Click here for full display of Fadden by-election results.
Monday
Along with rechecking, a further batch of postals today broke 699-271 to the LNP.
Sunday
A second batch of postals was added today, breaking 1289-602 compared with 5601-2247 for the election night batch, or 68.2% for the LNP compared with 71.4%. Also added were 262 Special Hospital Team votes, which broke about evenly.
Saturday night
12.05am. End of counting for the evening, with the AEC having accounted for all available results on primary and two-party by the close of business. Around half of a likely final total of 16,000 or so postals have been counted, with the remainder accounting for all of a few of the votes still to come. Unless I’m missing something, that suggests a rather meagre turnout in the low seventies, compared with 85.6% in Aston. To that can be added an increase in the informal vote share from 4.4% to 6.2%, as compared with a stable 3.3% in Aston.
10.23pm. Large Helensvale pre-poll, with 11,918 formal votes, reports with par-for-the-course swings on the primary vote.
10.08pm. Labrador pre-poll has reported its TPP: 2.7% swing to LNP.
9.35pm. The Gold Coast North pre-poll booth — the one that did well for the LNP — is now in on two-party, showing a 6.3% swing to the LNP.
9.30pm. The Runaway Bay pre-poll becomes the third to report on the primary vote, and it’s a big one — 14,432 formal votes. Like Labrador (2544 formal votes) and unlike Gold Coast North (3435), the swings are more or less the same as the election day booths.
9.16pm. A second pre-poll centre, Labrador, has reported on the primary vote — whereas the Gold Coast North centre was better for the LNP than the election day vote in swing terms, this one is basically the same.
9.02pm. Bug fixed — no new results of consequence came in while I was doing it.
8.46pm. A minor bug in my results page: the projected swing is rounding to full (percentage) numbers and not the first decimal place as intended, so it flips between 2.0% and 3.0% as the projection falls below and above 2.5%. The actual projection is 2.51%.
8.45pm. The first pre-poll voting centre (Gold Coast North) is in, and the result is above-par for the LNP, their primary vote up 8.3% with Labor little changed.
8.15pm. After being solid for quite a while on 3.0%, my projection of the LNP two-party swing just fell to 2.0%.
8.10pm. David Speers on the ABC says Labor are projecting a 2.1% two-party swing, compared with my 3.0%.
7.56pm. Looking like a high informal vote rate of approaching 7%. This isn’t booth matched, but the informal vote for ordinary votes in 2022 was 4.6%. Compare and contrast Aston, where the informal vote was 3.3% at both the election and the by-election.
7.46pm. As Murray Watt points out on the ABC, the absence of the United Australia Party, who were worth 6.3% last year, needs to be taken into account in looking at primary vote swings. No doubt this explains the One Nation vote holding up, and probably hasn’t done the LNP any harm either.
7.38pm. Things seem to be settling in now: the LNP is up on the primary vote, Labor little changed, One Nation doing well to hold even amid a bigger field of candidates, Legalise Cannabis doing well to knock on the door of double figures, and a poor result for the Greens, who are probably losing vote share to Legalise Cannabis (who weren’t in the field last time). What might change all this is a different dynamic on pre-poll voting, which we won’t know about until a fair bit later in the night.
7.25pm. Good results for the LNP from Sanctuary Cove and Coombabah South push the swing out further, to what I’m projecting at 4.0% on two-party.
7.18pm. Now it’s clear everything is running smoothly, my obligatory request for donations, which you can make my clicking “Become a Supporter” in the blue band at the top of the page.
7.16pm. Four booths in now on TCP and my system is calling it for the LNP.
7.15pm. Six booths in now on the primary vote, coming in quick enough that I won’t be able to offer comment on them individually. The LNP’s good result at Pimpama East looks like an outlier amid an overall status quo result.
7.12pm. Studio Village in on TPP — 0.6% swing to LNP.
7.11pm. Greens running fifth, behind One Nation and Legalise Cannabis, both on double figures. Gold Coast not exactly a happy hunting ground for them.
7.09pm. Pimpama East booth is in, and it’s a bad result for Labor, who are down nearly 5% with the LNP up nearly 10%. My LNP win probability estimate is now out to 95%.
7.03pm. Another plug for the map display on my results page, which you can activate by clicking on the button at the bottom of the page. Numbers indicate the booth has recorded two-party preferred numbers, with the colour recording the party that won the booth (teal for LNP, red for Labor) and the number their share of TPP. Where only the primary vote is in, the dot is coloured to indicate the leading party. White dots denote no result yet. Click on whatever it is and a table will pop up showing full results.
6.59pm. Legalise Cannabis are on double figures, and One Nation are more than holding up despite more competition for the minor party vote.
6.55pm. The second booth to report on the primary vote is Studio Village at the southern end of the electorate, and like Alberton, it records little primary vote swing for either major party.
6.30pm. The TCP booth is now in from the Alberton booth (highly efficient work there) and it’s a 1.6% swing to the LNP. My projections will continue to work off estimates until the TCP count reaches 1%.
6.28pm. The booth interestingly has One Nation level with Labor, but this is a particularly weak booth for Labor.
6.24pm. Was being a bit conservative with my estimates of when results would start — there are actually some very small booths in the seat, and one, Alberton, has primary votes for us already. These show both major parties up slightly on the primary vote.
5.30pm. With half an hour to go before polls close, welcome to the Poll Bludger’s coverage of the Fadden by-election count. After polls close at 6pm, you will find through the above link live updated results, including full booth details in both tabular and map display (click on the button at the bottom of the page) and swing-based projections and probability estimates. This post will offer live commentary as the results come through, the first of which I imagine will be in a bit before 7pm.
One Neuron are doing well, but their candidate should be running for Legalise Weed. Sandy Roach is the perfect name for a marijuana candidate in a beach seat.
Legalise Weed are doing something right. They scored more votes than the Greens. Along with Sustainable Australia and Animal Justice, the Left of Labor parties (LoL) have around 16%, compared to 22% for Labor.
Greens supporters might be disappointed by the result, but by-elections are opportunities to protest and there’s clearly a substantial contingent of Australians who think the Greens should focus more on the green.
If you care about policies, you’ll note that Legalise Weed have followed the Greens line on negotiations with Labor in Victoria, and their new upper house rep in NSW used to be a Green.
Jeremy Buckingham used to be a Green… yeah, USED TO. That was a particularly bitter falling out. I’m surprised I haven’t heard more about him, now that he’s back working with some of the same Green MLCs who never wanted to see him again.
There’s two LC folks in the WA upper house, thanks to the magic of GVTs. One’s an anti-vaxxer; the other one I haven’t heard much of, so assume must be OK. Under the new rules for electing the upper house as of 2025, they’re pretty much guaranteed a spot (quota is 2.63%), so we’ll be seeing a lot more of them.
Wow, over 3% of people who voted Albo/ALP at the last election decided they would prefer Dutton than Albo. With 7% informal saying a pox on both of them. I expected Dutton to be toxic. But Albo is fast becoming the next Kevin Rudd
My reading of the Fadden primaries:
Right of Libs: -9. The Phonies held their ground, Cliveasaurus and the Lib Dems didn’t stand.
Libs: +4
Labs: +/-fuckall
Left of Labor: +5. Greens went backwards but Legalise Green, Indigenous and Sustainable parties went ahead.
If you want to get granular, 5% of Fadden voters went from Right of Laboral to Liberal, 5% went from Right Out to Left Out, and 5% went from Green to single issues.
Dovif: 7% informal vote is what happens when there’s that many candidates (and CPV). If there’d been 5 candidates instead of 13, only about 5% of people would’ve had to change their vote, and there’d be so many less informal votes from people who skipped a random number long after it stopped being relevant. (Stop numbering at 11 because you genuinely have no preference of who’s worse between the Citizens Party and the Federation Party? Aren’t you dumb for voting informal! Now watch your #1 choice get ignored.)
Also, what if people were more inclined to vote Liberal because Stuart Robert isn’t the candidate any more? Inoffensive cleanskin from the local council instead of scandal-plagued minister. That’d be worth a % or two, especially with people whose default option is to vote Lib.
In a LNP safe seat
Labor primary vote was roughly the same as the 2022 federal election , it doesnt suggest people are blaming Labor for the cost of living or interest rates
To borrow a meme from the other thread:
Birds
Maybe, but is 13 candidates more difficult than 9 at the election. I also note that Aston did not have a higher informal vote.
Disappointing that some LNP rust wasn’t dislodged but essentially the result was always going to be that the sky is blue.
The main take out is that compulsory voting is dead.
OK. A predictable win for the LNP ( Liberals) in a strong Conservative seat. End of story.
What’s got me jittery is Australia’s Rugby outlook.
The ABs should do the Wallabies like a dinner next game. Australia has several pre- RWC games coming up and continuing losses will do the Wallies’ morale no good whatsoever.
Add to those woes, The English Women’s Cricket team have had their 3rd win on the trot against the Aussies so this Ashes series could go down to the wall with a resurgent England fighting on.
The other Ashes series is poised too. England has to win the last two Tests but Australia here too has to lift its game.
All I can say now is, in both sports, come on Aussies, come on!
They said it’s a safe liberal seat but so was Aston and it went to labor. Maybe labor now starting lose a little shine with not concentrating on things that matter here in Australia. I think the voice will also hurt labor, it will certainly hurt Australians if it gets in
Woah turnout under 70% that’s rough. I was expecting a 5% ALP swing but too much to ask from Goldie lmao. Should have expected this given LNP outspent Labor 20 to 1.
Boerwar says:
Sunday, July 16, 2023 at 8:11 am
The main take out is that compulsory voting is dead.
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I don’t think you can conclude that from just one byelection. It is disappointing that in spite of compulsory voting, many people don’t vote or even bother to enrol. Even so, Australians still vote in much larger numbers than do Americans or Brits.
As for byelections, they nearly always have a lower turnout than general elections, which is why I don’t think we can read too much significance into this result. Lower turnouts usually hurt Labor more than the Coalition, so a 2.4% swing to the LNP, so what?
Voters can and often do behave differently at byelections, because they know the result usually makes no difference, so why not protest against the big parties or experiment with a few outliers?
Not much to see here, I think.
The main take out is that compulsory voting is dead.
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The day after Friday night in the Goldie for a no contest byelection.
I aint writing off the Voice in QLD either.
Ho-Hum and lots of Coalition self-delusion is about it. Little to see here.
Fadden result 2019 L/NP 2pp 64.2%
2023 2pp 60.6%:
By-election 2pp 63.1 %:
Dutton not seen in the electorate – cost of living,
Crucifooli – State soft on youth crime
Senator McGrath L/NP Qld – the yes campaign.
Labor – usual by-election swing against Govt is more than this.
Most happy to see Robert gone. Hope to see him again get a good whack over Robodebt.
Mainstream media doesn’t seem to have noticed the movements of the Green and Independent votes. Does it not fit their narrative?
Lee:
Probably more to do with it being close to irrelevant in a by-election in a very
safe seat with only 70% turn-out
Bird of paradox: “Inoffensive cleanskin from the local council …”
Just don’t mention the swingers club. 🙂