Western Australian election: late counting resolution

Click here for full display of Western Australian state election results.

The lower house count for the Western Australian election has concluded, a process that many felt took rather too long. For this and other reasons related to the election process, former Governor Malcolm McCusker has been commissioned to conduct an inquiry.

Seven seats had non-standard results at the final preference count: Fremantle, where Labor’s Simone McGurk ultimately held out against independent Kate Hulett (who will now run for the federal seat of Fremantle) by 0.8%; Cottesloe, where Liberal candidate Sandra Brewer prevailed over teal independent Rachel Horncastle by 5.6%; Bibra Lake, the one seat where the Greens made the final count, falling 14.2% short against Labor; Bassendean, where Labor member Dave Kelly won by 15.7% over independent Renee McLennan; Thornlie, where Labor’s Colleen Egan won by 14.0% over independent Kevin McDonald; and two where the Nationals won the final count ahead of the Liberals. The latter were Mid-West, where Nationals leader Shane Love won by 13.7% over Liberal member Merome Beard, the two having gone head-to-head after the abolition of their respective seats of Moore and North West Central; and Roe, where Nationals member Peter Rundle scored a 25.1% margin over a Liberal rival. The 57.1-42.9 statewide two-party preferred shown on my results page relies on preference estimates for these seven seats.

That still leaves the upper house, the count for which, the Western Australian Electoral Commission informs us, is “on track for completion next week”. Three out of the 37 seats can be considered in doubt, with the remainder to go Labor 15, Liberal 10, Greens four, Nationals two, and one each for One Nation, Legalise Cannabis and Australian Christians. Discerning how the last three seats will go is made extremely difficult by the fact that only above-the-line votes are recorded in the currently published result: below-the-line votes are subject only to a data entry process that will be incorporated into the final result when the button is pressed and the preference distribution calculated. If an exercise by Antony Green that assumes below-the-line votes will behave similarly to 2021 lands on the mark, those in contention for the last three seats will be a fifth Green, the second candidate on the One Nation ticket, independent Sophie Moermond, and the lead candidates of Animal Justice and Sustainable Australia. The Liberals would presumably be hoping they will do better than the exercise suggests and remain in the hunt for an eleventh seat.

Another peculiar fact to emerge from the WAEC media release: one Victoria Helps is about to become a member of the Legislative Council for six weeks, presumably representing Labor. This is because of the chamber’s curious feature of having terms fixed to begin and end in late May, and a vacancy having been created by Stephen Pratt’s move to the lower house seat of Jandakot at the election. Pratt’s vacancy in South Metropolitan region was duly filled on a countback by Helps, who was the next candidate along on the Labor ticket in the region in 2021. Helps was not a candidate at the March 8 election, and her parliamentary career will be duly short-lived.

Author: William Bowe

William Bowe is a Perth-based election analyst and occasional teacher of political science. His blog, The Poll Bludger, has existed in one form or another since 2004, and is one of the most heavily trafficked websites on Australian politics. View all posts by William Bowe