Click here for full NSW election results updated live.
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.
The biggest winner is Wagga Wagga.
Thank you New South Wales.
A special big thank you to Gladys and Daryl. With your love I was once a virile and able man.
There once was a doctor’s son
Who sold fake IDs
To all those who lived around
Sydney Technical Boys High School Bexley
Mavis @ 8.51pm, Tuesday.
It was Gosford, on the Central Coast, which enabled Neville Wran – our last great Premier, to form government in 1976.
It was my first vote in a state election.
Analysing, the current polling figures, courtesy of William, which puts the ALP ahead – with a 50.2- 49.6% two party preferred count, and a 57.6% probability of winning – could we see history repeat and the Central Coast deliver another long, term successful ALP Government.
It is going down to the wire.
Steve777 @ 11.21
Totally agree with your comments regarding OPV.
Preferences flows are in the hands and control of the voters.
I seldom or rarely follow a party HTV card.
This election, for Terrigal, it was very easy with only 4 candidates.
ALP – 1.
Green – 2
Nutter – 3
LP – 4.
My vote is always predictable, irrespective of the candidate list, the LNP candidate is always, last.
Labor should put Jason Yat Sen Lee into Epping. 😉
well he does live in epping hewill make a good cabenit minister one day hopefuly houssos and jackson will get premotions
Probably the easiest peeps to deal with are the shooters and fishers. They will trade anything for more relaxed gun laws.
That might make the rest of the cross bench cross but we are constantly told what a wonderful thing they cross bench is so it is what it is.
C@t: Jason Yat Sen Li is already the MP for Strathfield and he got a decent swing to him on Saturday, no way he’s switching over to Epping.
Labor should run in any byelection Alan Maskarenas, who achieved a 7% swing against Perrottett in Epping on Saturday, after being preselected only 3 weeks before.
Absentees being counted today, I guess we’ll get a better idea of whether Labor can extend its 240 vote lead in Ryde and make up any ground in Terrigal or Goulburn.
So, on Seats ahead, we have ALP 47, LNP Coalition 34 and Independents 12
In the Lower House
So before you get to Upper House’s including Federal but not in Queensland which has no Upper House
And then the Territories
The lead question is, harking back to past times, which of the ALP and the Coalition now see Seats formerly held in the hands of Independents?
And I include those “trading” under a colour banner as Independents (the reason being they have no structure nor platform to form government, government being far more complex than the issue/s these Independents promote in gaining election. Given one of the Parties of government do not have absolute majorities the Independents are required to support on votes of confidence and on money bills such that we do have a government able to function)
One other note is the performance of the National Party in returning numbers, stable numbers on their percentage of the vote and where they get that percentage, so tightly targeted
”So, on Seats ahead, we have ALP 47, LNP Coalition 34 and Independents 12”
That’s 47, 34, Green 3 and Independents 9.
Dave from wagga
There once was a doctor’s son
Who sold fake IDs
To all those who lived around
Sydney Technical Boys High School Bexley
—
was that pre or post Flannery? pre or post Arthur Rorris?
Regarding the nine independents:
– Three are ex-SFF. I expect that they would tend more Right but SFF seems not to be particularly ideological and also seem to be amenable to negotiation.
– One Teal (Wollondilly)
– One who would be expected to vote with the Liberals (Gareth Ward, Kiama)
– The other four seem to be fairly centrist.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/elections/nsw/2023/results?filter=all&sort=az
The performance of the psephologists and their over enthusiasm to call results on Saturday night, led by Antony Green on the ABC, was a blight on their professionalism.
It revealed a profession which seeks to predict outcomes based on a booth by booth analysis, but fails to properly account for the shifting mood of the electorate as the election campaign unfolds. Further, they typically fail to take account of the power of incumbency (just looking at postal vote returns from the last two elections does not do the trick). Most of all, there is absolutely no excuse for Green having ALP on 48 seats on Satuday night (for over 30 minutes), nor for any other network of “experts” to follow him. (they didn’t but it did influence them to prematurely call a majority ALP victory).
It is critical that seats do not go into the “seat’s won” box until they are actually certain. IThey can certaionly go into to the “probable wins box” – as the Poll Bludger tends to do. Green amended his woeful Saturday night TV performance in the dark hours of Sunday morning without a hint of apology. We woke to Insiders proclaiming 45 seats for the ALP with up to 11 in doubt. This is how Green should have called the election on the night.
Any news on when ICAC are going to recommend charges be laid against Gladbags ?
Evan @ #821 Thursday, March 30th, 2023 – 8:14 am
You’re absolutely correct, Evan. I had it in my silly head that he was in the Upper House. 😀
Michael Pascoe reports this from before the election and compares it to after the election:
https://thenewdaily.com.au/news/politics/2023/03/29/michael-pascoe-liberal-news-corp/
Macca RB says:
Thursday, March 30, 2023 at 7:00 am
Steve777 @ 11.21
Totally agree with your comments regarding OPV.
Preferences flows are in the hands and control of the voters.
I seldom or rarely follow a party HTV card.
My vote is always predictable, irrespective of the candidate list, the LNP candidate is always, last.
……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….
98.6 says:
I totally agree with both Macca RB and Steve777 re OPV or HTV cards.
Unless a candidate was a convicted axe murderer, the Tories are always put last.
I’ll never forget what they did in 1975 and I’m still ‘maintaining my rage’.
Just a note about the independant in Wollondilly, she does not consider herself a Teal and didn’t use teal as her colour. See the clarification in the article – don’t rely on the title in the hyperlink.
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/mar/27/teal-independent-judy-hannan-expected-to-win-seat-of-wollondilly-in-nsw-election
Also, I do need to note that unless Labor envisages passing legislation consistently with One Nation, SFF, AJP AND legalise cannibis support in LegCo (and seriously, you must be joking), they are going to need to talk to the Greens first. The LA independents are possibly helpful, but not essential.
From ABC dude..
Labor catching up in Terrigal
22m ago
By Riley Stuart
Someone asked about what’s going on in Terrigal but I deleted the comment before I put it in the post sorry!
I’m told the counting this morning has shaved about 90 votes off the Liberals’ lead in Terrigal. This was from “new enrolment votes”. They’re still in front by roughly 150 votes though. That will pull through to our system this morning.
Labor has never won the seat, and this week, Premier Chris Minns conceded it was “unlikely” they’d get over the line there.
I’m hoping Terrigal pulls through for our friend C@t, Labor before in close counts has overturned deficits of 150 votes when they get round to counting absentees, but I agree with Premier Minns, it’s probably pretty unlikely.
At least the Liberal MP won’t be able to take his seat for granted again if he does win.
Hopefully Labor stays ahead in Ryde, 240 vote lead last time I looked.
Assume result ends up 46 Labor, 35 LNP, 3 Green, 9 OTHER.
Idea for Labor:
* Install Greg Piper as Speaker with an agreement he votes with ALP if required in a tie.
* Suspend but not expel Ward (so no by-election).
End result:
Votes for Labor = 46.
Votes for LNP = 35 + 3 + 7 = 45
Is this a majority without having a majority?
The speaker is supposed to be independent and when called upon to vote, do so on merit. Offering someone the speakership with a deal on how they vote could be considered corruption.
Shogun
“ ‘One Nation has come in from the cold,’ former Liberal MP Bronwyn Bishop said.”
I didn’t know Ms Bishop had a sense of humour.
Did Perrottet even say he was resigning from Parliament? There is no reason for him to do that. Those who think an Epping by-election might be the route to a Labor majority must be deluding themselves.
And governments never win seats from the opposition in by-elections anyway.
My results should be updating again now.
MelbouirneMammoth,
Almost never. Labor won Jeff Kennett’s seat after he resigned, as well as the seat of the leader of the National Party (whose name eludes me) a short time later.
I see I’ve got the Liberals ahead in Terrigal now — I’m projecting them at 50.05%.
William Bowe @ #839 Thursday, March 30th, 2023 – 1:07 pm
🙁
Those absents in Terrigal weren’t great for Labor, but batches of absents can be variable depending on where they come from.
What is happening with Stratified? Only 50.7% votes are counted till now.
Ven – presumably the results from Strathfield have been “stratified”!
Tom of Balmain @ #963 Thursday, March 30th, 2023 – 9:21 am
I watched the ABC coverage. Antony Green was clearly reluctant to call it so early, but was repeatedly pushed to do so by the ABC panel who needed something to work with – they clearly understand that Antony Green is their only draw. That would be my only complaint about Antony Green’s performance.
But he did call a Labor win early, and he got that call right. If you only want to see actual confirmed seats, you should perhaps stick to the AEC (or NSW EC) web sites – but you may not get any results at all on the night. Pretty much everything you see on the night about actual seat outcomes is a prediction. Antony Green and other psephologists use various techniques (e.g. booth matching) to try and predict the outcome with reasonable accuracy, but they have no control over the order or rate at which votes are counted, and so it is not an exact science – and of course it can change both backwards and forwards as the actual vote count progresses.
I can’t speak for the other psephologists (I didn’t watch any) but I don’t recall Antony Green definitively saying it would be a majority or minority government on the night. But even if he did, then so what? That would have also been a prediction, because the votes had not yet actually been counted. Here we are four days later and it is still unknown even with 75% of the vote counted. It is entirely possible we will not know for several more days yet.
Basically, you can have a predicted result on the night, or an actual result days or weeks later. You can’t have both – at least not with a paper-based voting system. And I hope we never go for fully electronic voting.
Player One says:
Thursday, March 30, 2023 at 2:54 pm
Tom of Balmain @ #963 Thursday, March 30th, 2023 – 9:21 am
The performance of the psephologists and their over enthusiasm to call results on Saturday night, led by Antony Green on the ABC, was a blight on their professionalism.
I watched the ABC coverage. Antony Green was clearly reluctant to call it so early, but was repeatedly pushed to do so by the ABC panel who needed something to work with – they clearly understand that Antony Green is their only draw. That would be my only complaint about Antony Green’s performance.
But he did call a Labor win early, and he got that call right. If you only want to see actual confirmed seats, you should perhaps stick to the AEC (or NSW EC) web sites – but you may not get any results at all on the night. Pretty much everything you see on the night about actual seat outcomes is a prediction. Antony Green and other psephologists use various techniques (e.g. booth matching) to try and predict the outcome with reasonable accuracy, but they have no control over the order or rate at which votes are counted, and so it is not an exact science – and of course it can change both backwards and forwards as the actual vote count progresses.
I can’t speak for the other psephologists (I didn’t watch any) but I don’t recall Antony Green definitively saying it would be a majority or minority government on the night. But even if he did, then so what? That would have also been a prediction, because the votes had not yet actually been counted. Here we are four days later and it is still unknown even with 75% of the vote counted. It is entirely possible we will not know for several more days yet.
Basically, you can have a predicted result on the night, or an actual result days or weeks later. You can’t have both – at least not with a paper-based voting system. And I hope we never go for fully electronic voting.
____________
Can we have Hanging Chads?
Even Encyclopaedia Britannica discusses them…
https://www.britannica.com/topic/hanging-chad
Electoral models are not perfect. Neither are psephologists. This election was a bit weird in terms of the pendulum and swing distributions. I have no problem with what was said on election night by election analysts.
Epping still has a massive amount of Postal Votes to come that have been far more favourable to the Liberals over this election. I would predict that the swing in Epping will look far less impressive once entirely counted, especially since it was hovering around 51.5-49.5 on election night.
Hopefully everybody can agree – we shouldnt go all Dominion Voting. There isnt much to contest about the actual mechanics of voting in NSW?
Is there any complaint or irregularity or the like? I havent heard any.
Staring to look like the Libs will get 7 LC seats after all. Sigh. Probably at the expense of animal justice. So Labor (8) plus Greens (2) plus Cannabis (1) = 11 out of 21. But with only 10 progressive carry overs fro 2019, this makes things much tougher for Labor to pass progressive legislation. Will probably need SFF, who – since their purges of last year – are probably going to prove much harder to negotiate with than SFF MLCs have been in times gone by.
FreeMoney says:
Thursday, March 30, 2023 at 3:42 pm
Epping still has a massive amount of Postal Votes to come that have been far more favourable to the Liberals over this election. I would predict that the swing in Epping will look far less impressive once entirely counted, especially since it was hovering around 51.5-49.5 on election night.
Lars Von Trier says:
Thursday, March 30, 2023 at 3:43 pm
Hopefully everybody can agree – we shouldnt go all Dominion Voting. There isnt much to contest about the actual mechanics of voting in NSW?
Is there any complaint or irregularity or the like? I havent heard any.
____________
FM – 51.5-49.5 would make for an interesting election.
Lars – careful what you say about Dominion.
so we could still win terigle minns seems to have a strong team so far
‘Simon says:
Thursday, March 30, 2023 at 10:39 am
Just a note about the independant in Wollondilly, she does not consider herself a Teal and didn’t use teal as her colour. See the clarification in the article – don’t rely on the title in the hyperlink.
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/mar/27/teal-independent-judy-hannan-expected-to-win-seat-of-wollondilly-in-nsw-election
Also, I do need to note that unless Labor envisages passing legislation consistently with One Nation, SFF, AJP AND legalise cannibis support in LegCo (and seriously, you must be joking), they are going to need to talk to the Greens first. The LA independents are possibly helpful, but not essential.’
———————————————-
There are multiple groups and combinations of groups with the BOP. The Greens are one of many. The notion that the Greens must be talked with first is classic Greens born-to-block arrogance.
Andrew_Earlwood says:
Thursday, March 30, 2023 at 3:47 pm
LC counting.
How are you applying Elizabeth Farrelley. She’s polled quite well and her first prefs are to AJP.
The alternative outcome could be:
ALP-8
LNP-6
Green-2
1Nation-2
LibDems-1
Canabis-1
AJP-1
@casual O – the libs are currently stinting on 6.74 quotas, and their position seems rto be improving all the time in later counting. It’s going to be hard for them to be tossed for their seventh seat i fear.
But I hope you are right, and a couple of days ago, i assumed that your scenario would be how it all panned out in the final wash up.
@Tom of Balmain: I think pseph prediction models including those of our host are still struggling a bit to model the new normal of ever-increasing prepoll votes and how that effects projections from votes on the day. Victoria 2018, Victoria 2022, Fed 2022 and this NSW election have all had a bit of whiplash in the projections as the pre-polls and postals started to be fed in. It might settle down for future elections as they should now have the data from the last 4 years of elections in every state and territory as well as Federally to get a grip on this voter behaviour.
I think everyone’s a bit lucky that the past few elections haven’t really been that close so any errors on the night have only been to do with the margin.
Re the Legislative Council vote:
– Labor looks OK for 8 seats
– Liberals will almost certainly get to 7
– Greens look safe for 2.
We need four more. One Nation has a bit over one quota. Cannabis, Liberal Democrats and SFF a bit under one each.
Animals have a bit under half a quota, which would help the Greens assuming they miss out.
Everyone else is below 30%, a mix of centre, left, right and nutjob.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/elections/nsw/2023/guide/lc-preview
My best guess would be (elected 2023 and total)
– Labor 8 (15)
– Coalition 7 (15)
– Green 2 (4)
– One Nation 1 (3)
– SFF 1 (2)
– Cannabis 1 (1)
– Liberal Democrats 1 (1)
– Animals 0 (1)
That would be left-leaning and right-leaning 21-all.
Aaron Newton: The only lower house seat still in doubt Labor really has a chance of winning is Ryde, I’m not that hopeful about Terrigal or Goulburn.
Alas Labor hasn’t done well on pre polls and postals this time, something for them to address for the 2025 federal election and the 2027 state election. I know I’m sick of good Labor candidates like Simon Earle in Miranda having a lead on election night and then ultimately losing by 500 votes because the party didn’t spend a cent on sending out postal votes to enough voters.
46 seats at best for Minns is my hunch, but hey, he can still govern quite comfortably from that position.
To be fair, I don’t think anyone could have predicted the wild variation of swings this election over the seats.
Of course both parties would have heavily targeted the most marginal seats like East Hills, Penrith, Goulburn, Upper Hunter and Holsworthy, resulting in only small swings, but then you have blowout results that people wouldn’t expect, like Camden, Monaro, South Coast, Terrigal and Miranda.
Probably fortunately for Labor is that the next redistribution is due for the 2031 election, so the 2027 map will be identical to this one, and there’s a lot of targets for them next time.
The thing about Pre Polls that I don’t think anyone has mentioned yet is that it favours the incumbent because there are fewer places they have to be to target the voters so they can concentrate their efforts on them. As opposed to polling day when there are more booths to cover and a greater number of voters to try and influence.
And the thing with Liberal incumbents is that they have worked out a schtick, which applies at State and federal level, whereby they work the line outside the polling booth, extend a forceful hand to shake the hand of every voter, which pulls them in and gives the liberal time to say their lines, ask a general question such as what’s your name, or which school do the kids go to, and then use that to bait a hook to draw the voter in.
We heard the Terrigal candidate for the Liberals do that. It went along the lines of, oh you’re name is Mary, I had an Auntie Mary! She was a very nice person as I’m sure you are too! And so the voter feels a personal connection to the Liberal and like someone important, an MP, has taken the time to notice them and relate to them. Plus they get the Liberal HTV shoved into their hand while they are talking. Very likely +1 in the Liberal column unless the voter has come with a preconceived idea of who they want to vote for. And so on down the line they go. And they do it all day, every day of the Pre Poll.
Not much time after that for the Labor candidate to get a word in edgeways and anyway, by the time someone from Labor tries to talk to the same voter they’re either just about to go in and vote and we have run out of time, or they’re all talked out and just want to get inside to vote. QED for the Liberals.
So, no wonder it’s such a big positive for them. They’ve figured out the secret sauce of Pre Polling.
Funny, normally everyone’s getting annoyed about Antony Green being too cautious with his calls.
There is a slight whiff of Baillieu about all this. The delay in announcing the Ministry is telling.
Just saw Gareth Ward on the news, what an arrogant piece of work. He really thinks he’ll be that important in the next parliament, ugh