oh dear, the right wing propagandists sunk the boots into a Labor campaign…how unfair. Fuckwits!
I doubt Daley’s problems in the last week helped Labor much and there was a late but small swing to the Coalition in the period. Cause and effect? Likely in my opinion.
That small late swing was the difference in the wash-up.
While I don’t appreciate the tone, Daniel. You do make an important point. There was a moment when groupthink came into force to a ridiculous degree, although only a few…
I never understood why people were talking about a Labor win. Personally, I felt a Lib minority was the likely best case scenario.
Winning from opposition is a two part process, showing why the incumbents need to go AND showing why you’d be better.
Labor tried to blur the two and therefore didn’t do either sufficiently. If anything, this felt closer to another correction election, mixed with the benefit of the incumbents not being terribly unpopular.
Labor’s campaign didn’t completely flop, there were some great swings, including in seats with large Chinese populations.
The friends working in Monaro texted me at just after 6, noting their previous vaguely optimistic position, and said “it’s a bloodbath, we don’t get it, but JB is going to romp in”.
My consistent misspelling of Michael Daley as “Dayley” is embarrassing.
But to put it in context, true story, there was once a person who had English as a second language who presented a poster at a conference, on “Star Counts”, a thing you do to work out where all the dust in space resides, such as the Aboriginal structure of the “Big Emu” as the dark emu shadow on the bright Milky Way Galaxy.
So at this conference, the person in question found that their poster was very popular, with many attendees going to view it. The reason was not so good. The word “counts” was misspelled so that the “o” was dropped.
So, I will now remember to write “Daley”.
And here is the Emu:
Douglas and Milko – that Star Counts poster story gave me good laugh!
D&M,
My boss at the time nearly made a presentation to UK PM Brown regarding AI and “Public Access” to data and procedures, but he’d left out the ‘l’.
problem 1. guns association (streettalk)
2. leaderfail (maybe a councillor – whoever thought he could lead from opposition)
daniel
this is a bad govt. spending money borrowed from public assets that public will repay for decades too come – unsustainable privatisation – not real economy
No sure where to post but it will be interesting to see if there will be SFF candidates in the Federal Election and where their preferences go. The same with One Nation preferences or will they do a split ticket. I am not sure about other areas I am in Adelaide but the United Australia Party have been spending Big thanks to Clive Palmer and I think they will preference the LNP before the ALP but not sure ? I posted in the Federal Election Tread but it is dead.
It’s hard to overestimate the damage done to NSW by Obeid and his left gonad. Daley briefly promised something new, and refreshingly took to Jones and the ridiculous stadium rebuild. In the end he couldn’t hold it together during the last few days: the casually racist comments and the debate fluffs sucked the confidence and oxygen from the campaign. To hear him interviewed during the final days, he sounded rattled, and not up to the job. I don’t think people have quite forgotten the corruption of Labor’s last term yet. So close, but so far. Shorten and federal Labor look so much readier to govern in comparison.
C@tmomma @ #502 Saturday, March 23rd, 2019 – 9:06 pm
Not all. However the Greens abuse by Labor politicians (and vice versa) certainly doesn’t help.
Lismore has popped off the ABC’s in doubt list and into the changing seats column as an ALP gain, obviously Antony’s model doesn’t much subscribe to the idea of AJ’s 2.4% helping the Greens leapfrog Labor. Likewise Barwon is called for SFF.
Part of me would like to say, “Yes, it was Daley who lost it”. Because then it could be neatly tied-off and put to bed with Daley’s undoubtedly imminent resignation from the frontbench. (If it’s not imminent, it had best damned well be made imminent!)
But it wasn’t. Too many of the seats which needed (and failed) to swing to Labor have little or no Asian-Australian presence, so I’m not buying the notion that it was an outraged Asian-Australian contingent who would have otherwise voted Labor but didn’t. It’s because – well, what did NSW Labor stand for? They stood against the stadium, which is a tick (in my book, anyway); what were they planning/promising to do for NSW as a whole, or even for individual parts of NSW?
I’ve gotten the impression that most NSWers couldn’t answer that question without first checking NSW Labor’s webpage, which indicates a severe marketing/campaigning failure. That, or a failure of ideas – I’m reminded of something Paul Keating once said when deriding the Coalition’s national platform on the floor of Parliament, in which he mocked the disjointed, piecemeal nature of the Coalition’s policy platforms. In NSW, was there an overarching theme, a logical or intuitive focus on what Labor would do for the State?
My impression is that the answer is “No”, at least to the average NSWer on the street. IMO, it’s why they declined to vote out Berejiklian’s mob, as hopeless as they have proven to be. Yes, you have to shine a spotlight on the Government’s failings if you want to get elected from Opposition – that’s your job, after all. But you also have to make the conversation about what you would do better, about how you would do it better, and so on. And you’ll never have time to detail each and every single point, so you have to organize it in a way that grabs peoples’ attention and gets them to grok (for lack of a better word) that you’ve Got It Together.
Federal Labor understands this. Apparently, NSW Labor does not.
Please bear in mind – while there’s some 20/20 going on here, I don’t think it’s 100% of what’s in my mind. After all, I was one of the people predicting Berejiklian would be returned, most likely as minority Government. I just wasn’t getting the “It’s time” vibe from the electorate, and I’m on the other side of the country! (And even I was too optimistic, since it looks like Labor will be left with minimal gains to show for the campaign.)
Spot on Matt. Even on issues where Labor did have a policy, eg pill testing, they pretended they didn’t (“we will convene a drug summit with harm minimisation experts and wait for them to decide yada yada…”). But it’s not just Obeid and corruption that dogs future Labor governments, it’s the legacy of doing nothing, so I’m not surprised a bad infrastructure policy for Sydney was picked over a non-existent one!
Matt says Sunday, March 24, 2019 at 1:52 am
What about the non Asian-Australian vote that might have been less than impressed with Daley’s asian comments? There might well have been voters who changed their vote to Green or Liberal because of what they perceived to be racist comments by Daley.
New thread.
Tom the first and best says:
Saturday, March 23, 2019 at 10:59 pm
https://www.pollbludger.net/2019/03/23/new-south-wales-election-live-3/comment-page-12/#comment-3108996
The Andrews Victorian ALP Government has a big transport infrastructure policy, not a whole transport policy. They have mostly been weak on metropolitan rail service increases.
A comment like this indicates you don’t read the long term development plans; little more.
https://transport.vic.gov.au/about/planning/transport-strategies-and-plans