Click here for full federal election results updated live.
Wednesday, June 1
Pardon me for dropping the ball for a couple of days there as I made a fraught transition from Sydney back to Perth. You will now find my results facility regularly updating again as the very last votes trickle in over the next few days. As you’re all no doubt aware, it seems generally accepted that Labor will make it not merely to 76 but to 77 seats, having opened up a 301-vote lead in Gilmore with barely 1000 votes left to go. Since opening the 142-vote lead noted in the previous update, Labor has further benefited from a 181-122 break in its favour on electronic-assisted COVID votes and 1401-1335 on declaration pre-polls. While later batches of absent votes were predictably not as strong for Labor as the first, they did them no actual harm, breaking 690-682 their way, and they even got a 127-101 break from the latest postals.
Monday, May 30
The ABC is now calling Macnamara for Labor, and with it a Labor majority of 76 seats out of 151, with a growing chance that Gilmore will make it 77. The AEC’s three-candidate preferred count for Macnamara has not been updated, showing Liberal on 29202 (33.6%), Labor on 29152 (33.5%) and the Greens on 28657 (32.9%), with Labor to lose the seat if the Greens overcome the 495 deficit against Labor, unless the Liberals also lose their 50 vote lead over Labor. This leaves it lagging 2354 votes behind the primary vote count, with three batches added today accounting for the shortfall:
• The electronic-assisted COVID votes were, contrary to earlier suggestions, neither approaching 1000 in number (perhaps there are more yet to be added, though I’d doubt it) nor especially favourable to the Greens. The 477 formal votes went Labor 169, Greens 154 and Liberals 105. This would have added 10 or so Labor’s lead over the Greens, and erased the Liberals’ 50 vote lead over Labor with half-a-dozen or so to spare.
• There were 1447 pre-polls added to the 1678 that were in the count already, of which 417 went to the Greens, 412 went to Labor and 404 went to the Liberals. This would have cut about 40 from Labor’s lead over the Greens and restored to the Liberals the 50-vote lead over Labor I just said they had lost on the COVID votes.
• The 475 absent votes added today were about half of those outstanding, and were much like earlier batches in that the Greens got 169, Labor got 134 and the Liberals got 114. This would have cut about 45 votes out of Labor’s lead over the Greens and hardly affected their lead over the Liberals.
• No postals were added today. There are 266 of these to be added to the count, plus however many arrive in the post over the coming days, which surely won’t be many.
My best estimate is that this still leaves Labor 420 votes ahead of the Greens on the three-candidate preferred, with the outstanding votes consisting of at most 555 absents, 730 pre-polls (there are about 1000 fewer of these than I suggested in yesterday’s update) and 266 postals, plus the few extra postals that will trickle in over the coming days. Realistically, any cut to Labor’s lead over the Greens here will number in the dozens rather than the hundreds. There are, however, potentially enough to erase a Liberal lead over the Labor that I reckon to be about 44 votes, though whether that happens is academic if Labor stays ahead of the Greens.
There was further good news for Labor today in Gilmore, where Labor’s Fiona Phillips has opened a 142 vote lead over Andrew Constance. This was mostly due to a remarkable 334-145 break in their favour on the first batch of absents, which obviously came for a strong area for them. Labor were further boosted by a 157-132 split on the latest batch of postals, 388-278 from the first declaration pre-polls and 95-63 from the provisionals, plus a net gain of 40 on rechecking of ordinary votes.
Labor’s position further improved in Lyons, where the second batch of absent votes broke 550-306 their way, putting their lead at 932 with no more than 2000 still to come. However, Deakin continues to slip away from Labor, with the latest postals breaking 1112-836 to the Liberals, more than compensating for advantages to Labor of 998-714 and 720-696 on the latest absents and pre-polls. This puts Liberal member Michael Sukkar 619 votes ahead with at most 2500 still to come.
There are now three seats with electronic-assisted COVID results in (Macnamara, Flinders and Graynder), and it seems they typically involve around 400 votes that are roughly 10% below par for the Liberals and 3% to 4% above it for Labor and the Greens. This suggests they will boost Labor by a few dozen votes when reported in Gilmore, Lyons and Deakin.
Sunday, May 29
With the Greens now effectively confirmed as the winners in Brisbane, Labor’s bid for the seventy-sixth seat needed for a majority hinges on three seats: Macnamara, which like Brisbane will be won by whichever out of Labor and the Greens survives to the final count against the Liberals; and the conventional contests of Gilmore and Deakin.
The Australian Electoral Commission’s efforts yesterday were devoted to preparing for a big push of counting in these three seats, meaning I have nothing to add to my updates from Saturday. In Macnamara especially, the result may well prove so close that it may not be definitively known until the final eligible postal votes have trickled in at the end of the week.
Note also the post directly below this one taking a deep and overdue look at the Senate result.
In a parliament with a cross bench of 16, 76 is enough. Labor will be very keen to get cross bench on side, because, unlike the coalition, they can cast forward longer than the current term
We have the Common Law In the Westminster tradition BW
[Nice try but there is no Denison’s Rule in the Constitution. Just like there is no ‘mandate’ in the Constitution. Just like there are no parties in the Constitution.]
Political parties have been mentioned in the constitution since 1977:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1977_Australian_referendum_(Senate_Casual_Vacancies)
[In a parliament with a cross bench of 16, 76 is enough. Labor will be very keen to get cross bench on side, because, unlike the coalition, they can cast forward longer than the current term]
I strongly doubt the government will put any bills to the house that are not supported by any of the cross bench.
It is possible that the entire cross bench and opposition may oppose certain procedural motions, but the new P.M. doesn’t just pretend to be a consensus builder as electoral branding; he actually thinks it is best for the country.
Labor could try not to legislate things the cross bench didn’t agree with. This would result in the Teals voting with the government near 100% of the time on divided matters.
Well this would just allow the LNP and the Murdoch-Rag media to paint the crossbench as lapdogs to the ALP and socialism.
The consequences of this are unknown.
‘sprocket_ says:
Monday, May 30, 2022 at 8:30 pm
We have the Common Law In the Westminster tradition BW’
==============================
That may be so. But (a) Common Law cannot force the Speaker to behave in the way you describe and (b) there is absolutely nothing about the Westminster tradition in the Constitution. Your argument would not even reach the High Court for a decision.
Well if Gilmore comes home to Mother Labor, it’s all a moot point. But Albo will want more consensus – me thinks the punters quite want Parties to work together.
Final word on Macnamara from Dr Bonham..
COVID votes have not broken to the Greens – I am busy at chess now but note the ABC has called it for Labor at this point, I expect correctly.
Freya Stark @ #154 Monday, May 30th, 2022 – 8:44 pm
Wrong post. This is a post for discussing the counting, and directly-related issues (like the final tally for Labor, and its direct effects). For discussing general politics, like that, you want the general thread.
So despite almost everything that could go wrong for Labor going wrong in MacNamara (or at least generally underperforming relative to expectations enough to keep people interested) over the last few days there really wasn’t much to see here.
Sure it’s been fun watching to find out when the luck would turn to a more in line with expectations run in the counting to finally snuff out the faint hope of a miracle, but I really don’t think you could ever realistically say this hasn’t been over the 99% certainty threshold for a long time now. Just too many unlikely things had to happen and the odds of multiple unlikely things multiply to become a near impossibility.
That’s not a criticism of Antony or anyone with a public and professional reputation to protect. But for us playing along at home it’s been safe to bank this one in the Labor column nearly as much as many other close seats.
There is still the possibility that the remaining votes are incredibly unrepresentative and the Greens win. But the odds of that are, well basically in the same ballpark as the odds have been for that result for a week.
Gilmore is also now exceptionally short odds on a Labor retain. Not 99% but getting very close. Again for us playing along at home you can call it as 77 without to much fear that the AEC isn’t going to have your back when they finally declare the results.
For those who want to hear Antony Green directly saying they’ve given Macnamara to Labor…
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-05-30/labor-will-govern-in-its-own-right-securing-76-seats/13906406
Oh and on the general expressions of admiration for the AEC above you can add my +1000.
A truly outstanding institution and I’ve no doubt that it’s well earned credibility is a huge factor in how smoothly we have gone through the process of changing government. To not be subjected to the toxic displays the US is still enduring over a not even remotely close election is to all of our benefit and largely to the AEC’s credit.
@ratsak This was most definitely not a 99% win off the numbers on Sunday. All of the “unlikely” events had been continually happening until that point. And projections based on the numbers to that point all had it coming down to a difference of no more than a few hundred votes with uncertainty about just how many remained to count + the lean of COVID votes. Today, the outcome is clear because now there’s been big breaks to Labor, and especially the COVID votes turning out to be highly Labor leaning, but to claim it was all but certain yesterday is silly.
@ratsak Not to detract from the AEC but comparing their performance to the US is an extremely low bar. Pretty much every democracy in the world does better than the US in running elections and vote-counting.
Thanks all, and in particular Trent, for the in depth commentary on the McNamara count as it progressed.
Adda, there weren’t “big breaks to Labor” at all today. Even the Covid votes would be almost break even on 3CP between Labor and Greens if the preferences were in line with the averages.
Both the absentee and declaration primary votes remain over 1% worse for Labor compared to their relationship to ordinary votes in 2019. In addition, the relatively large micro vote apparently flowed even worse to Labor than it already had been.
Despite this, Labor is still not going south of 33.333.
The Greens were way too far back to overcome Labor beyond a tiny chance and, if they were to do that, it would have taken a level of skewing in the final batches that would mean they would almost certainly pull the Libs back below Labor in the process.
Fair enough that neither Antony Green nor Labor were not going to call government on it, but even with the numbers before today it never came within a very low probability.
@GlenO, thanks for the link to the video!
@Adda, I totally agree with you. It looked like it was around 95-99% certain late last week, but as you say all those unlikely circumstances that had to unfold perfectly for the Greens to win actually were unfolding on Saturday; they were overperforming above projections on all vote types including postals, while the Liberals were also outperforming Labor to stay in the 2CP. They were the exact circumstances required, and they were occurring, so the seat could not be written off yet.
Of course, I think we all agreed that Labor were still the very likely winners because for them it was only the unlikely sustained overperformance of the Greens that could beat them, but for the Greens basically any shift away from those perfect numbers would end the race. But all the respected psephologists had doubt on Saturday night simply due to the unlikely good fortune the Greens were having in getting those numbers, against expectation.
Today that shift away from their overperformance happened and thus the Labor retain is confirmed. But what a journey to get there!
@Max, thanks! I’ve really enjoyed following this race. And while the outcome is decided now, I’ll still be very curious to see just how close the Greens get when the full distribution of preferences is done. I still think the final 3CP numbers will be close to 33.5 (Lib), just over 33.3 (ALP) and just under 33.2 (Greens) which will probably be smallest margin between all 3 parties in a 3CP count ever.
Adda,
Even Trent on what he admitted were optimistic projections couldn’t get the Greens into a winning position. At best he was saying if the count continued to underperform at an accelerating rate of underperformance from the already quite unexpected underperformance on the later counts for Labor then there was a slim chance that the Greens could get in front of Labor without taking enough votes off the Libs to drop them to third.
You had to squint really hard and cross your fingers and perhaps throw in a prayer to your deity of choice to find a way that Labor didn’t win this.
It would have taken an absolutely remarkable result had Labor not won. Talking about a couple of hundred votes in it really isn’t relevant. The important numbers were the percentage changes that were required as fewer and fewer votes were left to count. Sure we didn’t know exactly how many of them there were but we could make educated estimates. The sorts of numbers required for the Greens quickly became just another extremely unlikely event piled onto the fairly unlikely events that had kept them going. It’s not a certainty that when you’re on a lucky streak your luck is going to run out, but it is exceptionally likely.
That’s what happened here. It was always the overwhelmingly most likely scenario at every point of the count. The 200:1 roughy in the Melbourne Cup has stuck with the leaders all the way to the shadow of the post and people have dared to dream, but that’s all.
Ask anyone yesterday and they would not be telling you that there was >99% chance of Labor winning. Even WB himself was saying “the odds are most likely leaning against them” in Macnamara after Saturday. Your claim of it being a 1 to 200 longshot is based on numbers from Wednesday or Thursday, not after Saturday after the close three-way scenario was already set up and batches of releases kept the Greens on Labor’s heels. That doesn’t mean any of us were saying it wouldn’t be a Labor win – it was that they were favoured, but the circumstances had been in place for a realistic Greens win. My own estimate was 75% of a Labor win and that was the general view of others.
Today’s numbers deviated highly in favour of Labor compared to the last few days. The numbers ended up falling ~200 votes behind projection for the Greens. Had they skewed to the Greens as much as they did to Labor today, then we would be talking about a probable Green gain. Even if it went exactly according to projections, a couple of hundred votes also means that a booth error could easily be decisive. I don’t think you grasp that alone eliminates being over 99% likely. Then we still had no idea about the COVID vote lean (expected to be Greens, turned out not to) or the numbers of remaining votes.
The point I’m trying to get at here is that the situation was genuinely uncertain because the important information only has been found out today. It’s very easy to say now that Labor is a certain gain but that was simply not the case based on the lacking information beforehand. And it was definitely not a longshot on the evidence after Saturday’s counting – an outside chance, yes, but not as unlikely as it appeared on Wednesday or Thursday.
Ratsak that’s not entirely true about me not getting the Greens into a winning position with any projections.
For a short time on Saturday the projection did actually have the Greens beating Labor by about 30 votes. Very close. And what I thought was an optimistic projection for them, they were actually even outperforming. So it wasn’t as optimistic as I thought! That wasn’t based on their overperformance increasing either, just sustaining, but it did rely on making up anout 70 votes from the Covid EAV (didn’t happen) and relying on at least a small advantage from remaining postals. Neither of which was unrealistic.
Like you say, it was always unlikely that those flows would sustain. We all agreed on that. And *now* with fewer and fewer votes left you’re right that unrealistic percentages are required (hence, it’s been called), but when there were still 7000+ votes left to count the percentages required were actually just what they were actually getting at that time, so it simply couldn’t be ruled out, because if what was already happening simply continued, we were heading to maybe a 20 vote margin.
The Greens having a chance to win, as of Saturday, didn’t rely on anything changing to increasingly favour them. It relied on the current flows (at the time) simply continuing, and there being enough votes. Considering modelling projections is based on how things are currently tracking, not how thibgs might change, is why all the psephologists agreed it was in doubt on Saturday.
And I’ll just reiterate to add to that last sentence – in doubt but still likely Labor due to the high probability that the flows would change, or Covid votes wouldn’t break as required, both of which happened today.
On the ABC TV News report I saw, Antony Green said that Labor was ahead of the Greens by 400 at one of the crucial tipping points, presumably after allocation of the minor party preferences.
Yep, as of the 3CP count the AEC published on the weekend, the Greens were only 495 votes behind Labor with still just enough expected votes to count for the Greens to possibly close that gap if they continued getting the strong rates they were (outperforming Labor by 8% in absents and 5% in dec prepolls after minor preferences).
Today after counting more absents and dec prepolls they closed that gap to under 400, but at a slower rate than they required because the Greens’ advantage over Labor in today’s count was about 2% less than on Saturday. They really needed to have closed the gap to closer to 300 votes after those counts, then gained another 70 or so on Covid votes, to be in a competitive position.
The Covid votes adding 5 votes to Labor’s lead rather than erasing around 70 from it was the final nail in the coffin for the ABC to call it.
“Today’s numbers deviated highly in favour of Labor compared to the last few days. The numbers ended up falling ~200 votes behind projection for the Greens. Had they skewed to the Greens as much as they did to Labor today, then we would be talking about a probable Green gain.”
None of this is true
Adda is right that this afternoon’s count did deviate to Labor compared to the earlier batches.
The first batches of decs & absents had Labor getting almost 1% less than the Liberals on 3CP terms, and 5% less than the Greens in dec prepolls.
This afternoon it shifted to Labor getting more than the Liberals on absents, and only 3% less than the Greens on dec prepolls.
That’s what Adda is referring to and it’s a significant shift when the Greens’ only path relied on sustaining those earlier flows as a key dependency.
(Whether or not anybody thought they could sustain those flows is entirely irrelevant, they were happening and that’s what projections are based on, including those that unanimously pointed to a tightening race on Saturday)
I agree that they didn’t fall 200 short of projection though, but around 100 and that was enough in such a close race.
GlenO,
It appears the COVID votes from Grayndler have been released.
ALP 57.42
GRN 24.82
LIB 10.22
IND 2.92
PHON 1.46
FUSION 1.22
AJP 0.97
UAP 0.97
Bugler @ #175 Monday, May 30th, 2022 – 11:44 pm
Thanks. Shame it also has the “strong Greens” factor that makes it hard to apply to Gilmore and Deakin. But what I’m seeing, based on both Grayndler and Macnamara, is that both Labor and Greens are doing a good 2-4% better than Ordinary, while Liberals basically drop by the sum of the two.
If I had to hazard a guess at what they’d look like for Deakin, I’d guess 37% Labor, 17% Greens, and 34.5% Liberal. And with maybe 500 votes total, that would probably mean a gain of about 100 votes for Labor on 2PP.
”
Honest Bastardsays:
Monday, May 30, 2022 at 9:33 pm
@ratsak Not to detract from the AEC but comparing their performance to the US is an extremely low bar. Pretty much every democracy in the world does better than the US in running elections and vote-counting.
”
If the basic foundation on which the democracy is built i.e. running elections and vote-counting, on shaky grounds then why is US is the greatest democracy in the world?
GlenO,
While Deakin is an urban seat, it is not as densely populated as either Macnamara or Grayndler so will likely have less COVID cases and therefore less COVID votes. Maybe somewhere between Flinders and Macnamara.
Bugler @ #178 Tuesday, May 31st, 2022 – 12:24 am
That’s very possible. But without some data to help, it’s near impossible to predict.
That said, the Flinders data is more like what I was hoping for – and Labor and Greens both did even better relative to Ordinary in Flinders, suggesting that the reduced total number of votes may be compensated for by the increased changes in percentages.
Ven: “then why is US is the greatest democracy in the world?”
I don’t accept the premise of your premise.
Three words that sum up US “democracy”……..”Voter Supression Laws”
Not sure if anyone has posted this but interesting statistical analysis from the ABC on voting trends at this election as compared to 2019.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-05-31/federal-election-voting-trends-climate/101111930
It’s still all over red rover in Deakin, no point clinging onto the forlorn hope of a miracle.
Gilmore will be more interesting. Does an unusually Labor leaning batch of absents mean the remainder will go the other way?
mj – I read that this morning – equally impressed. Amazing these new feature articles with dynamic charts. Really good stuff.
My inner geek said – great start – lets get more variables and do a PCA. I was thinking can that then that be used in combination with current trends to improve late counting. No idea.
Obviously things like the Covid vote was just ‘unknown’ but surely most of the things done by the amazing William/Kevin/Antony/plethora of bludgers could be combined into a really good model. I am constantly amazed at how quickly the seemingly new ML techniques can be applied in disparate situations. Maybe even this one??
# I wish was back doing Comp Sci Honours and not stuck in the office. Speaking of which…
Trent, I too have appreciated your contributions in this thread. You clearly have good spreadsheet modelling skills and supported by solid conceptual logic.
I want to pick you up on something, but, particularly in light of you receiving my responses as aggressive at times, I am going to concede my 2 key errors throughout #Macnamarawatch. They both relate to minor party preferences
1. When I first started with the “why hasn’t Macnamara been called” early last week, I did so in ignorance of the Greens capacity to win decent preference flows over both major parties from RWNJ micros. This was apparently a known phenomena that I was unaware of as a couple-of-weeks-every-couple-of-years pseph-hack. Rightfully warrants a “how do you think you know better than these very smart people who do this all the time” charge
2. Apart from the odd “back of the envelope” calcs, I was doing this in my head. When the dec-prepolls and absentees were coming in I completely overlooked the much larger micro vote and its implications. To a lessor extent, I underestimated the possibility that the Greens could further increase their share of these flows, possibly still due to prejudices at (1)
Now, the key feedback I’d like to provide you. Essentially this:
“Whether or not anybody thought they could sustain those flows is entirely irrelevant, they were happening and that’s what projections are based on, including those that unanimously pointed to a tightening race on Saturday”
….is not correct. Projections are based on the totality of intelligence of the key drivers of whatever is being projected.
I was correct yesterday, not because the numbers actually did come in (they could have done so even if I was taking bollocks), but because the previous behavour was still very relevant (relative performance in previous elections) and we had no information on the source of the absent and dec prepoll batches that had come in. We also had no hypothesis offered as to why these vote types should behaviour differently to ordinary votes.
Likewise, in the absence of any data for this year, you cannot just rely on the last data point. Primarily here I am thinking of provisionals. Last time the relative performance on provisionals appears to me an outlier. Further, while provisionals do seem to tilt left, given their nature they are perhaps the least likely of vote types to reflect what happened last time (both because they are small in number but also because they are people presumably unsure of which electorate they are registered in).
Anyway, I hope you take this in the spirit it has been provided. You clearly are intelligent and skilled and deserving of the praise people have given you for the contributions you’ve made here
Ven @ #178 Tuesday, May 31st, 2022 – 12:23 am
Marketing, mostly. Backed by military strength and an obscene amount of nukes.
In reality the electoral college is (and always has been) an anti-democratic trainwreck, their Congressional map has been gerrymandered to oblivion by both sides, one of their two major parties is openly trying to make it harder (as in, “illegal”) for people in certain demographics to vote, and the Supreme Court has been stacked with partisans.
Don’t mistake the stars reflected in a pond for the night sky.
“Freya Starksays:
Tuesday, May 31, 2022 at 9:39 am
It’s still all over red rover in Deakin, no point clinging onto the forlorn hope of a miracle.
Gilmore will be more interesting. Does an unusually Labor leaning batch of absents mean the remainder will go the other way?”
I suspect it means they are likely to be somewhat less beneficial than 5% extra advantage Phillips got on absentees last time. Almost certain that was not all because of one 20% block of the absentee vote
So Labor has just had a good batch of dec prepolls but hasn’t increased its lead…..presuming there has been a batch of postals counted that have offset it?
Only 171 postals (received….but guessing 10 days post election there couldn’t be many more?) yet to count with a lead of 142. Looking good
>>>>>
Gilmore will be more interesting. Does an unusually Labor leaning batch of absents mean the remainder will go the other way?”
>>>>>>>>>
There isn’t any real population density near the borders of Gilmore. So it’s unlikely that punters would have a non-Gilmore booth near them or say drive to the shops, take the kids to sport and vote at a booth in a non-Gilmore booth.
So it’s not like there is a nearby non-Gilmore booth ready to take neighbouring votes from a particular Gilmore demographic.
(I guess more ALP/left aligned people from Kiama and surrounds _may_ have gone 30 mins up the road to Wollongong or Shellharbour to delight in big city shops on voting day. Many of these people work in Wollongong CBD and could show up in dec pre-poll – but still not a huge proportion from the entire electorate.)
Not sure if my nearby out of electorate polling booths idea is solid but Gilmore has 2378 Absents Issued and population-dense Sydney, for comparison has 5554.
All it would take would be two big ‘joint’ booths on a boundary to mess things up – and that’s without considering richer electorates having more people on holidays and so on.
So a novice question with dec prepolls.
Where do they appear in the AEC seat count?
I did a quick google and read but can’t find how they actually get reflected into the count.
# and I wish there was a like button on comments. I would like to show I really appreciated some of the detailed comments but don’t want to pollute the chat with ‘good job’
Gilmore into 130 after the last batch of absentees broke more favourably to Constance.
Probably looking a little more plausible overall. Hopefully if there are any more heavily pro labor batches
we get them next!
Notice that the bulk of outstanding (to be counted) envelopes in Gilmore are mostly pre-poll, absent, & very few postals left. If percentages keep in same direction for Labor — we might just squeak in.
That will be horrendous for LNP as it means they did not pick up a single seat.
Are you scrutineering Revisionist?
No Jen, just refreshing AEC count pages impulsively whilst I should be doing other things
I agree, stopping the Libs winning any seats trumps 77 as the biggest motivator of winning Gilmore!
Yeah – am refreshing constantly too …. What will we do with our time when all this is over????
JenAuthor says:
Tuesday, May 31, 2022 at 12:27 pm
Yeah – am refreshing constantly too …. What will we do with our time when all this is over????
中华人民共和国
Watch Albo and the crossbench change Australia for the better. Whilst this is not the thread, if Labor Governs wisely and with consensus we might be looking at even more Tory losses next time!
I’ll find something else to facilitate my procrastination, Jen!
Katherine Murphy tweeting that ALP have claimed Gillmore??
Indeed Indeed.
https://ibb.co/t4BxRML