Late counting: week three

Progressively updated commentary on late counting of the results from the 2022 federal election.

Click here for full federal election results updated live.

Monday, June 6

In Deakin, some pre-polls broke 53-33 to Labor and some absents broke 13-11 to Liberal, leaving the Liberal lead at 440. It’s the final seat to have dropped from my hyper-cautious results facility’s list of seats in doubt. There are 1033 envelopes awaiting processing, which I would guess will amount to about 800 formal votes. In Gilmore there are just 34 postal vote envelopes remaining to be processed: added today were postals that broke 117-40 to Labor (sufficiently lopsided that I expect there may have been an element of rechecking going on as well), absents that broke 93-63 to Labor and pre-polls that broke 270-235 to Liberal, putting the Labor lead at 348.

Sunday, June 5

The deadline for the arrival of postal votes passed yesterday, leaving the Australian Electoral Commission with only a bit of mopping up to do on a result that very much looks like Labor 77, Coalition 58, independents 10, Greens four and one apiece for the Centre Alliance and Katter’s Australian Party. The only theoretically doubtful seats are Deakin and Gilmore, where perhaps 1000 votes remain to reverse leads of 550 for Liberal member Michael Sukkar and 276 for Labor member Fiona Phillips.

That still leaves the Senate, the resolution of which is likely a fortnight away, and the process of which is helpfully outlined in a video from the Australian Electoral Commission. I have now updated my spreadsheet in which I project a simplified preference count based on flows from the 2019 election. This has not caused me to fundamentally change an assessment I laid it out here in detail on Monday, except that Pauline Hanson’s lead in Queensland over Amanda Stoker has narrowed to the extent that I now have her margin at the final count at 11.9% to 11.1%, in from 12.1% to 10.8%. This is close enough to raise the possibility that changes in preferences flows from the last election will be sufficient to account for the difference, though I personally don’t think it likely.

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.

105 comments on “Late counting: week three”

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  1. Fun fact:

    On the Victorian senate ballot, there was a candidate named James Bond. He appears to have gotten 0.0007 quotas.

  2. Re Upnorth at 10.27 am

    Marginality in electoral terms is multi-dimensional, so I think your numerical interpretation is correct.

    In Gilmore Phillips has seen off the big challenge successfully, whereas Sukkar keeps slip-sliding away.

    In Deakin the Labor candidate’s PV swing was only 0.39%. He needed a PV swing of 0.58% but failed.

    However, in 18 out of 30 Qld seats the Labor candidate’s PV swing was worse than Gregg’s meagre swing in Deakin (Bonner, Dickson, Fadden, Fairfax, Forde, Griffith, Groom, Herbert, Hinkler, Kennedy, Leichhardt, Longman, Maranoa, McPherson, Moncrieff, Petrie, Ryan and Wide Bay).

    Of course, some of that was due to many minor candidates, but those with good swings stood out.

  3. Interesting to see that of the 15 safest Labor held seats after this election 4 are now in WA – Fremantle (4th), Brand (5th), Perth (8th) and Burt (15th). The Division of Perth is particularly noteworthy considering it was a marginal seat for a few elections prior to this one.

    The way things are going for the Liberals in WA it wouldn’t be surprising to see Perth and perhaps Fremantle becoming Labor v Greens contests before too long. Curtin will be increasingly difficult for the Liberals to regain/win – a lot of apartment developments currently as well as on the pipeline that will see it “Kooyongified”.

    The LNP from my perspective have to take a more centrist approach if they are to return to being competitive in the metro seats (especially inner metro), they seem to think they can win people over in the suburbs with a populist approach to counteract that but there isn’t much evidence in this election to suggest it’ll work sufficiently to win government in the medium term. There doesn’t seem to be the personnel with the will to move the party in a different direction.

    Will be interesting to see how the teals go, it feels like it could be the embryonic stage of a future “green liberal” party. A lot of people, me included, thought the teals would “steal” a lot of votes from the “green socialist” Greens, though it seems it’s more a reflection of a greater mainstream appeal of candidates with environmental credentials. Perhaps it’s reached the stage where the political market for environmentalists has partially expanded/partially filled a vacuum to allow for an electable niche for the teals as the more economically conservative representatives of this ilk.

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