Live commentary
Tuesday
4.30pm. The TEC has now declared all three results, with the others confirmed as expected. Cassy O’Connor did it very easily in Hobart, winning over independent John Kelly in the final round with a provisional 11,194 (59.67%) to 7,567 (40.33%). The result in Prosser was perhaps a little closer than I would have anticipated, Kerry Vincent winning for the Liberals with 11,186 (52.93%) to 9,949 (47.07%) for Labor’s Bryan Green.
Noon. The Tasmanian Electoral Commission is today conducting provisional preference distributions to establish what the final results are likely to be, the first of which has made it clear that independent Bec Thomas will win Elwick with a provisional lead at the final count over Labor candidate Tessa McLaughlin of 9758 (53.34%) to 8537 (46.66%). Barring a surprise result in Prosser, this means Labor will be reduced from four seats in the chamber to three. If the general assumption holds that Cassy O’Connor will win Hobart and Kerry Vincent will win Prosser, the overall make-up of the chamber will go from Liberal four, Labor four and independents seven to Liberal four, Labor three, Greens one and independents seven (with Elwick an independent gain and Hobart going from independent to Greens).
End of Saturday night
The counts as they presently stand are unlikely to be disturbed much by late counting, which will presumably amount to no more than 1000 postals per electorate plus very small numbers of provisionals and absents. That means the decisive unknown quantity in each case is preference flows:
Elwick. With independent Bec Thomas on 34.0% and Labor’s Tessa McLaughlin on 28.9%, this almost certainly comes down to whether Labor gets the 57-43 preference split they will need from independent Fabiano Cangelosi on 19.0% and Janet Shelley of the Greens on 18.2%, whose preferences are exceedingly unlikely to favour each other to the extent needed to put them in contention. This is very much an unknown quantity: Labor usually gets the lion’s share of Greens preferences even against independents, but independents typically favour each other.
Hobart. Cassy O’Connor of the Greens has 37.2% with independent John Kelly second on 22.1% and Labor’s John Kamara third on 18.2%. All other candidates being independents, there seems no chance of Kamara moving into second. With full preferences, Kelly would need a split of about 68.5-31.5 to close the gap, but the hurdle is in fact slightly higher because a certain number of votes will exhaust, since voters are required to number no more than three boxes. With Labor preferences in fact likely to favour O’Connor, her victory seems assured.
Prosser. Liberal candidate Kerry Vincent is on 38.7% to Labor candidate Bryan Green’s 28.5%, which would leave Green needing a 66-34 even without allowing for exhaustion (although in a five-horse race this is unlikely to amount to much), and no particularly reason to think he will manage even more than half.
Saturday
9.28pm. Elwick pre-polls have been very handy for independent Bec Thomas, increasing her lead over Labor’s Tessa McLaughlin to 34.0% (up from 31.9%) to 28.9% (down from 29.0%). Independent Fabiano Cangelosi now leads the Greens candidate, by 19.0% to 18.2%.
9.03pm. Independent John Kelly did well on pre-polls in Hobart, pushing him to 22.1%, well ahead of Labor on 18.2%, though this does not change my assessment that Cassy O’Connor’s 37.2% will be comfortably enough for her to win.
8.45pm. The pre-polls are in from Prosser, accounting for 5825 out of 20,100 formal votes, and they have widened the Liberal lead to 38.8% to 28.4%.
8.30pm. The previous assessment didn’t factor in that a big pre-poll count will be added this evening.
8.05pm. All the election day results are now in together with the initial batches of postals, but presumably a small number of mobile votes remain to be added in Hobart and Prosser. All previous assessments still hold. In Elwick, independent Bec Thomas is on 31.9% and Labor’s Tessa McLaughlin is on 29.0%, leaving Labor hoping that preferences from the Greens on 19.8% can close the gap and forestall whatever preferences from independent Fabiano Cangelosi on 19.3% might do. In Hobart, former Greens leader Cassy O’Connor looks to have succeeded in her bid to win the party’s first ever upper house seat, being on 37.6% of the primary vote ahead of 20.8% for independent John Kelly and 18.7% for Labor’s John Kamara, with the latter very likely to send a solid flow of preferences O’Connor’s way. Liberal candidate Kerry Vincent is looking good in Prosser with 36.6% to Labor candidate Bryan Green’s 28.3%, and no particular reason to think preferences will be favourable to the latter.
7.25pm. All but two of the 26 booths in from Prosser, and there is now little difference between the raw result and my projection, on which the Liberal lead continues to narrow — now 34.1% to 28.7%. That still leaves Labor depending on what I would consider surprising preference flows.
7.18pm. Eight booths out of ten in from Elwick, which remains the unclearest of the three situations. Bec Thomas leads Labor 30.5% to 28.6%, putting the result down to the known unknown of preferences from the Greens on 21.6% and independent Fabiano Cangelosi on 19.2%.
7.16pm. Another two booths in from Hobart, for eight out of 13, and independent John Kelly now leads Labor 19.8% to 17.7% in the race for second. Which doesn’t change my assessment that Cassy O’Connor, with a 39.0% raw and 36.8% projected primary vote, is too far ahead for anyone to rein in on preferences.
7.13pm. Now 22 booths out of 26 in from Prosser, and my projected Liberal primary lead again narrows to 35.0% to 28.2%, though as noted I think it unlikely that preferences would favour Labor sufficiently to close the gap.
7.10pm. Another four booths in from Hobart, for six out of 13, and my Greens projection again edges up to 37.3%, although this is lower than the raw 40.7%. With Labor a distant second on 17.3%, Cassy O’Connor is looking good.
7.06pm. Reading Kevin Bonham’s account of the candidates in Prosser, independent Pam Sharpe who 11.4% is a self-styled progressive and her preferences will presumably favour Labor. But Shooters on 15.0% will likely lean the other way, and my vague sense is that those of independent Kelly Spaulding on 11.8% will too. If that’s so, the Liberals should be favoured to win.
7.03pm. Another six booths in from Prosser (fast-moving counts all round) for a total of 18 out of 26, resulting in a slight narrowing of my projected Liberal primary vote lead to 35.9% to 27.3%.
7.00pm. The second booth from Hobart is West Hobart South — Labor now holds a slight lead over independent John Kelly in the race for second, and my projection of the Greens vote is up from 35.0% to 36.6% (raw vote up from 31.6% to 39.5%).
6.57pm. Six booths in now from Elwick out of ten, and independent Bec Thomas now leads Labor 30.5% to 28.2%, leaving the latter counting on a strong flow of preferences from the Greens.
6.55pm. The Battery Point West booth is in from Hobart, and Cassy O’Connor leads with 31.6% of the primary vote, which my booth-matched projection suggests is consistent with a final result of 35.0%. Second is a close race between Labor’s John Kamara on 19.9% and independent John Kelly on 21.3%, with preferences presumably likely to favour the latter. Obviously this is only one booth, but I would suggest the likeliest outcome is Labor finishing third with enough of their preferences flowing to the Greens to seal the deal for O’Connor.
6.49pm. Three booths in from Elwick, where as expected the race looks to be between Labor and independent Glenorchy mayor Bec Thomas. I don’t imagine booth matching will be instructive here, but the raw vote has Labor ahead 33.8% to 31.4%. The Greens are on 16.0%, and I would imagine their preferences would favour Labor. The other independent, Fabiano Cangelosi, is on 18.8%, and while independents’ preferences typically favour each other, his own background in the ALP may mitigate that. Bottom line: too close to call.
6.47pm. A big hit of results just reporting from Prosser, where we now have 12 out of 26 booths in. My projected Liberal lead on the primary vote has now narrowed from 35.8% to 26.7% (it’s 33.5% to 24.8% on the raw result, so presumably the outstanding booths lean more urban and better for Labor), which gives Labor at least some chance if there is reason to think they will do well on preferences, on which I offer no judgement.
6.28pm. A third booth, Coles Bay, improves the picture still further for Vincent. But I should add the caution there are two independents with around a quarter of the vote, together with Shooters on 14.5%, and I have no clear idea how their preferences will behave. I’m projecting 42.2% of the primary vote for Liberal and 25.5% for Labor, so in any case Labor would need to improve their position from here.
6.27pm. Correction: there are five candidates in Prosser. Even so, two booths have already reported. I have a spreadsheet set up to enable me to do booth matching from the March 24 election, but unfortunately one of the two booths that has reported (Carlton, the other being Broadmarsh) is the only one that wasn’t in use at the election. So notwithstanding that the historical result I’m going off for Carlton is a little speculative, I have Labor down 6.0% compared with the election and Liberal up 1.9%. So while this isn’t much to go on, it’s encouraging for Liberal candidate Kenny Vincent. Liberal and Labor are both solidly clear of the other three candidates.
6pm. Polls have closed for Tasmania’s Legislative Council elections, and here begins the live commentary. I’m adding this on to yesterday’s preview, which you can see below, and bumping it to the top of the post. I don’t imagine it will take long for first results to come in for Prosser, where there are many small booths and only three candidates.
Overview
Voters in three of Tasmania’s Legislative Council divisions go to the polls tomorrow as part of the chamber’s annual periodic elections, whereby either two or three seats go up for election each year on a six-year cycle. This comes six weeks on from a state election that only reached its final resolution when two independents undertook to support a Liberal minority government last week. One of the three is technically a by-election, the seat having been vacated by the Labor member’s successful bid to move to the lower house. The chamber presently has four Liberal and four Labor members plus seven independents, with one of each up for election tomorrow. The site will as always cover the count live tomorrow from the close of polls at 6pm.
• Of particular note is the election for Hobart, which naturally covers the central business district and its immediate surrounds. This will be contested for the Greens by Cassy O’Connor, who held a seat in Clark (known until 2018 as Denison) from 2008 and led the party from 2015 until she stood aside in September last year. The seat will be vacated with the retirement of Rob Valentine, who has held it as an independent since 2012. Also in the field are child safety officer John Kamara for Labor plus five independents: Charlie Burton, Sam Campbell, Michael Haynes, John Kelly and Stefan Vogel.
• The by-election is for the seat of Elwick, covering a band of Hobart’s Labor-voting northern suburbs from Moonah north to Rosetta, which will not be contested by the Liberals. Josh Willie held the seat for Labor after unseating independent Adriana Taylor in 2016 and was re-elected in 2022. He was one of the two Labor candidates elected to Clark at the March 23 election, and was briefly considered a possibility for the party leadership. The new Labor candidate is Tess McLaughlin, an electrician from Lutana. The most formidable of the other three candidates is presumably Glenorchy mayor Bec Thomas, running as an independent. Also in the field are Janet Shelley of the Greens and independent Fabiano Cangelosi, a lawyer who ran for Labor in Franklin at the 2021 state election.
• Also being vacated by a successful lower house election candidate is Prosser, located immediately beyond Hobart’s northern reaches and encompassing Sorell, Port Arthur and Swansea. The seat had been held for the Liberals since its previous periodic election in 2018 by Jane Howlett, who was one of three Liberals elected in Lyons at the March 23 election. The election in 2018 produced a close race between Liberal and Labor, and the seat will be contested for Labor this time by Bryan Green, who held a seat in Braddon from 1998 to 2017 and led the party for the first three years after it lost office in 2014. The new Liberal candidate is Kerry Vincent, who has been the mayor of Sorell for twelve years and owns the agricultural merchandise business Rural Solutions. Rounding out the field are Phillip Bigg of Shooters Fishers and Farmers and independents Pam Sharpe and Kelly Spaulding.
I’m amazed by the extent of recycling of retreaded politicians that goes on in Tasmania. Where else would the likes of Eric Abetz, Guy Barnett et al. get another chance to to suck on the public teat once the public has a good look at them. Pretty bad, but probably not as bad a Kim Beasley, who just keeps moving from on public sinecure to the next.
Hobart will be an interesting battle. I agree with Bonham that Kelly has a reasonable show. There is a lot of love around for his role in saving the State Cinema and transforming it into a marvellous cinema complex/restaurant/bar/bookshop. He should get most of the normally Liberal votes, and some of the yuppie votes as well. As well as some second preferences from Labor voters who seriously don’t like O’Connor. So I reckon Kelly might get there.
Thomas is surely a shoo-in for Elwick. Willie had built up a following, but McLaughlin is an unknown. And in the LC, voters generally only go for a major party candidate whom they actually know and like.
Perhaps that fact gives Green a strong chance in Prosser: Dr Bonham certainly appears to think so. But Green has always seemed to me to have a strong touch of the used-car salesman about him. And he is a blow-in from the north-west, while Vincent is the well-regarded mayor of Sorrell. So I’m cautiously tipping Vincent. (But it’s always a dangerous move to tip against Dr B.)
‘Stuart says:
Friday, May 3, 2024 at 2:08 pm
I’m amazed by the extent of recycling of retreaded politicians that goes on in Tasmania. Where else would the likes of Eric Abetz, Guy Barnett et al. get another chance to to suck on the public teat once the public has a good look at them. Pretty bad, but probably not as bad a Kim Beasley, who just keeps moving from on public sinecure to the next.’
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Don’t let it get you down. In the end they are all Earthians.
My poorly researched predictions:
O’Connor Hobart
Green Prosser
Thomas Elwick
Likely to be wrong on at least one, probably two, so don’t use my post to put bets on.
I’d say the young Labor candidate in Elwick is looking in a very strong position.
The Liberal Vincent looks to have won Prosser, but it’s far from certain.
Hobart is interesting, in that O’Connor has only received around 38 per cent of the vote, and the Greens traditionally don’t get too many preferences from anyone else. So Cassy will need to pick up around 1,400 votes from the Labor candidate and the other independents. She probably will, but it doesn’t seem certain.
Why weren’t votes cast on election day?
What a waste of time and resources to do it all again 6 weeks later.
Presumably due to concerns over informal voting, since the rules for how many ballots one has to number are different in the legislative council and legislative assembly.
Leg council (upper house – today) are fixed term and always we’re going to be today. Lower house is non fixed and the liberals keep calling them early because they keep losing members due to incompetence and evil.
I have been out this evening so couldn’t follow the count, but am genuinely shocked at Hobart in particular.
With seemingly-good indie and Labor candidates in the race, O’Connor being an unusually divisive Green on weird issues, and Kelly being endorsed by various hard-right figures, a straight left-right fight between the latter two was really not what I was expecting. O’Connor and Kelly have far outdone what I’d expected and Kamara and Burton performed much worse.
I thought Green was a strange back-to-the-future candidate in the first place and am not surprised he got trounced.
Is there any chance one of Shelley or Cangelosi could get into the top two on the other’s preferences in Elwick?
It just continues the trend of Labor performing poorly in regional areas and the Greens continuing to eat away at inner city Labor votes. When you also consider around 1/3 voted for neither major party at the state election it will be very difficult for either to attain majority government going forward. The only way forward for Tasmanian Labor is to have a serious rethink on their stance around working with the Greens otherwise they will just languish in perpetuity as the opposition.
Shelley or Cangelosi would need to gain on preferences at the rate of currently .545 votes/preference in a three way split off the other one with McLaughlin and Thomas, so that would be something like say a 70-15-15 split, that can’t happen.
Kamara is from two electorates away from Hobart. Nice guy, doorknocked hard, great life story but I didn’t think he was good in interviews, just didn’t convey understanding of how the Legislative Council works. Burton got squeezed a bit by the range of other candidates running but it seems also voters are a bit wary of indies here at the moment; the indie vote in Clark fell 3% at state election despite there being more of them.
There was a telling exchange between O’Connor and Kelly about the stadium where Kelly was taking a noncommittal position and O’Connor just jumped on it with ‘that’s the problem with these independents, you don’t know what they stand for’ and that perception seemed to have rubbed off on Burton (who was clearly anti-stadium but not very high profile about it) as well. I also think Burton isn’t that high profile here and that voters in the Hobart area just do not give a stuff about high-profile endorsements, and haven’t for decades.
Dr B. I think there were also issues about Valentine himself that meant that Burton wasn’t going to get much out of being the anointed one. Rob isn’t the sort of Jacqui Lambie-type figure who could rub some of their charisma off on others.
He was almost an anti-charisma politician, as was symbolised by his daggy hat. And, while he was a successful Lord Mayor many moons back, as an MLC he never stood for much or achieved anything memorable. Everyone loves him because he is a terrifically nice and decent bloke, but that’s specifically about him: there’s no such thing as “Valentinism.”
And, as you say, Burton was a bit of a nobody.
I thought Kamara was a pretty good candidate for Labor, in that he had his own life story and wasn’t simply a product of the machine. But the Labor bus doesn’t seem to be coming back to central Hobart in a hurry.
I think there is still a strong interest in independents among Hobart voters, but the slate of independents running for Hobart LC this time was rather weak, and O’Connor has a very high profile.
Think Cassie O’Connor is the sister of former PBer “Jen ” O’Connor , who was mayor of the Indigo Shire.
Quasar: did the poster to whom you refer ever “out” themselves on PB? If not, perhaps you should ask William to delete your post before too many people see it.
We should respect anonymity on here IMO.
I’m not sure that Green in Prosser really got trounced, he just more or less achieved the same primary vote as Labor in the state general election (ok they got trounced). But he didnt bring in any new votes, so by that definition he was a failed candidate.
O’Conner in Hobart shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone. Looking at the suburbs, they’re probably the Greenest in the state, and stop right where you’d expect Libs to do better in the SE (Sandy Bay) and Labor in the NW (Moonah).
I dont know enough about Elwick to say anything intelligent.
So what will the composition of the Tasmanian upper house likely look like?. Do we think it will more workable then the lower house?. Or will it be a nightmare to get legislation through either house?.
So i guess i’m asking for a beginners guide to what this all is likely to mean on the governance of Tasmania.
Entropy: “So what will the composition of the Tasmanian upper house likely look like?. Do we think it will more workable then the lower house?. Or will it be a nightmare to get legislation through either house?.
So i guess i’m asking for a beginners guide to what this all is likely to mean on the governance of Tasmania.”
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Both houses will require the government to negotiate. This has been essential in the LC for as long as I can remember.
Negotiating with independents – and minor parties other than the Greens – is rarely a nightmare for state or Federal governments in Australia. Independents want outcomes that they can claim to have played a role in delivering. The Australian Democrat took much the same approach, as do the JLN and even One Nation.
The Greens like to posture towards their constituency, which makes them a little more difficult. But even they are ultimately open to deals as well.
In my observation, the most difficult negotiations are often those within the governing party/coalition.
meher babasays:
Monday, May 6, 2024 at 6:03 pm
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Thanks for your view on this. I gather upper house elections are set too. So unlike the lower house if they can’t get legislation through. Having a new election is not an option for this house?.
Entropy: “Thanks for your view on this. I gather upper house elections are set too. So unlike the lower house if they can’t get legislation through. Having a new election is not an option for this house?.”
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That’s my understanding, but Dr Bonham is the expert.
The LC electoral system is a terrible one IMO. They should face the people all together like upper houses in other states, and not in the bizarre dribs and drabs way that they currently do.
The Legislative Council can never be dissolved unless it agrees to. Roughly a sixth come up for election every year. It was designed to obstruct temporary majorities downstairs because the colonials didn’t trust the voters. Moreover it can even block supply and force the Lower House to an election and there is nothing the Lower House can do about it; even if the voters hated it it could take several years of rotation to get rid of the MLCs who voted for such a decision. (In practice the LegCo forcing the lower house to an election has happened once, in 1948).
The balance before the election was 4 Lib 4 ALP 7 IND and of those INDs three were left, one centre (formerly left) and three centre-right. The Liberals have retained their seat that was up for grabs, one of the two leftmost INDs has been replaced by a Green and the only remaining suspense is whether Labor retains their seat or is replaced by a politically ambiguous IND.
Kevin Bonhamsays:
Tuesday, May 7, 2024 at 12:25 am
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Thanks very much for setting out how things stands, much appreciated. I scan read the comments on this page a couple of times but all seem to be detailed analysis of individual or a couple of seat results. While i was more interested just an overview of results and what they could mean. Thanks for supplying that.
Provisional preference distribution confirms that Bec Thomas wins Elwick:
https://www.tec.tas.gov.au/legislative-council/elections-2024/results/elwick/index.html
Cassy O’Connor and Kerry Vincent confirmed in Hobart and Prosser:
https://www.tec.tas.gov.au/legislative-council/elections-2024/results/hobart/index.html
https://www.tec.tas.gov.au/legislative-council/elections-2024/results/prosser/index.html
Well, I predicted 2 out of 3 correctly. I thought there would be a bigger “anyone but Cassy vote” in Hobart than eventuated. I guess most people haven’t had the misfortune of having to listen to her deliver a speech.
Does anyone know if this result means that Rosalie will have to step aside from the party leadership? That would be unfair as I think she has proven herself to be a much better campaigner than Cassy.
I also got 2 out of 3. Prosser was a bad call by me, but I went party loyalty over truth.
So Labor actually ended up losing a seat due to Willie moving to the lower house from Elwick. Bad move. I see it all the time, voters punish parties who do not show loyalty to the seat. They should have known better than let personal (or faction) ambition override a basic political truism, dont piss off your voters.
I, like meher baba, had assumed a bigger anyone-but-Cassy vote.
I can’t see her taking back the leadership from the upper house, and I think if she was going to do that she wouldn’t have resigned it in the first place.
Elwick wasn’t about loyalty: Labor ran an unknown against a popular local mayor in a seat where two of the past five mayors (three of the past six if you include the predecessor seat of Buckingham) had romped it in there in previous campaigns. McLaughlin seemed a good candidate on merits alone, but Thomas was too high-profile in that seat to run such an unknown.
Added some wrapup comments following today’s outcomes:
https://kevinbonham.blogspot.com/2024/05/legislative-council-2024-elwick-hobart.html
MI: “So Labor actually ended up losing a seat due to Willie moving to the lower house from Elwick. Bad move. I see it all the time, voters punish parties who do not show loyalty to the seat. They should have known better than let personal (or faction) ambition override a basic political truism, dont piss off your voters.”
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It’s a seat they might have lost anyway. Willie clearly brought a considerable personal vote with him in the suburban area north of North Hobart. If he hadn’t run in Clark, it’s conceivable that Sue Hickey might have gotten ahead of a lesser-known Labor candidate and Labor would have ended up with only one seat out of seven.
Labor has a massive and growing problem in central Hobart. If you look at the booth-by-booth results for Clark in the House of Assembly election, the Greens finished ahead of Labor in the primary vote in every booth south of the State Cinema, bar Sandy Bay Beach (which is a profoundly Liberal booth). In the recent Hobart LC election (where the silvertail region of Lower Sandy Bay was absent), O’Connor finished ahead of Kamara in every booth: even Mt Stuart and West New Town, which are not generally good booths for the Greens.
It seems to me that Labor has completely lost its mojo in one of the most left-leaning regions of Australia. And we are seeing the same trend emerge elsewhere, particularly in Brisbane.
It’s the next phase of a process that began in 1967 when much of the rapidly-growing segment of the population that had completed tertiary education became drawn towards the ALP by the personality and policies of Gough Whitlam – and later Bob Hawke and especially Paul Keating. And, for those for whom voting for people associated with trade unions was a bit too hard to stomach, there was Gordon Barton’s Australian Party and, later, the Australian Democrats.
Today, a growing proportion of the children and grandchildren of the Whitlam Labor voters have jumped to the left of the ALP and I don’t see any likelihood of their coming back soon.
It’s almost entirely Labor’s own fault. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, the Right and Left factions moved to get rid of the Centre Left faction, which was reflecting the interests of the sort of educated voter who has become increasingly inclined to vote for the Greens. The factional heavies of the Left and the Right didn’t agree about much, but they both shared total contempt for the Centre Left: the “trendy blancmange” as I once heard one of them refer to the would-be third faction.
It was exactly at that time that the Greens started to make their inroads into Federal Parliament: first Chritabel Chamarette and Dee Margetts, and then the Tasmanians and now the bunch of unreconstructed Trots who run the show on the mainland.
And so Labor has come increasingly to lose the votes of the “trendy blancmange” element of the population. It’s a terrible development IMO.
Rebecca: “McLaughlin seemed a good candidate on merits alone, but Thomas was too high-profile in that seat to run such an unknown.”
McLaughlin actually did extremely well given her youth and her lack of a public profile before the campaign. I’m told that she campaigned her guts out. She might be one to watch: god knows, Labor needs some candidates with public appeal.
Labor got 2.43 quotas in Clark. Some of Josh Willie’s 0.71 quotas wouldn’t have voted Labor if he hadn’t run but definitely nowhere near enough to put them below 2 quotas. Even their abysmal 2021 Clark result would have been good for 2 seats if there had been 7 seats that year. It seems that some of the 2021 independent vote in Clark was voters opting for indies because they just couldn’t vote Labor that year and a lot of that’s gone back to sender.
Labor getting towelled by the Greens in inner Hobart isn’t new – for instance looking at the Hobart LegCo booths, the Greens beat Labor in all of them bar three in the 2006 state election, and two of those three were close. Those three (Mt Stuart and the New Town booths) were all won by the Greens in the 2024 Assembly election but this is a comparison between an election where Labor polled 47% to the Greens’ 24% and one where they polled 30.5% to 21%. Mt Stuart for instance – my home suburb now though I vote in Swan St as I’m down the hill – has gone from 261-282 to 288-251, not a lot to see there. I think what’s happened in Glenorchy is a bigger story.
As for the Hobart seat while Valentine was quietly occupying it the redistribution chopped out the pro-Labor stuff in southern Glenorchy that used to be the bane of Green attempts to win Wellington, so that helped.