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Thursday morning
As Antony Green explains, much of the Electoral Commission’s efforts yesterday were spent preparing declaration envelopes for votes that will be counted from today, including the first absents, which have the potential to pull a few rabbits out of the hat for Labor. So far as the seats I’m continuing to follow are concerned, significant progress was made in only three, each involving the resolution of election day and pre-poll booths. As explained below, this clarified the situation in two of them to the extent that I won’t continue providing updates henceforth, and I’m probably showing an abundance of caution in the third.
Kiama. The first batch of postals, which had previously only been reported on the primary vote, were added yesterday on two-party, and broke in Gareth Ward’s favour by 1165-732. That puts him 1367 votes ahead, with only 3000 absents, a handful of provisionals and however many postals to come — with the latter sure to continue favouring him, that settles the matter.
Miranda. After slow progress in the count previously, yesterday saw all the pre-polls added on two-party and the stragglers on the election day vote cleaned up, collectively pushing the Liberal lead from 525 to a safe-and-sound 1841.
Wollondilly. The Bowral pre-poll, which had been strong for the Liberals, was added on two-party, negating advantages to independent Judy Hannan on the newly added election day votes and reducing her lead from 1602 to 1350. The Electoral Commission has received over 4000 postal votes and should get a few hundred more, of which it has counted only 962 – given those counted broke 57-43 to Liberal, they could hope to rein in a good 500 or so. There could also be as many as 3000 absents, and if all goes well for them they could maybe scrape back another 500 there as well, since they performed strongly on them in 2019. That would still leave them short, but not by enough that I am quite willing to shut the door just yet.
Wednesday morning
Yesterday’s counting continued to take care of outstanding election day booths and reduce the number of unreported pre-polls, with no postals added anywhere that I’ve been tracking. Labor’s chances of a majority hinge on strong performances in a few place on absent votes, which won’t start being added until Thursday. Below are updates on seven of the eight seats I identified as seriously in doubt yesterday, the exception being Oatley where there was no further progress.
Holsworthy. Yesterday’s counting bore out Antony Green’s indication that this would continue to drift towards the Liberals: all the pre-polls reported their two-candidate results, for a collective Liberal advantage of 7038-6889, and the one outstanding election day booth, Menai Primary, broke 619-582 in their favour as well. Even without the addition of further postals, which will almost certainly play to their advantage, that increased their lead from 340 to 526. Labor would need a very strong result on absents to remain in the hunt here.
Kiama. Again consistent with what Antony Green was hearing, Gareth Ward stormed into the lead here after winning the Nowra pre-poll 3333-2145, and he further gained 852-680 from the one outstanding election day two-candidate booth (Bomaderry Public). He now leads by 615 after trailing yesterday by 752.
Miranda. The results caught up with my projection here after the Illawong Public election day booth finally reported (though there are still three election day booths without two-party and one without primaries), breaking 1279-818 to the Liberals and pushing their lead out from 71 to 525.
Pittwater. The Narrabeen pre-poll pushed the Liberal lead out from 377 to 664, which the outstanding postals can only widen further. That just leaves the unknown quantity of absents, of which the Electoral Commission was expecting about 3000.
Ryde. The Epping pre-poll broke 873-866 to Liberal, reducing the Labor lead from 241 to 234.
Terrigal. The Woy Woy pre-poll broke 836-683 to Liberal, amounting to a below par swing to Labor of 7.2%. My system continues to project a Labor lead, but that’s probably based on an underestimate of the number of outstanding postals. Labor’s hope remains a strong performance on absents.
Wollondilly. The Camden pre-poll broke 1022-1016 to Liberal, putting independent Judy Hannan’s lead at 1602.
Tuesday morning
Before dealing with the business at hand, you can hear more of my thoughts on the result in discussion with Ben Raue on his podast at his Tally Room website, and in an article for Crikey if you’re a subscriber.
Yesterday’s counting made Labor’s win look rather less emphatic, to the extent that Antony Green – going here off “inside information” – expects them to win no more than 46 seats, placing them one short of a majority. My projections still have Labor ahead in Terrigal and Holsworthy, but the Liberals have hit the lead on the raw count in the former case and remain ahead in the latter, and Antony’s sources evidently have reason to believe they will stay there. What follows is a summary of yesterday’s progress in doubtful seats, which I’ll define here a little more tightly than I do in my results summary, starting with the aforementioned two seats and then proceeding alphabetically.
Terrigal. The Liberals went from 556 behind on the two-party count to 87 ahead after three pre-poll centres broke their way by 5969-5154 and the first postals did so by 350-208. Whereas election day votes swung 13.8% to Labor, so far pre-polls have done so by 11.5% and postals by 10.8%; further, the number of formal election day votes was down from 30,625 to 27,560. My system continues to credit Labor with a lead based on the swing from the votes that are actually in, but if it’s indeed the case that the outstanding votes underperform that, the projected lead is unlikely to hold. On the other hand, Labor performed well above par on absents in 2019 (a Liberal TPP margin of 4.3% as compared with 12.3% across the electorate as a whole), likely to number about 3000, which I would have thought held out hope for them. The Woy Woy pre-poll is still to report – Labor did 3% better there on two-party preferred in 2019 than the pre-polls that have reported so far, but it’s actually located in neighbouring Gosford and the NSWEC’s pre-election estimate was that it would handle a fairly modest 1760 votes. The problem for Labor would appear to be that the number of postals has more than doubled from the last election — another 3000 of those continuing to break nearly 63-37 to the Liberals would boost them by 750.
Holsworthy. The Liberals lead here by 0.7% on the raw two-party count, but there are a lot of pre-poll numbers still to come, and the Liberal margin on those was only 1.4% in 2019 compared with 5.7% across the electorate as a whole. Labor should also get a bit of a boost from absents if their swing is like those of votes cast within the electorate. Again though, my system could be underestimating the advantage remaining to accrue to the Liberals on postals, the first batch of which broke 943-803 in their favour.
Kiama. Labor were looking good here at the close of election night, and they still hold a seemingly handy 752 lead on the two-party count. The reason my system now thinks it’s lineball is that Gareth Ward has scored an impressive 48.6% of the primary vote out of 2192 postals, compared with his overall progress score of 38.5%, and these are yet to report on two-candidate preferred. Antony Green’s sources go further than that, saying he has it in the bag.
Miranda. With only postals added yesterday, there are still a lot of holes in the count here: two election day booths haven’t reported at all, another two have primary vote numbers only, no pre-polls have reported two-party preferred, and only one out of five of them are in on the primary vote. My system’s efforts to fill the gaps credit the Liberals with a lead of 1.0% compared with a raw 0.2% on two-party preferred. As ever, part of the equation is that the first batch of postals broke 726-505 their way.
Oatley. The Liberals’ lead here inflated from 254 to 910 yesterday with the reporting of the large Mortdale pre-poll booth, which broke 4740-4084 their way for a slightly below par swing to Labor of 5.1%. The first batch of postals broke 1329-946 to Liberal and those to come will presumably widen the gap, leaving absents as Labor’s only chance — there should be about 3000 of them, and in 2019 they broke almost evenly in a seat where the Liberals recorded a 6.9% winning margin.
Pittwater. I’m still projecting a narrow independent lead here, but the Liberals have opened up a 377 lead on the two-candidate count after winning the Pittwater pre-poll 3924-3049. They are also smashing it on postals, a factor my system struggles with when they substantially increase in number, as they have done both at this election and in Victoria. Certainly Antony Green’s sources are telling him the Liberals are home and hosed here.
Ryde. Labor’s two-party lead fell here yesterday from 412 to 241, the size of the Liberal winning margin in the large Eastwood pre-poll outweighing their losing margin in the smaller Macquarie Park pre-poll. The swing to Labor in Eastwood was a weak 3.2%. The one outstanding pre-poll and the absents both produced results in line with the overall result in 2019, but Labor would have to be worried about the thought of more than 2000 postals yet to come — the first batch swung 12.2% their way, but still broke 1052-837 to Liberal.
Wollondilly. Climate 200-backed independent Judy Hannan holds a 3.2% margin on the two-candidate count, but she has some weak booths that have so far only reported on the primary vote, which is one reason I’m only projecting her to win by 1.2%. Once again, the large number of outstanding postals may mean my system is selling them short — those counted so far have broken 437-326 their way, with a good 3000 yet to come, and the Liberals did even better on absents in 2019 than they did on postals.
Monday morning
No counting was conducted yesterday, but today we can expect to see progress on the pre-poll voting centres that are yet to report, which is the majority of them; a smaller number of election day stragglers; and the postal votes received up to Friday in seats where they were not reported on the night, of which I count 36. The Electoral Commission has pulled the two-candidate count between independent Alex Greenwich and the Liberals in the seat of Sydney, having determined that Labor rather than the Liberals will finish second. A new count will be conducted, but I’m not clear when the results will be published – clearly it’s academic because Greenwich has easily been re-elected. I have cleared a blockage that was preventing my results system from calling Newcastle for Labor, for whom it is now calling a definite 45 seats.
Sunday morning
My ever cautious results system* is currently giving away 44 seats to Labor, placing it three short of a confirmed majority, but leading in another seven. So the likeliest outcome is that the incoming government will indeed hold a majority. I spent the evening as part of a six-member decision desk at the Nine Network calling seats the hard way, and by the close of business we had it down to nine in doubt: the Labor-versus-Coalition contests of Winston Hills, Goulburn, Holsworthy, Miranda and Oatley; Willoughby, Wollondilly and Pittwater, which are Liberal-held seats that might go independent; and Kiama, where ex-Liberal independent Gareth Ward effortlessly saw off his Liberal opponent as expected, but might fall foul of the swing to Labor. Immediately before it turned off booth matching and switched to raw results, the ABC was calling Winston Hills for the Liberals, but concurred with my system in not yet calling Ryde for Labor, Drummoyne for the Liberals or Balmain for the Greens.
The situation in the Legislative Council is always obscure on the night, with only a third of enrolled voters’ first preference votes counted, all of which are above-the-line votes. For what it’s worth though, Labor is currently clear of eight quotas, the Coalition six, the Greens two and One Nation one. Legalise Cannabis, the Liberal Democrats and Shooters Fishers and Farmers also look to be doing well enough to each win one of the four remaining seats, with the final seat perhaps going to the Coalition or Animal Justice. If that’s the case – and it must be stressed at this early stage that it may not be – that would result in the final seat deciding whether a broadly defined left has a majority with 22 seat out of 42, or if left and right are tied at 21 each.
* If you’re finding it of any value, donations are gratefully received through the “become a supporter” button at the top of this page and in the right-hand corner of the results page itself. Between the scale of an election for 93 seats and the confounding extra layer of complexity entailed by optional preferential voting, this involved a rather considerable expenditure of effort on my part, for which I am only rewarded to the extent that my kind donors see fit.
“David Sligar
@DavidSligar
As scrutineer tonight witnessed a true rare collectors (sic) edition vote
1 Socialist Alliance
2 Liberal Party
-exhaust”
Willoughby will be Lib retain. Chatswood prepoll and postals to come will strongly favour Tim James. Looks like a status quo result from the by-election.
shellbell says:
Sunday, March 26, 2023 at 6:00 am
“David Sligar
@DavidSligar
As scrutineer tonight witnessed a true rare collectors (sic) edition vote
1 Socialist Alliance
2 Liberal Party
-exhaust”
And the difference between the Nationals and the Social Alliance?
frednk: “And the difference between the Nationals and the Social[ist] Alliance?”
Yep, those National Agrarian Socialists.
For 25 years, Terrigal (formerly a part of Gosford), has been a blue island since the 1988 Greiner landslide.
Congratulations, Sam Boughton on liberating us from this Tory fiefdom. Many of us have referred to Terrigal as Torygal for many years.
Congratulations to all the ALP members, volunteers and voters for working so hard to achieve this result.
Thanks C@tmomma for your comments, regarding the Terrigal campaign, over the past couple of weeks.
I realised that something was happening when driving home, yesterday morning, when I saw a large mobile advertising display at The Entrance Road & Avoca Drive intersection urging people to vote for Adam Grouch and the Liberals.
Obviously the LNP had similar polling to the ALP.
Watching replays of the speeches last night, the Liberals in Perrottet’s crowd had to be chastened to behave and not boo when he said he called Minns to concede. They always do this, esp at the federal elections. Why? It looks so petty and mean-spirited.
Well done Labor for getting to a majority , the lib/nats continue to rely on their corrupt propaganda media units to control the policies of the lib/nats, they will not be competitive not only in NSW but majority of Australia states/territory
So if the mainstream media and Murdoch Rag media state that the Liberals need to move further to the Right, who will they nominate to replace Perrottet? Can they win back government in one term?
And with a state Labor government will that help the Federal Liberals in 2025?
As per WB results Page
Labor PV is 37.1%
Liberals PV is 27.3%
A difference of 9.8% in PV.
So in a contest between Libs vs Labs Labor has a advantage of almost 10% on PV. And in OPV system it is huge difference.
Currently only 15 seats are in Libs column and Nats have 10 seats across the state.
Confessions @ #6 Sunday, March 26th, 2023 – 7:55 am
Because being petty and mean-spirited pretty pretty much defines the Rodent’s “Liberals”?
MelbourneMammoth says:
Sunday, March 26, 2023 at 8:06 am
So if the mainstream media and Murdoch Rag media state that the Liberals need to move further to the Right, who will they nominate to replace Perrottet? Can they win back government in one term?
And with a state Labor government will that help the Federal Liberals in 2025?
—————————————————
Voting pubic seem to give labor state/territory governments min of 3 terms,
In the last 20 years the only one term state/territory governments have been Lib/nats
One term Queenland LNP, Victoria Lib/nats , Northern Territory CLP, South Australia Lib
”
shellbellsays:
Sunday, March 26, 2023 at 6:00 am
“David Sligar
@DavidSligar
As scrutineer tonight witnessed a true rare collectors (sic) edition vote
1 Socialist Alliance
2 Liberal Party
-exhaust”
”
Brother of Rex? 🙂
Perrottet thanked his coalition colleagues “for all the support they have shown me” with a wry grimace, no doubt thinking about David Elliott and others who constantly whiteanted him the whole time he was premier.
Who will lead the Liberals now? Who’s left in the partyroom apart from Kean?
The DT is going a bit overboard with the puns.
rhwombat:
True, true.
Alexandra Smith (SMH) to Julian Morrow on RN, on reasons for the Liberals loss:
“They just couldn’t convince women to run for parliament.”
Ah, right. Nowt to do with boofy blokes blocking women candidates, then?
The SMH has wasted no time telling the new government what must do to keep Nine Entertainment happy.
The Ming Dynasty lasted 368 years.
Is the Daily Terrorgraph predicting similar longevity for Minns?
The SMH urged us to vote for the Liberals.
It’s only the morning after the election and the ABC has already set a test for Minns.
All of southeast NSW has swung very strongly to Labor – they’ve won South Coast and Monaro, probably Kiama, and retained Bega, all on swings well into double digits. You’d have to think bushfire response and related issues have something to do with that. The Coalition now don’t hold any seats east of the ranges between Sutherland and the Victorian border.
Also interesting (in a natural disaster context) was an equally strong swing to Labor in Lismore, after that area had swung to the Nationals federally – indicates that the incumbent MPs there were seen as doing a good job for their community, regardless of their political stripe.
Still waiting for a Liberal any Liberal, state or Federal to say they have learnt their lesson on systemic CORRUPTION.. until they do they wont govern again.
”
Confessionssays:
Sunday, March 26, 2023 at 8:18 am
Perrottet thanked his coalition colleagues “for all the support they have shown me” with a wry grimace, no doubt thinking about David Elliott and others who constantly whiteanted him the whole time he was premier.
Who will lead the Liberals now? Who’s left in the partyroom apart from Kean?
”
As I posted above, Mark Speakman?
”
Oliver Suttonsays:
Sunday, March 26, 2023 at 8:28 am
The Ming Dynasty lasted 368 years.
Is the Daily Terrorgraph predicting similar longevity for Minns?
”
The Ming Dynasty of Australia lasted 21 years isn’t it? 🙂
Indeed, Ven. 😉
Nine and the ABC aren’t taking this well.
As per WB, in LC ON may win only one seat. So Tanya M, who is in second spot of ON ticket and who was heckling Matt Kean like road side thug on ABC TV, will miss out.
citizen says:
Sunday, March 26, 2023 at 8:32 am
It’s only the morning after the election and the ABC has already set a test for Minns.
After his NSW election win, Premier-elect Chris Minns faces a new test as Labor gets ready to govern
The only place the word “test” occurs in the article is in the headline.. ABC incompetence on display.. headline writer must be ex news limited jurno.
WHo iS chRIs MInNs?!?!?!
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-03-25/who-is-nsw-incoming-premier-labor-s-chris-minns/102142266
Another real world example of the vanishing influence of the old media – all shilling for their audience to vote Liberal. Few did.
Good morning from Thredbo, NSW. About to attempt to climb the summit of Oz.
While I was having tea last night, I had to listen to two self-important entitled 40-something men who lamented the result of the NSW state election after spending half an hour talking about ski slopes and whinging about getting injured on day one of their last trip in Aspen, Colorado (diddums!). Of note, they said rich people should be taxed more, but only those of an Elon Musk standard. The merely “financially okay” category of everyday doctors and lawyers should be allowed to keep more of their earnings that they worked so hard for, had to miss their wife’s Christmas Party for, etc. And are fully deserving of the Stage 3 tax cuts.
Ha!
How can we forget this fantastic piece of ABC political analysis….
Labor’s Chris Minns desperately campaigns to be New South Wales premier — can he hang on to his seat?
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-03-16/chris-minns-runs-for-office-in-hurstville/102088602
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
As per WB, in LC ON may win only one seat. So Tanya M, who is in second spot of ON ticket and who was heckling Matt Kean like road side thug on ABC TV, will miss out.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Presumably she could back-fill Latham’s vacated seat.
Insiders being presented in the knowledge that the population pretty much ignored the paper editors and the opinion writing. No mention, the voters ignoring their writings.
Didn’t know they were going to win says the NSW ABC reporter. I predicted Labor was going to win based on the behavior of the press. Press panic.
Why does Speers go on and on.
SPEERS !!!!
every week he gets worse.
NOW will the NSW ICAC release the Berejiklian report?
Speers is getting all sooky now.
I’d put some of the South Coast success down to a good federal member in EM. She is a great worker and while federal /state divides are common in politics, there is a similar feel to the ‘cleansing’ of federal lNP from the area.
1 Socialist Alliance
2 Liberal Party
-exhaust”
———————————
There are some ex NSW ALP members out there who are still very angry at the party. But that surely is a grump too far.
Speers summation of the Voice wording is disingenuous .. a dissembler
“ignore clause 3 .. look at clause 2 “
As counting draws on (tomorrow I believe) for Goulburn it will be interesting to see how early voting plays out for Labor. For purely practical reasons, the older generation flock to vote early in Yass, will the strong votes for Pilbrow in the two regular booths hold out the LNP. There was a feel at the prepoll booth that Labor might prevail. For mine, I’d just like bragging rights with the toxic LNP lady that couldn’t understand why we should be concerned about education in NSW.
Frednk et al
Is it a reasonable assumption to make that the NSW Election result is further evidence that the general voting population has become indifferent to , if not alienated, from the Merdeoch/ Nine Media press and media?
Sure there are several factors in this disaster for the Coalition. But it seems to me that despite the above two media group’s control of all sections of the media, and the ABCs questionable approach to a balanced reporting style, both the former and latters influence has broadly disappeared.
Furthermore, with certain age group- related voting patterns diminishing with time, and greater use of social media for information, will the media influence pass into history?
The guests on Insiders represent which sections of society ?
At worst Minns gets 45 seats, you can easily govern in minority from that – that’s a worst case scenario if for example Kiama and Terrigal and Ryde don’t go Labor’s way after postals and pre polls are counted.
Much as I’d love Simon Earl to win Miranda, I suspect he’ll get swamped by Liberal postals, but maybe I’ll be wrong on that one.
Goulburn is still up in the air.
Michael Regan in Wakehurst might be the only independent gain of the night.
But overall all good for Minns, and I’ll be interested to see who gets in his cabinet, Prue Carr certainly in Education and Ryan Park in Health and Daniel Mookey as Treasurer and Penny Sharpe in Environment and Michael Daley as AG.
David Speers needs to move back to Sky.
Guardian Australia’s live blog has photos of the Liberal and Labor election night parties.
The Liberals’ do looks like a godawful small affair, as the boy from Brixton might have said.
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/live/2023/mar/26/nsw-election-results-2023-chris-minns-wins-labor-majority-dominic-perrottet-steps-down-liberal-leadership-contest-safeguard-mechanism
Michael Daley as AG – “A man has got to know his limitations.”
In the Upper House, looks like Jeremy Buckingham of the Legalise Cannabis party will get a seat. From what I know of him, that’s good news.
BT @ #21 Sunday, March 26th, 2023 – 8:33 am
Yes, I think this is true in general, but there is a little more to it in specific cases. For instance, Kiama is a special case with Gareth Ward facing criminal charges, but so is the South Coast which had a much smaller swing to Labor than the state average.
All parties have performed poorly here during the recent run of rolling climate disasters. Both the Liberal incumbent (Shelley Hancock) and the Greens challenger (Amanda Findley, who is also the mayor here) lost a lot of local support over that period. But Fiona Phillips (Federal Labor) has not made a positive difference either. We can hope Liza Butler will do better.
The Liberals would probably have held the seat had they chosen a better candidate, but they decided to and install a party functionary (Luke Sikora) from within Shelly Hancock’s office – and that office has been largely dysfunctional since she decided to retire two years ago. Leaving her in place as a seat warmer was a very poor decision, but so was the choice of candidate to replace her – almost as poor a choice as the one the Federal Libs made when they chose Warren Mundine.
The Liberals had to work hard to lose this seat at both State and Federal level, but by golly they managed it! 🙂