Federal election live

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Live commentary

8.30pm. Just popping in to say my results system seems to be working well, and if you’re finding it of value, perhaps you might consider making a contribution through the “become a supporter” buttons at the top of the site or the bottom of each post.

6.21pm. My system has successfully processed the first booth, which is the CBD pre-poll result for Fowler.

Preview

Polls have closed on the eastern seaboard, so welcome to the the live thread for discussion of the results for tonight’s federal election. I will be doing honest work this evening in the data room at the Nine Network (on which Ally Langdon, Peter Overton, Charles Croucher, Andrew Probyn and Liz Daniels will be joined by Chris Bowen, Bridget McKenzie, Katy Gallagher and Christopher Pyne), so I won’t be in a position to provide live commentary, though I may sneak in the odd explainer about technical aspects of the count and things that are going on with my live results.

On that front, the link above will take you to one of two entry platforms, the other of which is a map display that will colour in as results are reported to reflect who the system deems to be ahead or to have won, respectively indicated with a lighter or darker shade. Scroll over an electorate on the map and you’ll a window with a two-party pie chart and other essentials of the result. Click and the results page for the seat will be revealed, featuring progress totals, projections, probability estimates, a table recording votes and swings for each booth and, if you click on the button at the bottom, a booth results display map. The results system is based on a three-candidate model that hopefully had the bugs ironed out of it when it had a run at the Western Australian election in March. This will prove especially useful in Macnamara, the Greens seats in Brisbane and possibly one or two other places I can’t presently foresee.

The AEC is conducting Labor versus Greens counts in Grayndler, Sydney, Cooper, Wills and Canberra; LNP versus Greens in Brisbane, Griffith and Ryan; Greens versus Liberal in Melbourne; Liberal versus independent in Warringah (Zali Steggall), Wentworth (Allegra Spender), Mackellar (Sophie Scamps), Goldstein (Zoe Daniel), Kooyong (Monique Ryan), Indi (Helen Haines), Bradfield (Nicolette Boele), Cowper (Caz Heise) and Wannon (Alex Dyson); LNP versus independent (Kate Hook) in Groom; Nationals versus independent (Andrew Gee) in Calare; Labor versus independent in Fowler (Dai Le) and Clark (Andrew Wilkie); LNP versus One Nation in Maranoa; Bob Katter versus LNP in Kennedy. The information for South Australia, the Northern Territory and Western Australia will be provided when voting closes there.

If the choices in the Greens seats in Brisbane can be faulted for not including Labor where it seems possible or even likely (in the case of the seat of Brisbane) they will win, the results will in fact likely come down to whether Labor makes the final count, on which a two-candidate count would offer no guidance no matter who was chosen. This point can be illustrated with reference to Macnamara, where this evening’s Labor-versus-Liberal count is unlikely to tell us much: barring a better-than-expected result for the Liberals, Labor should win if they make the final count, and the Greens should win if they don’t. We may see a repeat of the ad hoc three-candidate counts that the AEC conducted for some of these seats after the 2022 election in the days to come. It is here that the Poll Bludger results feature comes into its own, as it integrates probability estimates for who makes the final count and what chance they have when the get there. However, this will of necessity be based on pre-determined estimates of preference flows unless and until three-candidate counts are conducted.

Now for some high wonk factor detail about the specifics of the count and the projection of the results. The Australian Electoral Commission relieves those of us in the election industry of the burden of producing “historic” data, namely estimates of how each polling place or vote type voted at the last election, a matter complicated by changes in locations and electoral boundaries. It is on this basis that swings can be calculated on a like-for-like basis, and a determination made as to whether they are big enough to cause the seat to change hands. The challenge it has faced on this occasion has been greater than ever because of the unprecedented number of independents who won seats last time, and the fact that nearly all of them were in states where redistributions have occurred. This means most of them are running in areas where they weren’t on the ballot paper last time, meaning there is no good way of determining their “historic” vote in these areas.

In a couple of cases, the AEC’s processes have led it to data that is of little value. The most glaring case involves Wills and Cooper: inner Melbourne seats where the threat to Labor from the Greens has intensified with the addition of territory from the seat of Melbourne. For reasons too arcane to go into, the AEC credits Labor with respective margins here of 9.0% and 8.9%, which makes little account of Greens strength in the newly added areas (my own determinations have it at 4.2% and 7.8%). Presumably to keep the historic two-candidate totals at this level, the AEC has produced two-candidate histories in booths around Carlton North and Fitzroy North that are wildly out of line with how people actually vote there. To pick one example: the Greens are allocated 30.4% in the Merri booth in Wills, where Adam Bandt got 65.9% in 2022. By contrast, the primary vote history has the Greens at a sensible 57.6% in this booth, suggesting the mathematical impossibility of them losing votes after preferences. If such booths are the first to report in these seats, the AEC’s early projection for the Greens in these seats will be massively inflated.

Independent incumbents, who in every case are teals, have been allocated zero primary votes in areas that were not in their electorates in 2022, meaning they will be credited with swings in these booths equal to the entirety of their vote. This presents my results system with a problem, as primary vote swings are a crucial element in how the final result is projected. If the AEC cannot be faulted for not crediting independents with invented numbers, they have in effect done so on two-candidate preferred – in this case with mostly plausible results. The AEC will use this data to produce useful swings and projections of its own based entirely on the two-candidate count. But it doesn’t do me any good, because my system is geared to make use of the primary vote, which gets counted first and is thus ahead of the curve.

There is one independent seat where I believe the AEC’s two-candidate determinations in areas now to the electorate will be of as little value as those noted for Wills and Cooper, namely Wentworth. In December, the AEC published its estimated margins for redistributed independent seats, which you can read more about here. The historic booth data matches these margins in every case except Wentworth, where it seems the previously published estimate of a 0.6% margin for Allegra Spender had it the wrong way around. The historic booth data in fact provides for a Liberal margin of 0.6% in this seat, such that Spender will need to record a swing in her favour to be projected as winning. I do wonder though if something might have gone awry in the AEC’s calculations, as its historic two-candidate numbers weigh heavily against Spender in such Liberal-unfriendly areas as Woolloomooloo and Kings Cross. So here too, the AEC’s early projections will be unreliable – specifically, heavily weighted towards Spender – if these booths happen to be among the first to report.

My approach to deal with these problems, which I can only hope won’t run into any major bugs, involves abandoning my usual effort to project preference flows based on booth matching, and – in the case of the independent-held seats – also to make no effort to project the primary vote. The numbers in both cases will simply be based on whatever the progress count happens to be. There are two independent seats whose newly acquired areas aren’t big enough for me to consider any of this a problem, namely Fowler (which gains a part of the suburb of Weatherill Park) and Wannon (which gains rural territory at the eastern end of the electorate).

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