Tasmanian election live

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Sunday night

All the results from the pre-poll centres are now in, and there were further votes added to the count today from mobile polling and (I think) some more postal votes. These haven’t changed the picture too radically, including in all-important Clark, where the Liberals’ position has improved about as much as had been anticipated given the usual form of late counting. Kevin Bonham, whose practised eye for Hare-Clark is such that his assessments undoubtedly count for more than my own, has information from scrutineers suggesting the rate of preference leakage to independents is perhaps high enough to make the Liberals uncomfortable. The view seems to be that the Liberals will probably win their decisive second seat, but not by much. Another point to be noted from Bonham’s analysis is that he is not ruling out Roger Jaensch being the winner of the third Liberal seat in Braddon, despite being on 7.0% compared with 9.0% for Adam Brooks and 8.9% for Felix Ellis. This is presumably because the large surplus from Jeremy Rockliff’s 27.4% vote share might be expected to favour other incumbents.

End of night summary

There will be some subtantial progress in counting today, with the Tasmanian Electoral Commission having scheduled half the pre-poll booth counts to be conducted last night with the other half to follow today. My live results facility will, touch wood, continue ticking over as new results are added through the day — it remains the only place where you can find booth results (to say nothing of booth results maps).

The question of whether the Liberals win a majority comes down to whether they can hold their second seat in Clark, since they have retained their three seats in Bass, Braddon and Lyons and their two in Franklin. The threat comes not from Labor, who had a dismal result in the electorate, or the Greens, who did well but not well enough to be in contention for a second seat, but from independents Kristie Johnston and Sue Hickey, one of whom is assured of becoming the first independent elected since the regime of five-seat electorates was introduced in 1998 — more likely Johnston, who leads her by 11.4% to 9.9%.

The three clear winners are Elisa Archer for the Liberals, Ella Haddad for Labor and Cassy O’Connor for the Greens; the other two will either go one Liberal and one independent or, on the minority government scenario, both independent. That seems unlikely but not impossible: Kevin Bonham lays out how the preference distribution might unfold here. Madeleine Ogilvie and Simon Behrakis are in contention for the probable second Liberal seat.

The result in Bass looks like three Liberal and two Labor, although there seems an outside chance of a seat for the Greens at Labor’s expense. The three incumbent Liberals, Peter Gutwein, Michael Ferguson and Sarah Courtney, will all be re-elected, as will Labor’s Michelle O’Byrne; Janie Finlay will win the second Labor seat at the expense of incumbent Jennifer Houston, unless it instead goes to Greens candidate Jack Davenport.

Braddon looks like a status quo result of three Liberal and two Labor (such is the reckoning of Kevin Bonham, to whose wisdom I defer), despite earlier suggestions that independent Craig Garland might win a seat at the expense of a second Labor candidate with the help of Greens and Shooters preferences. It appears that three Liberals will be incumbents Jeremy Rockliff and Felix Ellis and, remarkably, Adam Brooks, who looks set to carry off his comeback bid by defeating incumbent Roger Jaensch, despite a horror end to his campaign. The two Labor incumbents, Shane Broad and Anita Dow, are running close and it is not clear who would have fallen victim in the apparently unlikely scenario that Labor was reduced to a single seat.

Franklin is clearly a status quo result of two Liberal (incumbents Jacquie Petrusma and Nic Street), two Labor (Dean Winter scoring highest after initially being denied preselection, reducing David O’Byrne to second place) and one Greens (Rosalie Woodruff re-elected). Lyons will be unchanged in having three Liberal and two Labor members, and perhaps also in the candidates elected: incumbents Guy Barnett, Mark Shelton and John Tucker will win the three Liberal seats, Rebecca White will obviously win a Labor seat, and incumbent Jen Butler will most likely win the other.

Election night commentary

11.33pm. 3751 postals are in from Clark: they are very strong for Sue Hickey, who polled 15.2% compared with 9.1% of the ordinary vote, which might have meant trouble for the Liberals if they hadn’t held up well too. The Liberals have 38.6% of the postals batch compared with 30.2% of the ordinary vote, which is much the same difference between the two as in 2018.

11.18pm. The big Launceston pre-poll booth, accounting for 10,211 votes, has reported in Bass, and once again its swings are well in line with those of the ordinary votes, and thus add no further clarity to the question of whether this will be a 3-2 or a 3-1-1 result, though the view seems to be the former is more likely.

11.12pm. As Antony Green has just related on the ABC, the first pre-poll booth is in from Clark, namely the 5174 votes of the Hobart booth, and both of us agree that it changes little, with the swings being well in line with the election day votes (a bit less good for the Greens).

11.07pm. 2930 postals have been added in Braddon, and they’ve pulled Craig Garland back from 0.40 quotas (which at least was where he was last time I made note) to 0.36, reducing his chances of riding home over the second Labor candidate. The Granton pre-poll booth from Lyons is also in, but that was never going to change anything given the clarity of the 3-2 result there.

10.23pm. I’m no longer projecting the Greens will outpoll Labor in Clark, although they remain ahead on the raw vote and there clearly won’t be much in it.

10.18pm. The first two pre-poll results are in, from Kingston in Franklin and Devonport in Braddon. I’m reading little difference from the election day swing in Devonport but a worse result for the Liberals from Kingston — however, I’m not hugely confident here, because changes in pre-poll booth locations make swings hard to calculate.

9.45pm. Kevin Bonham on Twitter: “Some people are badly underestimating the Liberal position in Clark and the difficulty of 2 candidates overtaking them”.

9.38pm. State political journalist Alex Johnston says this on Twitter: “Not much upper house confidence from the Liberal camp. One astute judge predicting Will Smith and Craig Farrell victories”, which is to say Labor has retained Derwent and an independent may yet squeeze out the Liberal in Windermere. Will Smith is far the best performing of three Windermere independents; the scenario envisions preferences from the other two pushing him ahead of Labor, and preferences from Labor putting him ahead of the Liberals. The first part of this equation seems to me far from a done deal, but Johnston’s source may have meaningful intelligence on preference flows.

9.34pm. Antony now downplaying the possibility of 3-1-1 (i.e. the Greens poaching a seat from Labor) in Bass.

9.29pm. Antony Green just made a significant call in noting that Sue Hickey is fading in Clark, reducing the possibility of a second independent win at the expense of a second Liberal, which is the scenario that threatened to cost the government its majority.

9.21pm. The election day results are mostly in — entirely so in Braddon and Franklin — and what remains won’t change the picture much. We are presently in the now familiar trough in Australian election nights between the election day booths wrapping up and hearing from the pre-poll centres, which receive far more votes and take much longer to report.

9.12pm. The Greens have crept up on me in Bass: I’m projecting 0.57 quotas for them and Labor are only on 1.55, so this would seem a strong chance of a 3-1-1 rather than 3-2, capping a better than expected (by me at least) result for the Greens.

8.30pm. To reiterate the general picture: for as long as it’s unclear the Liberals will retain a second seat in Clark, it will be unclear they will get to a majority. While I’m projecting them to get close enough to a second quota to do that quite comfortably, I’m doing so entirely on the basis of the election day vote. So we’ll have a particularly exciting time waiting on the pre-poll centres, which I assume will be in later in the evening. Sorceror43 on Twitter points out that Labor has done well on pre-poll and postal votes in the upper house seat of Derwent, which is within the electorate, which could prove a worry for the Liberals.

8.29pm. The Liberals have their existing three seats in the bag, but with almost all ordinary polling booths in, it’s an interesting race for the fifth seat in Braddon between Labor’s second candidate (now looking like Anita Dow, who has fallen behind Shane Broad) and Craig Garland: I’m projecting 1.56 quotas for Labor with Craig Garland on 0.40, and the potential for Garland to snowball with preferences from the Greens (0.33 quotas) and Shooters (0.24 quotas), being unusually well placed to attract support from the both.

8.23pm. Labor are actually running a fairly distant third in Clark behind the Greens, having clearly bled a lot of voters to the two independents, who are very closely matched at 10.1% for Kristie Johnston and 9.7% for Sue Hickey. I’d say it was pretty clear that Liberal, Labor, the Greens and at least one independent will win, and that it’s possible the remaining seat will go to a second independent. I would think it would quite a bit more likely though that it will go to a second Liberal, given they aren’t shy of two quotas. However, we have no results from the pre-poll centres, and they could well shake things up a bit.

8.19pm. Interesting to compare my booth results maps for the last election (see the bottom of the page) and this one — more green dots this time owing to the near collapse in the Labor vote in this electorate.

8.15pm. If you’re enjoying my live results pages, which I feel you should be, you may care to consider a donation through the “become a supporter” button at the top of the page.

8.12pm. All told, the swings are pretty small — Liberal down very slightly and a bit of movement from the Labor to the Greens, leaving the former looking distinctly under-nourished.

8.11pm. Intra-party contests of note: Labor’s Janie Finlay to depose Jennifer Houston in Bass; resilient Liberal candidate Adam Brooks likely to unseat Roger Jaensch for the third Liberal seat in Braddon; Labor’s Dean Winter to defeat Alison Standen in Franklin; hard to say who will win Labor’s second seat in Lyons out of incumbent Jen Butler and non-incumbents Janet Lambert and Edwin Batt, but since this will be entirely determined by Rebecca White’s preferences, I would guess they will decisively favour her fellow incumbent.

8.02pm. The consensus seems to be that we’ve got status quo results in Bass, Braddon, Lyons and Franklin, and a question mark over Clark that makes the loss of a Liberal seat at least a theoretical possibility, though one that’s hard to square with my present projection of them getting 1.96 quotas.

7.59pm. I noted before that the early results looked bad for Labor in the upper house seat of Derwent, but they don’t now. However, the Liberals remain in front in Windermere.

7.54pm. Dean Winter leading the Labor ticket in Franklin, ahead even of mooted leadership contender David O’Byrne, which should make a few union leaders feel a bit stupid. Incumbent Alison Standen facing defeat.

7.53pm. Antony reckons it’s at least possible that Craig Garland could win a seat in Braddon, but he’d be doing it at the expense of Labor’s second rather than the Liberals’ third. It would require a strong flow of Greens preferences, and would also be an unprecedented achievement for an ungrouped candidate.

7.50pm. Franklin, I think it’s safe to say, is a status quo 2-2-1, with the Greens winning a lot more easily than they did last time.

7.48pm. Over 25% in now from Braddon — my assessment that they might win four seats has been based on the fact that there’s little swing and they nearly did it last time, but my quota projections make it look very unlikely, so I guess they did well out of preferences last time from Lambie and whoever else.

7.44pm. Clark remains the zone of uncertainty, with a slower count and a very difficult to call final seat. It remains possible that the Liberals will fall to one and lose their majority (though it’s also possible that a fourth seat in Braddon would save it).

7.39pm. So the big picture seems to be that the Liberals are on track for a majority, Labor aren’t doing great, and the Greens are perhaps doing a little better than I’d figured, though without being on track to build on their existing two seats.

7.35pm. Strong early showing for the two independents in Clark holding up with 6% counted — but Labor’s hope that this might upset the Liberal applecart by reducing them to a minority aren’t being borne out, because the Liberal vote is holding up quite a bit better than Labor’s, and the Greens are holding firm as well. Not at all sure how to read this, as I’ve no idea how preferences will flow between and among the major parties and independents.

7.33pm. Approaching 10% counted in Bass, looking most likely to be a status quo result of three Liberal and two Labor, but with Janie Finlay taking Labor’s second seat from Jennifer Houston.

7.31pm. Progress in the Braddon and Lyons counts, both over 15% counted now. Both are looking status quo overall, so I’ll stick my neck out and call Lyons as three Liberal two Labor, while the Liberals can continue to hope for 4-1 rather than 3-2 in Braddon.

7.24pm. The Liberals have early leads in both upper house seats, particularly Windermere, but I’m making no effort at booth-matching here — perhaps Sandy Bay Beach is dominating the early result in Derwent.

7.22pm. A bit of a surge in the Lyons count, which is the first to top 10%. It looks like a status quo result of three Liberal, two Labor — all three Liberal incumbents returned, Rebecca White inevitably dominating the Labor ticket, open race for a second Labor seat.

7.18pm. The count in Braddon is now approaching 10%, and it suggest a similar result to 2018 when the Liberals came close to winning four seats. Despite everything, Adam Brooks is looking competitive or better even if the Liberals can only manage three seats; the two Labor incumbents are closely matched, making it unclear who would lose if the Liberals indeed made it to four.

7.16pm. The first booth from Clark has the two independents is Sandy Bay Beach, which is a blue-ribbon booth — the two key independents have around 20% of the vote between them.

7.10pm. So, to offer my first piece of semi-meaningful analysis: early days, but swings to the Liberals in the two northern electorates, at least leaving open the possibility of four seats in one or the other, which would solve any problems for them elsewhere. Lyons looks status quo three Liberal two Labor; too early in Franklin, no numbers yet from Clark.

7.07pm. Spent the last ten minutes ironing out bugs — hopeful/confident that we’re on track now.

6.58pm. Okay, I’ve uncovered a problem — some of my results were TEC test data, so disregard the last few updates which I’ve now deleted.

6.48pm. My results facility seems to be running far ahead of the online systems of the ABC and the TEC, which is good in one way, but it does mean I’m not able to get the reassurance that I want that my numbers are as they should be. Everything seems to be functioning though, except for the time stamps on the electorate results pages.

6.45pm. Very early days, but what we have so far points to a fairly solid swing against the Liberals — except in Braddon.

6.38pm. Results starting to come through — after clearing a roadblock, I think my results facility is doing its job.

6.15pm. Not sure exactly when we can expect to see the first results, but they will presumably come in relatively slowly due to the complexities involved in counting ballot papers that feature at least 20 candidates grouped by party.

6pm. Welcome to the Poll Bludger’s live coverage of Tasmanian state election count, for which polls have just closed. The charts above are the summary highlights from my live election results facility, which I’m reasonably confident is going to work, and which can be viewed in all its glory through the link at the very top. It includes total progress results by candidate, projected quotas by party, booth results by party in which you can tab through vote totals, percentages and swings and, in a new innovation, a map-based display of booth results.

I’m not venturing to make projections of seat results, but the projected quotas you can see on both the main page and through a bar chart on the pages individually should hopefully give those who know their way around Hare-Clark a clear idea of where things are headed. These results are based on booth-matching of party vote totals from the current election with 2018. The seat results pages also include swings by candidate for those who have contested consecutive elections, but these are not booth-matched — they simply compare their progress results with their final results from 2018.

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. View all posts by William Bowe