Click here for full Victorian election results updated live.
Wednesday night
It is now acknowledged that John Pesutto has won Hawthorn for the Liberals, and Mornington continues to drift away from the only other teal independent in the hunt, Kate Lardner. In the latter case, today’s early votes broke 902-726 to Liberal candidate Chris Crewther, who now leads by 353. In Pakenham, the two-party votes were added for the early voting batch that appeared in the primary votes count only yesterday, and it broke to the Liberals less heavily than I had anticipated — 1135-907, turning a Labor leading of eight votes into a Liberal lead of 220. There’s evidently a complex mix in the race for the final seat in South-Eastern Metropolitan region, because the ABC’s projection now has it going to Legalise Cannabis, overtaking the Liberal Democrats who in turn overtook the second Liberal yesterday.
Tuesday night
I had a paywalled piece in Crikey today noting where the result for Labor in swing terms was particularly good (the same Chinese-heavy eastern suburbs that turned against the Liberals at the federal election) and particularly poor (the party’s northern and western Melbourne heartlands, which likewise were relatively soft for the party at the federal election). I also joined Ben Raue of The Tally Room to discuss the results on his podcast.
Turning to the count: it was a better day for the Liberals in Bass, where Aaron Brown went from 225 behind to 53 ahead after early votes broke 835-663 his way, and Mornington, where Chris Crewther’s lead went from 177 to 337 on a 747-588 break in early votes. The Liberals also got a strong batch of early votes in Pakenham, and while they are yet to be added to the two-party count, the primary vote results have boosted my Liberal two-party projection there from 50.0% to 50.8% and left my system not far off calling it for them. My system also no longer rates Benambra as in doubt.
Labor’s one good show was in Hastings, where the latest early votes batch broke 747-660 to Paul Mercurio, boosting his lead from 470 to 557. The fresh two-candidate preferred counts in Albert Park, Brighton, Melton, Point Cook, and Werribee yesterday caused by projections in those seats to go haywire yesterday, but this is fixed now.
While I still haven’t taken a serious look at the upper house count, I note that the ABC’s projection now has Adem Somyurek taking the last seat in Northern Metropolitan for the DLP ahead of Fiona Patten of Reason, though I have a notion that Somyurek may do less than brilliantly on below-the line votes. David Limbrick of the Liberal Democrats also has his nose in front of the second Liberal now in South-Eastern Metropolitan.
Monday night
There was no significant progress today, which was spent mostly on rechecking. That will continue today, but more interesting will be the addition of as-yet-uncounted early votes that were cast outside the home district. As noted below, new indicative two-candidate preferred counts are being conducted in five seats where the wrong two candidates were picked for the count on election nights, but in no case is the result in doubt. Happily, the Victorian Electoral Commission has a page on its website where such news is related in detail on a daily basis.
Sunday night
I spent yesterday fixing bugs in my results system, and now this is done to a reasonably satisfactory level, it should resume updating promptly, at least when I have an internet connection. Most of today’s activity will involve rechecking, but fresh two-candidate counts will be conducted in seats where the initial counts picked the wrong candidates – Albert Park, Brighton, Melton, Point Cook, and Werribee – although in no case is the result in doubt.
My system is giving away 45 seats to Labor and has them ahead in a further 11, which would result in the extraordinary achivement of an increased majority if it stuck. Seats my system is not yet calling but almost certainly soon will are Bayswater, Footscray, Pascoe Vale, Glen Waverley and Yan Yean, which get Labor to 50; Caulfield, Polwarth and Rowville, which get the Liberals to 12; and Mildura and Shepparton, which get the Nationals to not far behind the Liberals on nine. I still have nothing to offer on the upper house result, but that will hopefully change over the next day or two.
Bass. Labor’s Jordan Crugnale needed an 0.8% swing to retain her seat after the redistribution, and after looking gone on election night, a 5.0% swing in her favour on early votes puts it at 1.4%. However, the early vote count of 15427 formal votes is nearly 6000 shy of the number cast, which presumably means one of the three centres hasn’t reported yet. If the outstanding centre is more conservative than the other two, the swing on early votes — which is not broken down between individual voting centres, as would be the case at a federal election — will drop considerably when it reports, perhaps taking Crugnale’s lead with it.
Benambra. The ABC has Liberal member Bill Tilley marked down as holding off two-time independent challenger Jacqui Hawkins, but my more conservative system only gets his probability to 85.9%. He leads by 1.1% on the raw two-candidate preferred count, which is all you’ll get from the ABC — I’m still using a method that presumes to project a final result, which narrows it to 0.8%. Booth and early votes came in about where Hawkins needed to knock off his 2.6% margin, but he’s picked up a 5.3% swing on 2354 postals, about as many of which are still to come.
Croydon. Liberal member David Hodgett had a slight swing against him on ordinary and early votes in a seat where he was defending a 1.0% margin, but the first half of around 8000 postal votes have swung 4.4% his way and he will more than likely get home.
Hastings. Paul Mercurio looks likely to gain a seat for Labor that had no margin at all after the redistribution, and which was being vacated with the retirement of Liberal member Neale Burgess. Ordinary, postal and early votes have all swung slightly his way, leaving him 470 votes ahead with most of the outstanding vote consisting of around 3000 postals and 2000 absents.
Hawthorn. My projection has John Pesutto’s current lead of 0.7% (480 votes) narrowing to 0.3% at the last, mostly because the Liberals did poorly on absent votes in 2018 (36.5% by my post-redistribution reckoning, compared with 44.7% all told), of which I would expect about 2000. However, his primary vote is up 6.1% on the 3055 postal votes counted, compared with about 3% down on ordinary and early votes, and my projection method doesn’t presume that offers any guide to the 4000 or so outstanding. If it does, he will get home fairly comfortably.
Mornington. The teals could emerge empty-handed after a promising start in Mornington fell foul of a 2635-1553 break in favour of Liberal candidate Chris Crewther on postals, leaving him 177 votes ahead with about 3800 further postals still to come. On the other, the Liberals did poorly in 2022 on absent votes, of which there should be about 2000.
Northcote. The Greens’ lower house performance failed to match expectations set to at least some extent by a media determined to hype any anti-Labor narrative to hand, most notably in their likely failure to win Northcote. The first 1651 postals have broken 1027-624 to Labor, a swing in their favour of 5.7% with about 3500 still to come, but the Greens handily won absents in 2018, of which there should be about 3000.
Pakenham. Labor had a notional 2.2% margin in this essentially new seat, and their candidate Emma Vulin ended Sunday with a lead of eight votes over Liberal rival David Farrelly. Labor lost the first 2121 postals by only 1104-1017, a swing of 4.8% in their favour. The question is likely whether an advantage to Farrelly on 3500 or so remaining postals outweights absents, which on my post-redistribution calculation favoured Labor 1230-828 last time.
Preston. Labor’s 1306 vote lead on the two-candidate preferred count will assuredly be enough to see off the Greens. But at Inside Story, Tim Colebatch offers a “scoop”: the final count will in fact be between Labor and independent Gaetano Greco, and it’s not inconceivable he will win. Labor is on 38.1% of the primary vote to Greco’s 14.9%, raising the question of how many voters for sundry left-wing concerns (Greens, Victorian Socialists, Animal Justice and Reason Australia) moved promptly to Labor after their first preference over Greco, a “long-time Darebin councillor and Labor activist”.
Ripon. Liberal member Louise Staley needed a 2.8% swing here post-redistribution, currently has only 0.7%. Labor’s raw lead is 1358, but there are around 8000 early votes outstanding and Staley won the first batch of postals 1814-1272 with about 4500 still to come.
A TPP of 54-46 is typically considered a landslide in Australian elections, and winning 55 seats out of 88 is definitely a landslide. (That’s the equivalent of winning 93 seats in a federal election.)
Just because it’s not as big a landslide as last time doesn’t mean it isn’t a landslide.
B.S. Fairman, Liz Cunningham (independent) didn’t win the Mundingburra re-election: she was already in Queensland parliament.
Frank Tanti (Liberal) won Mundingburra, giving the independent Cunningham balance of power. After careful consideration (she itemised her reasoning in a speech), she decided to support the Coalition, thus bringing down the re-elected Goss government mid-term.
Liz Cunningham was the MP for Gladstone.
Yes, I was wrong. The Liberals challenged that election when they had nothing to lose. And the breeze was certainly blowing their way at the time.
It wasn’t blow their way at next state election however.
There was also the most recent case here in Victoria in Ripon in 2018 when the Liberals won by 15 votes after a recount (after Labor was ahead by around 70 votes before), but Labor chose not to contest that because it was already in a comfortable majority in seats.
I realize now that Mundingburra in 1995 was a huge contesting issue because Goss’s government held a 1 seat majority, so it was logical for the Liberals back then to challenge it as hard as they could.
Andrews has responded to media saying I have not been to a faction meeting for 12 years and will not be attending for another 4 years
These matters are for others
Answers the typical rubbish from media comprehensively – including that he will be there for 4 years
Andrews is the consummate politician – what you see is precisely what you get
What we do have is more and more candidates and, indeed, Parties nominating
And that appears the trend
These individuals will attract votes – from where they attract votes from including both the ALP and the Liberal Party
At the end of the day, what delivers government is the seats won in the Lower House
End of story
The ALP government in SA obtained the majority of seats despite a 2PP of under 50%
With a redistribution it was defeated by the LCP led by Marshall – the Marshall government then unravelling to minority status then being beaten in a landslide earlier this year after 1 term
The ALP 2PP vote recovering to where is was in that landslide election result
The ALP now have a Premier in SA to continue the reputation of long term Premiers Dunstan, Bannon, Rann and Wetherald
I would suggest that Andrews has a lot more in the tank despite what a partisan media may wish for or hope for – and promote noting again Andrews response to them today
I’ll be curious to see what the Liberals’ position on the Suburban Loop project will be in 2026. By then, it would be 4 years into it, and attempting a Matthew Guy style “Tools down, you’re all fired” policy in southeastern-eastern suburban seats they need to win if they were to regain government probably won’t go over well.
I noticed that about 2.3% has been wiped off Newbury’s 2PP margin in Brighton.
It appears that a batch of about 7000 early votes got added which broke about 12% better for Labor than all the previous early votes, so I assume that may have been the prepoll at the Pride Centre in St Kilda that was doing Albert Park, Prahran and Brighton and would most likely have been the nearest prepoll for Elwood voters.
Not that it makes a difference to Newbury’s comfortable win, but symbolically the LIB margin reducing from 6.8% to 4.5% keeps it in the marginal column for next time.
Kirsdarke @ #455 Friday, December 2nd, 2022 – 7:47 pm
My gut tells me they will revert to economic conservatism and budget restraint will be their be all and end all for 2026.
Labor on a roll may fluke Narracan!
Crugnale’s lead back out to 285 now in Bass.
Having done some of the actual economic modelling for the suburban rail loop myself (that is my day job other than talking politics on the Bludger), it does require certain parameters to meet to be feasible. But all modelling requires assumptions as there will always be unknowns and uncertainties.
There are also intangibles that come from decentralising the Melbourne Rail network. And haven’t been model as there are just too many knowns to put a round figure on it.
I do love it when sometimes my figures are quoted verbatim without the two dozen cavets they were supplied with. State and federal governments of both colours have done that with my work.
There is another factor that is being overlooked re Labor’s chances in 2026. The Metro Rail Tunnel is expected to be integrated into the network and running by 2025. Assuming that timeline holds, the delivery of that infrastructure is bound to have an electoral impact, particularly in Melbourne’s south east.
@B.S. Fairman
That’s pretty cool, nice to hear you’re working on that.
Just my main pondering there is if the Liberals take the same policy of “We can’t afford it, so stop.” in the 2026 election whether it’ll be worth it for them. By then there’ll be billions of dollars in contracts in place and large amounts of earthworks already under construction.
That may make voters in those areas unsettled about turning to the Liberals to vote. After all, if they win on that platform, all they can do is point to a giant incomplete mess and proudly say “We did that, that’s what we stand for.”
I think if they were to carry an actual election winning strategy, they’ll probably have to do what Baillieu did in the end in the 2010 election campaign and promise to continue Labor’s infrastructure works to completion.
Their best chance at stopping it, like Labor stopped the East-West link in 2014, was last week and they failed. If they continue to insist on cancelling it at the next election, it may be too costly, both politically and in the budget.
Sounds sensible Kirsdarke, but I’m not sure that’s the way they roll anymore. The ‘sensible’ ones seem to be less and less visible.
In regards to the vote count, today’s counting in Ripon has seemed to confirm a Labor victory and the party has claimed so. It’s been a seat I’ve been keeping my eye on, even though the ABC computer called it, but today’s numbers apparently made it decisive.
Unless there’s a serious error, Martha Haylett will be the new member for Ripon, defeating Louise Staley of the Liberals. Just a little part of me is cautious about making it decisive because of the nonsense that happened last election there.
Frankly, the Victorian Liberals just don’t have it in them to do the work needed to turn those swings against Labor in the outer northern and western suburbs into something durable. They’re fundamentally lazy – and not just intellectually. These are places they can barely find on a map, let alone bring themselves to spend much time in.
B S Fairman
“Having done some of the actual economic modelling for the suburban rail loop myself (that is my day job other than talking politics on the Bludger), it does require certain parameters to meet to be feasible. But all modelling requires assumptions as there will always be unknowns and uncertainties.”
Interesting! I started doing traffic engineering back in the 80s then transport demand (four step) models in the 90s then gradually wound up doing mostly economic analysis of infrastructure projects.
I think the suburban rail loop is a really interesting project because, if successful, it will change both the shape (demographic scenario) and transport activity pattern (mode share) of Melbourne. It might also facilitate the rise of sub regional centres outside the CBD. As a comparator, look at the difference in density and PT mode share for middle Sydney vs middle Melbourne.
One thing I don’t understand is why such a long term project has to be all tunneled? If there is time to acquire a surface corridor that will safe a fortune over tunneling. On average the cost of surface/bridge/tunnel is 1/2/5.
If Labor hold Bass, it would be one of the most rural seats they hold, up there with Ripon. It’s hard to find maps from the 90s online, but I’m guessing there’s a big overlap with the old Gippsland West?
it seems suprising that somyurek could winn he is undoughtedly a man of bad charictor yet the liberals and sky after dark have turned him in to some sort of hearow for some reason his eleged stacking the dpp could not find any evidence of criminal behavier this contrasts to nsw where the media are bring up links to obead to triy and save the nsw liberal government yet a victorian mp has been turned in to a hearow standing up to dictator dan
B S Fairman
“I do love it when sometimes my figures are quoted verbatim without the two dozen cavets they were supplied with. State and federal governments of both colours have done that with my work.”
De ja vu! One of the first jobs I did on one rail planning study that State’s DoT liked the plan, adopted it for funding, and my cost estimate, which was only a rough planning estimate for option comparison, wound up in the following year’s budget. I had explicit statements that it was not a budget figure, they had to do survey, geotechnical etc to make sure costs were known, but they ignored it al. Fortunately my risk allowance was sufficient and they got within 10%.
@Socrates
I’m making a guess here, but I think the decision to make the railway underground is to play with “The Castle” principle. The train goes underground, and minimal surface properties have to be demolished to make way for it, which if it did would very much disgruntle a lot of people who live on the route. Especially in that this is a completely new design for the city in those suburbs.
This is different to the Skyrail corridors because those were mostly built along existing railways and minimal properties had to be brought back to the government to build them. But for a railway to be built between Cheltenham and Glen Waverley to start with, that would go through hundreds of properties if it was put on the surface. And that would make a lot of people angry if they were forced to sell off their property there and move elsewhere.
@Socrates
Of all the (overheated) criticisms of the Suburban Rail Loop, that one is the weirdest. There is simply no feasible surface route for it – even in an elevated form – that wouldn’t require acquiring thousands of properties. It can’t be anything other than a tunnel.
Besides, a tunnel only costs more largely because of stations – the SRL will have relatively few to ensure fast trips across the suburbs. (Yet another reason why the comparisons with the Circle Line in London, the Ringbahn in Berlin or the Yamanote Line in Tokyo are just stupid.)
The other weird thing about the SRL is how so many otherwise sensible people seem to think the whole thing has to be budgeted and paid for up front when it’s going to take 20-30 years to get to Melbourne Airport – let alone another 20-30 to go through the west, by which time it’ll be going through places like Sydenham (via a tunnel under Melbourne Airport to serve the new terminal which will end up being built on its opposite, western side – see the Airport’s latest Master Plan) and Mount Atkinson to Werribee, rather than Sunshine.
Why is SLR underground all the way? Only really worked on the first stages which has to be underground because land acquisition would cost more than tunnelling. There is no corridors set aside for it. In the second stage and onwards (Anti-clockwise from Doncaster) , there is a possibility of using some existing reservations in places but most of it still has to go underground. Plans are nowhere near as advance for those stages.
I was mostly checking others work on it. The biggest issue is COVID has changed the way people go to work and it is uncertain if that is going to remain or things will go back to normal. Hence the trend modelling is a mess.
Analysing the latest Bass batch: postals split 167-131 Lab (56.0%), absents 531-430 Lab (55.3%). Current Labor lead of 285. At 83.9% counted and probably no more than 3-4k remaining votes. Remaining vote should consist of probably close to half of absents (which Labor will win) and then the Liberals not only need to win, they need to make up a gap of 400+, and that means they need to flip late postals/prepolls to being hugely in their favour (when usually they get better for Labor, like this last batch).
I don’t see how that’s going to happen so barring some freak booth correction or similar it looks like Labor have secured this. Close to callable but can wait for another 1k votes to put it beyond doubt.
Kirsdarke, Toby, B S Fairman
Thanks for explaining re the lack of surface corridor for the Melbourne rail loop. In that case sure the tunnel is unavoidable.
In that case Victoria should look at what Singapore has done to get costs down. Contract it as a continuous rolling process rather than a series of one off contracts. That was you don’t keep paying the very high establishment cost for the TBMs.
Legalise Cannabis Australian have achieved three members of the LC in Victoria while The Transport Matters Party lost its only member.
Some are keen to become part of the loop, some are not.
Does the LCA Party have a transport policy ?
Bird of paradox says:
Friday, December 2, 2022 at 11:06 pm
If Labor hold Bass, it would be one of the most rural seats they hold, up there with Ripon. It’s hard to find maps from the 90s online, but I’m guessing there’s a big overlap with the old Gippsland West?
———-
There would be a fair overlap between Gippsland West, but I suspect the ALP’s success here has a lot to do with the fact that a smaller proportion of voters live in the traditionally rural parts of the electorate. The commuter towns along the Bass Highway all the way to Phillip Island have been booming and there’s an increasing sea-change/tree-change component too, especially since COVID.
If Legalise Cannabis does obtain MLC it will be achieved with the help of ALP preferences. Legalise Cannabis will side with Labor.
gollsays:
Saturday, December 3, 2022 at 6:34 am
Legalise Cannabis Australian have achieved three members of the LC in Victoria while The Transport Matters Party lost its only member.
Some are keen to become part of the loop, some are not.
Does the LCA Party have a transport policy ?
_______________________
LCAs transport policy is to keep the roads clear so that Dominos can deliver their Pizzas 😉
Their policies are mostly about funding public transport.
hwow is somyurek ddoing in upper house hope he losis
Mega George bayoneting the wounded Liberals…
This was the unavoidable maths of last Saturday’s massacre. The combative and policy-lite Mathew Guy secured swings but no seats for the Liberals in Labor’s heartland in the west and north of the city. The polarising but respected Daniel Andrews secured both a healthy swing and a couple of seats to Labor in the east.
Labor has built two reinforcing electoral walls in this once-safe Liberal territory in Melbourne – with young professionals, especially women, and with the Chinese. The realignment has been accelerated by the twin forces of ageing and migration. The combination of deaths and departures has seen the white populations of both the inner east and the outer east fall in absolute terms between 2011 and 2021. That means net population growth has been coming entirely from overseas migrants and their children.
The ageing part of the equation should have kept this area safe for the Liberals. But Morrison and Dutton gratuitously alienated the Chinese and others who were moving into the area with their wild claims that Labor was Beijing’s preferred candidate.
https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/here-s-a-map-of-misery-in-the-liberal-heartland-20221201-p5c2s9.html
Legalize Cannabis is just code for Fiona Patton. Rachel Payne worked as a propagandist for the ironically named Eros Foundation and worked for Patton anyway. Their position will be the same in the LC. She’ll be the same, smarmy, leftoid with the same ‘prostitution is great’ mantra.
Mike Seccombe joins in the pile-on of the hapless Victorian Liberals, with Malcolm and Peta offering alternate solutions…
The party is deeply – and increasingly publicly – riven about how to respond. On Monday, former Liberal prime minister Malcolm Turnbull unleashed a fierce tweetstorm.
“At the heart of the Liberal Party’s defeat in the Victorian election on Saturday,” he wrote, “is the paradox that in this, the most small-l liberal state in Australia, the Liberal Party has been taken over by the hard right and is therefore at odds with the electorate whose support it seeks.
“This is, in large part, dictated by the right-wing angertainment complex, mostly Murdoch, which claims to speak for ‘the base’ overlooking the fact that the ‘base’ of any political party are those that habitually vote for it … And, as the regular Liberal voters shrink in numbers, the need to reach beyond the ‘base’ (however defined) to the centre is greater than ever. The angertainment media can monetise narrow audiences with divisive hate filled bile – but it is too narrow for electoral success.”
It was strong stuff and elicited a strong response. Peta Credlin – former chief-of-staff to Tony Abbott and now one of the hard-right coterie of commentators on Sky News – used her column in The Australian to attack Turnbull personally, and to savage the Victorian Liberal Party for adopting “Labor-lite” positions on gender issues, climate, Indigenous reconciliation and other social issues.
Credlin actually has a point: that the Liberal Party needs to find a way to distinguish itself from Labor. And Turnbull also has a point: they need to do it in a way that does not alienate the rising generation of voters.
https://www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au/news/politics/2022/12/03/inside-the-liberal-partys-existential-crisis
Jeremy Brownout.
You really are one sick puppy, but I think you might just be the man in black and we all know how he ended up when the pressures got too great for him.
https://d2bx93w6kas18u.cloudfront.net/titles/devilspl/devilspl1_bb.mp4
I’m not sure how Jeremy Browne’s preferences are relevant to the late counting in the Victorian election or Victorian electoral matters generally, but maybe he’ll eventually find a more appropriate place to express his feelings.
Grime,
“You really are one sick puppy”
Move over Voltaire. Step aside Socrates. There’s a new kid in town. For Grime will soon be joining the pantheon of legendary thinkers. A lesser man might have made a well thought out counter argument but not our Grime. No. “You really are one sick puppy”, is surely the catchcry of the intellectually gifted.
What is it with the demented flogs that always like to raise the subject of intelligence when they’re called out for their odious behaviour?
For those not aware, let me provide a good crib-sheet for you…
https://www.healthline.com/health/projection-psychology
Jeremy Browne @ #487 Saturday, December 3rd, 2022 – 11:10 am
“A well thought out counter argument”
“Do not answer a fool according to his folly, or you yourself will be just like him” (Proverbs 26:4).
Pi @ #488 Saturday, December 3rd, 2022 – 11:14 am
Now there’s a really useful tip for ‘demented flogs’
See a therapist.
Somyurek was expelled from the ALP for breaking PARTY Rules (re branch stacking)
Breaking PARTY Rules is not a criminal offence
“Faceless men” and branch stacking have been potent political attack points for the Tories for generations and the catalyst for the Rules the Party now has in place
On the other side, what Rules are there noting the stacking of Bulleen, Turnbull and his electorate numbers plus Bastiaan and Sukkar and the “Churches” they target for membership and control?
The defence of Bastiaan and Sukkar is that they broke no Rules (noting the internal inquiry was attended by Sukkar’s former employer)
Margaret Simons hits the bullseye here.
Any thoughts on the current dead heat in Pakenham?
Not quite a dead heat in Pakenham – per the ABC, it looks like around 930 votes have been added today, with the Liberal now ahead by 3. No idea what type of votes were added.
How long do we have to tolerate Jeremy Browne bringing everything back to their anti-sex work views? It’s bloody tiresome.
something like that
Well, if you dont like witty repartee and the fearless exchange of free flowing ideas then I suggest you look elsewhere for your psephological needs.
Upper House count in Western Victoria (on ABC) has dropped back from 72% counted to 58% counted. VEC still showing 72%, no change in days. Anyone know what is happening with the slow count in the regions?
Gough and Margaret’s children, Catherine and Nick. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree…
Whoops! Wrong thread
I think realistically that nobody will know the results of the upper house until button-push day for each region, whenever that is in the next couple of weeks.
I don’t like it, but that’s the system. Which will hopefully be reformed next term.
However, things will be very interesting if the ABC computer is right and Legalise Cannabis gains the balance of power on the crossbench.