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Live commentary
9.43pm. Early days in a very slow count, but the disendorsed Liberal candidate is looking competitive in Kimberley (part of a pattern of big swings against Labor in regional areas).
9.40pm. More TCP counts now unlocked, as far down the alphabet as Scarborough.
9.12pm. A lot of seats (though not all) between A and K have had their TCP numbers unlocked.
9.02pm. The WAEC has unleashed its first two-candidate preferred numbers, for the exquisitely uninteresting seat of Armadale. A good occasion to remind you all that my projections are based entirely on my pre-determined estimates of how preferences would flow.
8.30pm. Something else I’ll stick my nose in about: amid a result that’s surprising on the up side for Labor (or do I mean on the down side for Liberal), do keep in mind that we will see a flood of early votes coming in from around 10pm. When this happened in New South Wales, Labor lost the majority that everyone was projecting early in the evening. And another thing: if you’re enjoying my live results (or anything else here), please consider a donation through the “become a supporter” button at the top of the page.
7.51pm. Something I’ll stick my nose in about: there is a result in Fremantle for the Fremantle Early Polling Place which is fairly spectacular for independent Kate Hulett. But over 9000 votes were cast at that booth, and there’s only 635 of them here. So I imagine what we’re seeing here is election day results, to which the much larger amount of early votes will be added later. But the swing is based off a historic result that makes no distinction between them. Still, it’s obviously interesting that there’s a booth where Hulett is on 38.2%.
6.36pm. In short, mobile polling booths — aged care facilities and such — are reporting their results.
6.28pm. My system has successfully processed the first result – mobile voting from Scarborough – which is always a relief.
6pm. Polls have closed. I’m not going to be providing running commentary on the results, but I may pop in from time to time to explain technical details of what’s going on with the results.
Preview
This post will be used to provide a discussion forum for today’s Western Australian election, and as a launching pad for the live results feature linked to above. It will be the first workout of my new three-candidate model for projecting results at a general election, which received some useful stress testing at last month’s state by-elections in Victoria. My back-room involvement with Nine’s television coverage means I’m unlikely to have much to offer in the way of supplementary commentary this evening, but hopefully my results projections will speak for themselves. I had some further thoughts on the matter in a paywalled article in Crikey yesterday. Yesterday’s post reported on the only public polling to have emerged since the start of the campaign – today’s newspaper’s offer little in the way of further intelligence on what might be expected this evening, although Tom Rabe of the Financial Review reports a view in both camps that the polls’ implication of around 11 seats for the Liberals and Nationals combined is “at the lower end of potential losses for Labor”.
The Western Australian Electoral Commission acknowledges a likely feature of tonight’s counting that has become familiar to election watchers across the land: a lull in proceedings between 8pm, by which time most of the election day booths have reported their results, and at least 10pm, which is at long as it takes for most of the early polling places to process their many thousands of votes. The WAEC relates that 557,693 out of 1,868,946 enrolled voters have cast votes at early polling places, which I actually make to be down a little on 2021. There is no data that I’m aware of on postal votes — those that have been received will also be counted this evening. Only first preference above-the-line votes will be counted for the Legislative Council, the process for which will drag out until at least the end of the month.
Some other peculiarities of tonight’s proceedings are worth noting. This is the first Western Australian election at which early votes are ordinary rather than declaration votes, meaning the results category of “Early Votes (in Person)” has been abolished. The early polling place locations around the state will all be open today as well, and the results reported for them will include both the early and election day votes. Early votes cast out of district are now classified as absent votes, which are still declaration votes and will thus not be counted this evening. This is particularly significant in the case of Kalamunda, Forrestfield, Butler and Baldivis, which do not have a dedicated early polling place. Voters in these seats will doubtless have cast absent votes in neighbouring electorates in very large numbers, none of which will be counted this evening. All of which has made life complicated for those of us who create historic datasets allowing for swing calculations and booth-matched projections of the results.
Another unusual feature of the WAEC’s procedures is that the notional two-candidate preferred counts are kept under wraps until the commission is satisfied it has picked the right candidates, which seemed to start happening on a large scale at around 7:30pm in 2021. This means that the various media outlets’ results projections, including my own, will be based on speculative preference estimates for much of the night. My system is geared to be rather conservative when when going off preference estimates, and I’m guessing it will lag behind other media outlets in calling results.
Damo, Basil is officially now 690 in front so you haven’t done your money there. And Nedlands is now a Lib gain.
Hack, woke, Partisan
Federal polling is looking much better for LNP than State. Libs will win Curtin just and win Bullwinkel. Tangley will be close. They will not lose any of their seats as there has been a 12% swing away from Labor. If the LNP Federally got this swing , Labor will be in lot of trouble in Pearce and Swan. But I think they are safe in those 2 seats.
Been awhile since I’ve commented but I don’t know if most of you are east coast folks in these comments or something but, I can tell ya as a west aussie, there was no way the Liberals were going to do anywhere near what might be considered “well” or “good”, they will likely end up in the high single digits of seats . State Labor is considered by the vast majority of the electorate to be the more competent economic managers, health and education policy makers, and infrastructure backers of the major parties (this doesn’t mean we think they are necessarily good, just that labor are less bad then the Libs).
And the loons tryna suggest that this result will see a similar swing against Labor federally don’t seem to realise: just like Labor federally in 2022 didn’t get a 2pp or primary vote the same as the state election in 2021, nor will they see as big a swing against them.
We might think federal Labor are mugs, but we also think federal libs are east coast greedy hacks, no different to Palmer or One Nation who try and make a song and dance about being on our side but when it boils down to it like with the border during covid, will try and sell out our states economy and peoples health for their own political gains. We still remember Dutton being a grub and attacking WA’s amazing handling of covid that kept us all employed and healthy while people over east were sold out for some cruise ships to be allowed to dock in Sydney, we still remember Dutton trying to take our fair share of GST from us.
If anything next election will see more independents elected like Kate Chaney was in Curtin, as they at least stand for their electorates interest, and not some east coast fella who cares more about if they are called Prime minister then the people they are meant to lead.
Looks like they are still posting counts. Interested in Churchlands with 1 booth left to count. This seat will be close as Basil is not getting a good preference flow. Kapinara Primary School booth to count plus Absents and Postals arriving during the week.
Damo says:
Sunday, March 9, 2025 at 2:49 am
Hack, woke, Partisan
If this result were replicated federally it would trace a 2PP swing to Labor. Just over 1/4 WA voters gave their first pref to the Liberals. The National vote is about 5%. So the total reactionary primary share is less than 1/3. If this result applied federally the Liberals would lose Moore and Canning.
Make no mistake. The WA Liberal Party is as out-of-touch as it’s possible to be. They are few. They are very old. They are very, very ideological. They are Trumpy. They are sexist. They are racist. They are unmistakably reactionary. They are desperate liars. They believe in nothing of relevance to the young.
They got the result they deserve.
Considering the attachment Dutton has for Trump – he’s a Trump satellite – it’s possible the reactionary primary vote in WA will decline into the 20s in the forthcoming federal contest. This would be the best possible thing that could happen to the political culture here.
Basil should not be elected Liberal Leader despite the result. Libby should retain the leadership or anybody else accept Basil. He has too much baggage now.
How accurate were the polls ? Almost dead on.
WA Labor should erect a statue to Scomo for the GST deal. Every state in the country is in deficit except WA.
Who knows how 4 years goes – but with a 7% buffer and 20 + seats needed it look they still have 2 terms in them if they dont stuff it up.
As to Basil – what a disaster , he is barely going to win Churchlands , and he is going to have work on a back benchers salary for potentially 8 yrs. He may be regretting giving up a very comfy media lifestyle this morning. Certainly not a rails run to becoming Premier.
FUBAR @ #228 Sunday, March 9th, 2025 – 1:01 am
…Not to the Liberals.
New thread.
Tangney not looking like a gimme to the Liberals either.
Labor lost votes to the left and the right, which to me indicates they are driving down the center.
The Liberal man on the ABC was lamenting the Liberals didn’t go far enough right economically, but should drop the culture war stuff. A beginning I suppose. Economically Lars summed it up. The government has the money because of the GST deal., what would tht wing economics bring to the table?
In Victoria we have the problem, we have large net immigration, the money has to be spent otherwise life becomes intolerable and the GST money is going to WA.
Kerry Stokes must be a very unhappy camper this morning, all that culture bullshit and no result.
frednk says:
Sunday, March 9, 2025 at 7:34 am
“GST money is going to WA”
It’s the reverse. WA GST money is going to other States.
Disappointing that so many people were instructed by WAEC officials just to put “1” above the line for the Upper House and persuaded that way.
I do hope this was not electoral interference.
I’m confused when I look at the polls on Bludger Track and Newspoll and others.
The Coalition in W.A. was ahead of Labor in every poll for the last 16 months. A Newspoll on 9 March had coalition primary at 34.7% which will be close to actual result.
Labor polled a primary of under 35% in polls since November ’23 but appears to have 41.7% on election day. Is there any major event that caused a variation of that magnitude?
The feelings I am getting from people I know about Dutton bears little resemblance to what the polls are claiming.