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Friday
Even slower progress in the count today. Labor has claimed victory in Fremantle after another batch of postals broke 637-488 in favour of Simone McGurk, pushing her lead out to 491. Finally some progress in Warren-Blackwood, where only rechecking occurred between Monday and Thursday. My system is still allowing for the possibility of either a Labor or a Liberal win, though far the most likely result will be that it goes to the Nationals. The Nationals lead Labor by 956 on the two-candidate preferred candidate count – the hypothetical chance of Labor winning would involve the Liberals beating the Nationals to second and Labor doing better out of preferences against the Liberals than they are against the Nationals. Thirty-six votes separate the Nationals and the Liberals on the primary vote, but the Nationals will surely gain as minor contenders are eliminated.
Thursday
The Liberals hold a 98-vote lead in Kalamunda after the two-candidate count almost caught up with the primary votes, and the first (but presumably not last) batch of absents broke narrowly in favour of Labor. My system is projecting the narrowest of Labor leads based on the fact that they did quite a lot better on postals in this seat in 2021 than is usual — the batch counted on election night slightly favoured the Liberals, but the general tendency is for later batches to get less favourable for them. One way or another, this seat seems up in the air, although The West Australian continues to report the Liberals are “confident”.
It was noted yesterday that Labor’s lead in South Perth was cut from 345 to 189 when nearly 70 votes at the Challenger Reserve booth were shifted from Labor to Liberal. It is apparent from comparison of the primary and two-candidate counts that they had this right the first time. A batch of absent votes also broke 902-791 to Labor today, leaving a published lead of 300 votes that almost certainly around 440 in reality, which is surely enough to withstand whatever’s still out there.
The upper house count isn’t too far behind the lower house now, though all the votes to this point are above-the-line. It’s looking like Labor 16, Liberal 11, Greens four, Nationals two, one each for One Nation, Legalise Cannabis and Australian Christians, and one in play. On the latter count, Animal Justice are on 0.43 quotas and One Nation’s second candidate will be on 0.35 after the election of the first, with the latter presumably to do well out of preferences from the Libertarians, Stop Pedophiles! and Shooters Fishers and Farmers (the latter of whom flopped after committing the rookie error of identifying themselves on the ballot paper as “SFFPWA”). An unknown quantity is “Independent” on 0.47 quotas – if most of this went to the ticket headed by former Legalise Cannabis member Sophie Moermond, rather than the ungrouped candidates, she too could be in contention.
Wednesday
Simone McGurk moved further ahead today in Fremantle, a second batch of absents breaking 1029-718 her way, increasing her lead from 31 to 342. Labor did badly out of rechecking in South Perth, where their lead fell from 345 to 189, mostly because nearly 70 votes at the Challenger Reserve booth were shifted from Labor to Liberal. Dawesville became the second seat to add absent votes to the count, which increased the Labor lead from 438 to 512 after breaking 1162-1088.
Tuesday
The big news (the only news, really) from today’s counting was that Simone McGurk moved into a 31-vote lead in Fremantle after absent votes broke 1390-1121 in her favour. I am not clear if there are more absent votes to come, but outstanding postals, of which there should be as many as 2000, seem very likely to favour McGurk. This puts Labor on track for a forty-sixth seat, and sets up a third successive state election at which no cross-benchers were elected to the lower house.
Monday
End of evening. Labor member Rebecca Stephens has conceded defeat in Albany, though it remains unclear if the winner will be Scott Leary of the Liberals or Thomas Brough of the Nationals. A point worth noting about the count for Kalamunda is that the seat had no dedicated early polling place, meaning all early votes were classified as absent votes, none of which have been counted yet. There are still three booths outstanding from a two-candidate count that currently has the Liberals ahead by 187, a situation that is unlikely to change much when they are added. The West Australian reports the Liberals “remain confident”. Since my brief review of the upper house on election night, both Labor and Liberal have improved enough to suggest they will win 16 and 11 seats respectively. That leaves the Greens assured of the balance of power with what looks like a certain four seats. The Nationals look solid for two, and One Nation, Legalise Cannabis and Australian Christians for one each. The last seat is harder to pick, although I would think Animal Justice well placed.
3pm. The WAEC is now conducting a two-candidate count between Simone McGurk and Kate Hulett in Fremantle, which so far has McGurk receiving 41.3% of overall preferences — the estimates I was going off earlier only had it at 34.4%. My projection still has Hulett ahead, but it might not be taking into account how heavily postal votes are going against her (1069 to 718), and will presumably continue to do so. With barely half the likely postals counted, the existing trend would be about enough to eliminate Hulett’s lead. So once again, the result is likely to come down to absents, which are difficult to predict. We also finally have a TCP count in Murray-Wellington, which suggests the Liberals are very likely to win.
Sunday night
I appeared on Ben Raue’s Tally Room podcast today to discuss the result, which you can access at the bottom of this update. I should also have a paywalled piece in Crikey later today (i.e. Monday). Developments from today’s counting, which mopped up mostly early polling places that didn’t finish counting last night:
Dawesville. My call of this seat for Labor got rescinded in the small hours of Saturday when a second batch of votes was added for the Dawesville Early Polling Place (presumably the first was election day votes and the second was the pre-polls), breaking 3109-2619 to Liberal and reducing the Labor lead to 438. As the first batch of postals favoured Labor slightly, Liberal hopes of closing the gap rest on what I’ve roughly calculated at around 3500 absent votes.
Murray-Wellington. Still no two-candidate count here, but the 4491 votes of the district’s early polling place reported early afternoon yesterday. This pushes my projection of the Liberal lead out to a seemingly formidable 2.4%, bringing it closer into line with the ABC’s 1.9%. Here as in many other places, this all hinges on the accuracy of our preference estimates. I note that One Nation polled an uncommonly strong 8.1% here, perhaps helped by their top position on the ballot paper. Donkey votes will go Labor as preferences.
Warren-Blackwood. I’m not exactly sure why, but the 1.4% Labor lead I was projecting last night has become a 2.6% lead for the Nationals, though there remains a theoretical hope for the Liberals.
End of Saturday night
This seat will be progressively updated over the coming week with updates on late counting for the Western Australian state election, starting with a review of the situation in the most doubtful seats as of the end of the night. A few general points before moving on to specifics. Accurate election eve polls, which in fact slightly overstated the Labor primary vote, had few predicting such a sweeping result. The minority of seats in which the two-party swing was below double digits included a rich haul of the election’s most keenly contested seats. The other outstanding feature of the result was the Liberals’ dismal performance in affluent Perth seats, of which Churchlands is only the most visible example.
With only three seats confirmed as Labor losses — Carine and Nedlands to Liberal, Geraldton to the Nationals — my system is calling 40 seats for Labor, four for the Nationals and three for the Liberals and twelve in doubt. However, I’m confident enough about Labor in Bateman and Kimberley and Liberal in Cottesloe that I won’t be detailing them further. I also think it very likely that Labor will lose Albany, though whether to the Nationals or the Liberals is unclear. If it’s the Nationals, the Liberals had better hope they stay ahead in the three further seats where my system rates them as such, as they may otherwise suffer the ignominy of failing to recover opposition status.
Albany. A close race for second between the Nationals and Liberals means the WAEC is sparing us the valuable insight that would be offered by a two-party count conducted between Labor and Nationals candidates. My own three-way results system is projecting Nationals candidate Scott Leary to finish ahead of Liberal candidate Tom Brough (who defeated Leary for Liberal preselection) by 30.1% to 27.6% and then giving him a 68.2% chance of winning the seat, but it factors in enough uncertainty about Brough dropping out to still give him a 17.6% chance. The remaining 14.2% allows for the possibility that Labor’s Rebecca Stephens may yet hold on.
Churchlands. One of the biggest stories of the evening was the prospect of spectacular failure for Basil Zempilas, but it proved illusory to the extent that his swing was locked up in seat’s early polling booth, which reported late in the evening. My system isn’t quite calling it though, and a swing of barely more than 3% looks to be the weakest of the election after Warren-Blackwood.
Fremantle. The WAEC conducted a Labor-versus-Greens preference count we will presumably never see, because the star performer here proved to be teal independent Kate Hulett, who trails Labor’s Simone McGurk by 33.2% to 28.8% on the primary vote. My own preference estimates, which split the Liberals 80-20 and the Greens 50-50, push Hulett to a solid 3.7% lead, but the ABC has other ideas, getting only so far as 0.7%.
Kalamunda. A lot of the biggest swings were in outer metropolitan seats, Kalamunda being the only one where the Labor margin wasn’t too big to matter. Liberal candidate Adam Hort leads by 272 on the two-candidate count, which is unlikely to change much when we get results from six booths that have so far reported only on the primary vote. A lot will depend on absent votes, which are hard to predict — they will include early votes cast outside the district, which I don’t believe was the case in the past.
Kalgoorlie. A three-way race between Labor, Liberal and the Nationals in which the current total of 5611 votes counted will shortly be swamped by the Kalgoorlie Early Voting Centre, encompassing 8241 votes pre-polls plus however many were cast there on election day. Here as in Albany, Labor, Liberal and the Nationals all have a chance, with my system presently favouring Labor.
Murray-Wellington. Due to some manner of glitch at the WAEC, no votes from this seat reported until late in the evening, by which time the person in charge of unlocking two-candidate counts had seemingly gone home. My preference estimates give the Liberals a 0.6% lead, but the ABC has it at 2.5%. The electorate’s early polling place is yet to report: it received 7167 early votes plus however many were cast there yesterday.
Pilbara. The WAEC conducted a Labor-versus-Nationals preference count here, but isn’t publishing it because Liberal candidate Amanda Kailis leads Kieran Dart of the Nationals 24.1% to 16.2% on the primary vote. My system still gives Dart a slender chance — he will presumably do well on One Nation preferences — but it is most likely a question of Labor-versus-Liberal that must presently be left to preference estimates, mine putting Labor 1.6% ahead, the ABC’s doing so by 2.1%.
South Perth. With a well advanced count including the two-candidate numbers, Labor’s Geoff Baker leads Liberal candidate Bronwyn Waugh by 345 votes, leaving much riding on absent votes. The postals counted so far only slightly favoured Waugh, and there’s a general tendency for late-arriving postals to be less favourable to the Liberals.
Warren-Blackwood. Labor’s Jane Kelsbie is a good chance of pulling off an extraordinary second win in one of the high-water marks of the 2021 landslide. Oddly, the WAEC has lifted the lid on the two-candidate despite the Nationals and Liberal candidates being in a very close race for second. This has the Nationals 400 votes in front, but the two-candidate count is lagging far behind the primary count, and my own projection that uses estimates to fill the gaps gets Kelsbie 1.4% ahead of the Nationals. There also remains the possibility that the Liberals will make the final count and sneak home.
For the Legislative Council, polling booths around the state got as far as they could with counting the first preference above-the-line votes last night. The numbers may well move around a lot, but at the moment there looks like a solid chance that the Greens will hold the balance of power in their own right, looking good for four seats with Labor in contention for 15. The Liberals at present look like winning ten and the Nationals two, with One Nation, Legalise Cannabis and Australian Christians looking good for a seat each, and the last seat maybe going to Animal Justice.
Did Antony Green call Dawesville because of the batch of absents extending Labors lead?
Happy to be corrected on my math, but by my calculations, since last LC update on ABC (so using current published WAEC figures) Libs down from 10.554 to 10.498, Greens now back to just over 4 quota, on 4.013, and Independent group up from 0.461 to 0.474, Australian christians down from 1.006 to 0.996 so (for now anyway) needing preferences to get over the line. Animal Justice up from 0.425 to 0.427 but further behind Independents than before, and unlikely to get many preferences.
Further to this:
If you look at my map display at the bottom of the Fremantle results page …
https://www.pollbludger.net/wa2025/Results/LA.htm?s=Fremantle
… you’ll see that voters east of Stirling Highway and north of Leach Highway had to either brave the terrors (or at least, the traffic lights) of those roads or cast absent votes in Bicton. This is a fashionable area – around 10% better for Liberal than the Fremantle norm going off 2022 federal results.
The opposite seems likely to happen in South Perth — the Liberals’ strongest areas are by the river, whereas Labor is strongest at the eastern end, where the boundary with Victoria Park is.
Two developments in relation to South Perth. One is that a batch of absent votes have been added on the primary vote, which should add about 150 votes to the Labor TCP lead. The other relates to the check count update yesterday where about 70 votes shifted from Labor to Liberal. It’s been pointed out to me that they pretty clearly had it right the first time — based on these numbers, Labor only got about a third of the preferences at this booth but two-thirds everywhere else.
Also 3933 primary votes added in Kalamunda, which I believe should cut about 100 votes into a 180-vote Liberal lead. But most of the outstanding votes will be postals, which will likely favour the Liberals.
William. Why does your model now have ALP leading in Kalamunda? Made me happy but?
Well might you ask. Turns out postals were bang on the overall result in Kalamunda in 2021, and didn’t lean Liberal like they normally do. So maybe I speak too soon.
Thank you. Back to the footy.
The Liberal lead in Kalamunda is down to 98, with 78% counted, so maybe 1500 or so postal votes still to go. It’s going down to the wire, but there has been a bit of a trend in recent times for Labor to do better with the later postals. We shall see.
If, by chance, the final seat tally aligns with the current projections in William’s model, including the Nats winning Albany, both Libs and Nats would end up with 6 seats. Who would be the Leader of the Opposition in that scenario?
Outsider @ #210 Thursday, March 13th, 2025 – 9:16 pm
I think it would probably be the Liberal leader, mainly by the fact that they have more Upper House members elected.
Another thing about Kalamunda: that last booth without a 2pp, Wooroloo, is the one where the Nats came second with 24%. Labor got absolutely clubbed on primary votes (a 39% swing!), but hardly any of it went to the Libs. With only 36% for Labor+Greens, it looks like a strong Lib booth, unless Nat preferences do something strange. Which they do sometimes in WA.
With the statewide 2PP tracking towards 58% and potentially winning 47 seats to secure a 3rd term in Government, this really has been an astonishing performance by WA Labor.
“With the statewide 2PP tracking towards 58%. . .”
2PP still showing ‘just’ 57.2% on William’s tracker?
Outsider
With the reports of procedural issues associated with polling day I’m waiting for a beaten Liberal, or Michaelia Cash, to cry “stolen election”.
https://kevinbonham.blogspot.com/2025/03/western-australia-2025-legislative_13.html
Western Australia 2025 Legislative Assembly Postcount
I’ve been very slack at getting this up but I’ve studied snails that could count elections faster than this.
With 65.7% of votes counted, the ABC’s 2PP estimate is 57.7% to the Labor Party and 42.3% to the Liberal Party. Labor’s share could still go up by the time counting has finished. Some of the very safe Labor seats (eg, Bibra Lake, Butler, Belmont, Cannington) have very low counts so far – in Butler, only 48.4% has been counted with Labor’s 2PP at 65%. You would expect the final count in Butler to be at least 80%, so still a lot of votes to be counted.
Looking forward to the addition of more postal votes in Kalamunda. One would hope this is prioritized by the WAEC.
I wonder if the recent (global) trend where the fringe are constantly questioning the validity of elections and the impartiality of election officials – sometimes in quite violent terms – has resulted in it being much more difficult for groups like the WAEC to recruit normal temporary staff for elections?
If so, could that effect the upcoming likely much closer Federal election?
(Or is it something much simpler – we all knew the broad brush stroke result of this election months ago, so there’s little impetus to speed the process along, so they’re not bothered)
Been a bad 6 days voting outcome since the election for WA libs barely holding on and not gaining in a few seats.
Labor seems to be doing better in the too close to call marginals as time goes on.
Next week Aussie or Austin Trump numbers will be revealed.
Another batch of absents on the primary vote in Fremantle look like they’ll put Simone McGurk another 150 or so ahead.
It does seem to be an extraordinarily slow count. I wonder if William (or anyone else) has any insights as to why this is the case. It’s been like a slow drip!
@Matt
I think incompetence mostly explains the WAEC here, choosing to contract an outside company that clearly thought they’d have an easy time doing everything at a minimim. It’s going to cost a few jobs.
If the same company is also employed to handle the votes for the Federal election in WA, then they better get their shit together fast.
The Independent on 0.47 quotas has to be Moermond’s group, as any ungrouped candidates would necessarily have 0 votes presently (because ungrouped candidates can only attract BTL votes, which have not yet been counted).
I do wonder what kind of preference flows an independent ticket (even a grouped one) can expect from other micro parties – this would be the decisive factor in whether Moermond is returned to the upper house, or whether Animal Justice or One Nation #2 gets up instead. My gut instinct is that One Nation’s 2nd candidate has to be in pole position here to grab the final seat.
The West Australian reports that Labor has claimed Fremantle.
So Cook can get in with choosing his Ministry.
Been a strange count there.
Saw another report that Hulett has already spoken to lawyers.
Rossmcg @ #224 Friday, March 14th, 2025 – 9:52 pm
It’s probably just performative things from here with Hulett. The main bulk of votes left to come in are Postal Votes which are so far favouring Labor.
I have to say that Hulett does not strike me as a particularly attractive candidate. Maybe a Fremantle thing! (Spoken as a Citizen of the People’s Republic of East Victoria Park).
Kalamunda still missing the 2pp count from Wooroloo. Why would the smallest booth take the longest to count? There’s 325 formal votes – I could’ve gone out there and counted the things myself in an afternoon. It’s one of the closest results in the state, so you’d think it’d be a priority.
Do they count over the weekend?
If Labor wins Kalamunda and Nationals win Albany…
Its possible the Nationals will remain the official opposition!
On the results page there are no booth figures for Maylands.
Is it a coding issue or just no data from elections WA?
Greens and Libs are just 0.2% apart on the 3cp projection for Maylands, so that’d be part of it. Libs are third on primaries, should be cleaning up on minor right prefs, but maybe not by enough to make the top two. Labor have won on primary votes so it’s just bookkeeping there.
There’s one booth left which hasn’t even reported primary votes. Muradup, in Roe – some dot on the map near Kojonup which had 92 formal votes in 2021. It won’t change the result, but it’s a weird one to be missing. Usually tiny rural booths like this report by 7pm on election night.
The WAEC website lists polling places – Muradup is shown as “closed” with voters advised to vote at their nearest polling place.
There are for me – do you just mean for TCP?
Abc website looks like they the snails are counting votes today -sat -Pilbara labor guys lead after 500 postals cut.
There’s actually been quite a bit of progress so far today, though Pilbara’s the only seat of interest. My projection of the Labor lead there is in from 1.4% to 0.9%. Thursday was the cut-off for the arrival of late postals so I suspect they spent yesterday getting those in order before counting them.
Murray Wellington wow the libs have won a seat says Abc .6 seats now lower house.
6 in doubt now overall.
PILBARA
You’d have thought that with first prefs of:
Lib + Nat + ON + SFF = 53%
and
Lab + Green + Leg. Can. = 47%
It should be enough for the Coalition to win, but these things are never that simple.
And of course, the party with by far the most 1st prefs has a distinct advantage as there’s always significant leakage of votes even from relatively aligned parties.
Swings required for LNP to win next time (based on projected 2PP votes as they are right now):
0-5% (i.e. up to 10% margin):
Bateman, Collie-Preston, Dawesville, Kalamunda, Kalgoorlie, Kingsley, Pilbara, Riverton, Scarborough, South Perth,
5-10%:
Bicton, Bunbury, Darling Range, Forrestfield, Fremantle??*, Jandacot, Joondalup, Mandurah, Swan Hills,
*complicated by Independent, although Libs won it in 2017
Very neatly, we don’t need to go further in terms of swing. Winning 18 out of the above 19 would give the Coalition the barest of majorities with 30/59 seats combined.
No doubt the reality in this hypothesis would be LNP winning some lower hanging fruit and failing to take some of the above.
Do seats like Rockingham (biggest swing of the election at 26.5%), Secret Harbour and Wanneroo have another above average swing in them, or were there above average swings this time due to reasons other than demographic changes? (sort of a rhetorical question, but happy to see any answers from those with local knowledge)
If Lab and LNP ended next election on exactly 50-50% in TCP and swing was uniform everywhere, then Lab would still win 33-26 in seats (ignoring any surges from Green or Indy), indicating further that the Coalition has their work cut out to get back into government in this state.
@BTSays
Libs have never won Fremantle. The Greens won it at a byelection once, which is the only time the ALP haven’t won it. I’d guess the 2PP for the Libs to win it in ’29 would be more like a 25% swing – it would more likely fall to a Green or Indy who’d prop up the ALP ahead of the Libs.,
I would expect that the size of the swing in Rockingham would be the replacement in the seat of McGowan with an ex-staffer (who didn’t seem particularly popular), so I’d be shocked to see another huge swing there. It started at a ridiculous 87% on 2PP, but that was with McGowan himself on the ballot.
Of all those other seats, I wouldn’t be shocked if the ALP continue to hold them against a swing if they’ve got reasonable local members. As a resident of Scarborough, I’d say that Stuart Aubrey seems to be a member with solid local focus (certainly compared to Liza Harvey) and it wouldn’t shock me if he managed to hold the seat again in 2029 – talking four years in advance of course, so it’s completely pie in the sky.
A good example of this was the ALP somehow holding Albany of all seats from 2001 until this election with a really good local member – even in 2013. And eight years is time to build up that recognition.
(on the other hand, the ALP certainly wouldn’t want any retirements to jeapordise their standing in quite a few seats)