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Saturday
Tim Wilson has finished the preference distribution in Goldstein 260 votes ahead of Zoe Daniel, after a series of late revisions that drove first drove his lead up yesterday from 129 to 444, before today cutting it back to 170 and then settling on the final margin. These convulsions presumably loom large in the request Daniel has submitted for a recount, but experience suggests the AEC will stand by the 100-vote threshold it set in place in 2008.
Friday
Yet another twist in the saga of Bradfield, which ended with Gisele Kapterian taking the lead at the last and finishing the scrutiny with an eight-vote lead over Nicolette Boele. The Australian Electoral Commission promptly confirmed that this would be subject to a recount, as it does automatically when the margin is inside 100 votes, which will begin on Monday and is “expected to take up to two weeks”. Twenty-two out of Kapterian’s 48-vote gain during the preference distribution came with a second correction from the St Ives pre-poll centre, which had put Kapterian in the hunt the Monday after the election with the addition of hitherto unreported votes to its tally, booting her by 440 votes. The issue this time was apparently a transpositional error in the record of preference flows, causing 11 votes to shift from Boele to Kapterian.
The rest of the movement largely resulted from ballots previously admitted to the count being deemed informal, a process that favoured Kapterian because only the third or so of the vote that was cast for excluded candidates was under consideration, around two-thirds of which went to Boele as preferences. Boele’s hope lies in the recount revisiting the two-thirds of the vote that was cast for the two leading candidates, where the same dynamic is likely to work against Kapterian, who has 38.1% of the primary vote to Boele’s 27.0%. If these votes are excluded in roughly the same proportions as those of the other candidates during the preference distribution (during which Labor lost 23 votes, the Greens 14, One Nation 8, independent Andy Yin 7 and the Libertarians 6), Kapterian will lose about 65 votes to Boele’s 45. The distinctions are fine enough that clearly nothing can be said with certainty – and even if Boele were to emerge with the slender lead implied, there would be a strong chance of a court finding enough routine irregularities to void the result and force a by-election.
In Calwell today, the preferences of independent Joseph Youhana were excluded, nearly 60% of them favouring independent Carly Moore, pushing her well clear of the Liberals into second place. Labor holds a lead of 36.6% to 25.6% that Moore needs to chase down with the successive exclusions of the Greens and the Liberals, on 16.7% and 21.2%, which scrutineers’ reports related through the media suggest is unlikely to happen. Also today, whatever lingering hope there may have been for Zoe Daniel in Goldstein was snuffed out by dramatic revisions that blew Tim Wilson’s lead out from 129 to 444.
12.30pm. My assessment of last evening was evidently too sanguine with respect to Nicolette Boele, whose margin is dropping fast – now down to five votes. Almost all of the correction so far today is down to the St Ives pre-poll centre – the same one whose result was dramatically revised in the Liberals’ favour in the early stages of the check count – where 11 votes have been shifted from Boele to Kapterian. The broader dynamic is that the distribution of Labor preferences and their strong flow to Boele means that votes successfully being contested on grounds of formality are mostly for her.
Thursday
The Calwell preference distribution turned up its first real surprise with the exclusion of independent Sam Moslih, with fully 61.3% of the distribution going to the Greens ahead of the other remaining contenders, namely Labor, Liberal and independents Carly Moore and Joseph Youhana. This pushes the Greens ahead of Youhana, who will be the next candidate excluded. Kevin Bonham suggests this reflects a strong influence of Moslih’s how-to-vote card and/or that of Muslim Votes Matter, which is good news for Labor because both favoured Basem Abdo over Moore. Moore presently holds a 17.5% to 15.3% lead over the Greens, which seems unlikely to be closed with the exclusion of Youhana, given he favoured Moore on his how-to-vote card and the general tendency of independent votes to favour other independents. Assuming that’s so, we are now likely to see Greens preferences push Moore ahead of the Liberals, whose preferences will then produce a final result between Labor and Moore. Moore will need around 67.5% of the preferences shortly to be distributed from Youhana, the Greens and the Liberals.
Proceedings today in Bradfield wore Nicolette Boele’s lead down from 41 votes to 28, with three added to Gisele Kapterian’s tally and ten subtracted from Boele’s. A source familiar with the matter in comments indicates we should now be a good way into the last phase, namely the distribution following the exclusion of Labor with only Boele and Kapterian left standing. If the apparent pattern of movement in favour of Kapterian looks unlikely to eliminate the margin altogether, it does remove whatever doubt there may have been that the it will fall inside the 100-vote threshold for an automatic recount.
Wednesday
Calwell proceeded today through to the eighth count, leaving a remaining field of Labor, Liberal, the Greens and three independents. Carly Moore’s lead over the other independents has widened, and seems likely to be maintained through the imminent exclusions of the Greens and two other independents, together with the elimination of the current 18.5% to 16.4% gap between the Liberal candidate and Moore. Between now and the final count, Moore would need two-thirds of the preferences to overtake Labor.
Today’s preference distributions added 15 to the informal counts in both Bradfield and Goldstein, respectively cutting Nicolette Boele’s lead by four to 41 and increasing Tim Wilson’s lead by one to 129.
Tuesday
End of counting. We’re now six counts into Calwell, with another six exclusions to come. Candidates accounting for 9.1% of the primary vote have now been excluded, with results that probably don’t tell us all that much. Next out will be Legalise Cannabis and One Nation, who will perhaps go relatively heavily to established parties rather than independents, followed by Sam Moslih, whose how-to-vote card had Labor higher than the remaining independents. Most likely, the issue will then be whether preferences from Joseph Youhana, the Greens and the Liberals favour Moore enough to get her ahead of Basem Abdo.
Revisions arising from the preference distribution in Bradfield today have added 11 to the informal vote tally, costing Gisele Kapterian eight votes and Nicolette Boele two, increasing the latter’s lead from 39 to 45.
5pm. The Goldstein count has ended with Tim Wilson up by 128 votes. The AEC relates that the votes still in the system as awaiting processing have Senate ballot papers only. The preference distribution will now proceed, to be followed only by an automatic recount if the margin comes in below 100, though the discretion remains to conduct one even if it doesn’t. Arguments have been made that the population has increased since the 100-vote threshold was established about 15 years ago.
2.30pm. The Australian Electoral Commission will helpfully be publishing updates from Calwell in the form of progress preference distribution results that will presumably be updated with each exclusion. These are a bit hard to read, so I offer the following summary below, showing us up to count four out of twelve. This looks promising for independent Carly Moore with respect to her prospects of making the final count, with 21.5% of the preferences from the first three exclusions having gone to her. However, the marginal nature of the candidates excluded so far is such that these figures are unlikely to offer much insight as to whether Labor will receive enough preferences to get from their 30.5% primary vote to 50% at the final count. If it is Moore who comes second, she will need about two-third of preferences (and Labor one-third) from all other candidates.
Monday
The last batches of votes in Bradfield kept true to the contest’s epic form, with independent Nicolette Boele taking the lead at the last to end the scrutiny 39 votes ahead. But it doesn’t end there: the formal distribution of preferences will proceed throughout this week, almost certainly to be followed by the recount that proceeds automatically when the margin is inside 100 votes, so Liberal candidate Gisele Kapterian has at least some hope that proceedings turn up errors substantial enough to reverse the result. Kapterian began the day 43 votes ahead, then moved to 50 ahead when absents broke 29-22 her way. Boele’s breakthrough came when postals broke fully 125-56 her way, consolidated when declaration pre-polls favoured her 111-90.
A recent recount precedent missing from yesterday’s summary was Clive Palmer’s win in Fairfax in 2013: at 36, his margin on the indicative two-candidate count was very close to Boele’s, but it was reduced to seven during the preference distribution and then inflated to 53 on the recount. An informed source in comments notes that recounts have become less prone to produce changes since the initial recheck became a routine part of the procedure in 1984, and court rulings established legal precedents about formality, most notably in relation to the seat of McEwen in 2007.
In Goldstein, Tim Wilson’s lead is down from 254 to 206 after postals broke 94-60 and absents 76-62 to Zoe Daniel. The AEC records 332 envelopes awaiting processing, of which Daniel would need two-thirds to land in her column to get to automatic recount territory.
Sunday
With the deadline for the arrival of late postals having passed on Friday, there are two seats that can still be regarded as in doubt, barring extraordinary late developments. One is Bradfield, where today’s counting will account for 260 declaration pre-polls, 104 postals and 66 absents (UPDATE: Outstanding postals revised up to 191). Some of these will be deemed invalid and a handful will be informal, but as many as 380 will be added to a tally on which independent Nicolette Boele trails Liberal candidate Gisele Kapterian by 43 votes.
The counting of these votes will be followed immediately by a full distribution of preferences. Should the margin land inside 100, as seems extremely likely, this will be followed by an automatic recount. A review conducted for the Australian Electoral Commission in 2014 helpfully reviews the history of recounts, which provides at least some level of information on how much the dial was moved by 11 recounts going back to 1958 (see pages 24 and the very last page). A recount for Bass in 1998 was something of an outlier in increasing Labor’s winning margin from 16 to 78. Including the one recount conducted since – for Herbert in 2016, which increased Labor’s margin from 8 to 35 – a typical recount seems to make about 20 votes’ difference to the final result.
A recount would seem to be the only remaining chance for Zoe Daniel in Goldstein, who trails Liberal candidate Tim Wilson by 206 votes with 332 remaining to be processed: 172 declaration pre-polls, 100 postals and 39 absents, plus 21 provisionals that may all be disallowed. Even getting to the 100-vote threshold requires stretching the arithmetic here, but the returning officer can use their discretion to require a recount even if the threshold isn’t reached.
The other unknown is the seat of Calwell, which I have not been making the effort to follow on a blow-by-blow basis, since the point at issue is that there’s no way of knowing which out of as many as four candidates will make the final count along with Labor. The only thing that can be said for sure is that Labor win the seat if it’s the Liberal candidate, but it’s quite a bit more likely to be an independent. Such questions can only be answered by a full distribution of preferences. With only 154 votes remaining to be processed, this will presumably begin later today.
Then there’s the Senate, where the pressing of the button on the final results is still as much as a fortnight away. I have a post below with my latest updated assessments on how that is likely to play out.
It was hardly a prediction. More a report from someone watching. The results have to typed into a computer. So there is a bit of time between the count finishing and the numbers ending up on the website.
Also the website is only updated every 15 minutes.
Yep Boele is now ahead by 19.
Note that even if Boele maintains that lead, a recount has a significant chance of reversing it.
Rob Mitchell (who eventually won the seat in 2010) won the initial count in McEwen in 2007 but it was overturned on a recount by 17 votes.
Amazing stuff. And also note Julian Leeser, a moderate Liberal, only won Berowra (Philip Ruddock’s old seat) by 1.5% against LABOR, and might not have won if a Teal was his main opponent. Wow.
Boele up by 19? Date to dream.
wow – part of the reason that Bradfield bunch of postals was so good for Boele was because it had a 31% Labor primary, Boele only 26%. Liberal must have been <30% one would think….
Labor's postals had only been 20% primary until then 20%
High Street
And we will also know soon if Labor’s tactical voting was another master stroke or an epic miscalculation.
What is the margin cut off at which point SEC won’t accept recount?
Peak Teals will be seen if the Liberals roll Sussan Ley for no reason…
Ven @ #55 Monday, May 19th, 2025 – 3:07 pm
It’s generally accepted as 100 votes, but challenges can still be made by the losing candidates above that, but they’d only succeed if they have a compelling reason for it.
True Believer
The coming Distribution of Preferences may tell us something about how the minor candidate preferences flow b/w Liberal and Labor, especially Andy Yin’s. We can safely assume the green preferences will be 80-85% to Labor. But it the Boele vote that will be the main factor.
Did Gisele Kapterian get a vote in the Liberal Party leadership ballot? And if so, did she vote for Sussan Ley?
Ley won by 4 votes, 3 of which are departing Senators, and maybe one other vote is not even going to be in Parliament????
@ Timmy,
Yes, and yes.
The really late postal votes are ones coming in from overseas, often from the more remote parts of the world. Therefore they are going to look different to the rest of postal votes.
The first ones come from older people within the electorate, the next lot come from elsewhere in Australia, then overseas votes from places where the mail comes quickly like America and Europe, then you get the votes from people in South America, Africa and central Asia.
Margin now 40 votes with 59 to go.
The AEC has counted a batch of Declaration Prepoll votes. Boele now leads by 40 votes, with 59 envelopes remaining to process.
Teal now 40 up!
Kirsdarke says:
Monday, May 19, 2025 at 3:22 pm
The AEC has counted a batch of Declaration Prepoll votes. Boele now leads by 40 votes, with 59 envelopes remaining to process.
中华人民共和国
I might get drunk – again.
AEC now showing Boele leading by 40 2PP.
Hilarity ensues.
Nathan says:
Monday, May 19, 2025 at 3:23 pm
Teal now 40 up!
中华人民共和国
Where’s the Pied Piper when you need him?
Bradfield – Batch of 201 PrePools dropped in TCP, Teal picks extends lead by another 21 votes to now be 40 ahead (got 55% of the batch), with the following to go:
– 12 Absent
– 45 Pre Poll
– 2 Postal
– 59 Total
Would not be surprised if these last 59 will end up invalid.
Upnorth – A Labor Partisansays: Monday, May 19, 2025 at 3:25 pm
Where’s the Pied Piper when you need him?
Not coming. 🙁 Teal wins the day, and should also win any recount at 40 up.
Even Nostradamus wouldn’t have predicted what was coming today in Bradfield.
Can we hope and pray for a second miracle?
So the LNP need 41 of the remaining 59 votes to win Bradfield (69.5%) when they have only been winning what, 44%? of the latest batches. That’s now miracle territory.
Bradfield, all but 2 of the remaining have now been dropped into “disallowed”
Now it looks like all envelopes remaining other than 2 postal votes have been moved to the “Ballot Papers Disallowed” category.
I imagine there’s some animated arguments currently between scrutineers and AEC workers about those last 2 postal votes.
Other than that, the recount in Bradfield awaits.
Timmy says:
Monday, May 19, 2025 at 3:34 pm
Even Nostradamus wouldn’t have predicted what was coming today in Bradfield.
Can we hope and pray for a second miracle?
中华人民共和国
332 left in Goldstein….stranger things have happened.
King OMalleysays:
Monday, May 19, 2025 at 3:36 pm
So the LNP need 41 of the remaining 59 votes to win Bradfield (69.5%) when they have only been winning what, 44%? of the latest batches. That’s now miracle territory.
________________________
Try 50 of 59 if all are valid…
Irony alert:
‘boele’ is dutch for ‘lots’.
Is a disallowed vote distinct from an informal vote?
I believe an informal vote is still valid, it just doesn’t formally credit to any candidate, but it does go toward the informal total. Whereas a disallowed ballot paper is formally invalid?
AEC now saying 2 Postals left in Bradfield – how will they protect the voters privacy if the votes are counted and both vote the same way. Boele still 40 ahead.
You just know if Kapterian loses Taylor will call for a re-ballot of the leadership, only to discover she voted for him.
This really would be a win for the True Believers
Timmy @ #76 Monday, May 19th, 2025 – 3:43 pm
I’m not sure, but I think it’s distinct from “Envelopes rejected at preliminary scrutiny” in that they may have passed the first check, but a second check from AEC workers and scrutineers determined they were in fact invalid, probably from irregularities on the voter roll or such like that.
True Believer says:
Monday, May 19, 2025 at 3:47 pm
This really would be a win for the True Believers
中华人民共和国
Might have been “hairdressergate” that got Boele across the line – got her name out amongst the punters.
An even 50 would be nice and neat. As in Labor 93, LNP 43.
Looks like an independent will have to win in Calwell to keep it neat.
And it would be good to give Labor a little kick too.
Assumption on the 43 is we have to suffer Tim Wilson.
A recount in Bradfield looks probable, but recounts are less likely to change a result than was the case 50 years ago. Up until the 1980s, votes counted at the polling places weren’t rechecked by AEC divisional staff as a matter of course, and the only ones looked at again were those of candidates excluded during a preference distribution. That changed in the 1980s, and there is now a “fresh scrutiny”done of all votes counted at polling places: that’s what took up much of last week. So a recount these days is really a second check, and errors found there are ones for some reason not picked up at the fresh scrutiny. In addition, the AEC now has much more detailed guidelines about informality, backed up by legal precedents, than was the case in the past, so one might expect that the informal vote won’t change that much as a result of a recount. That having been said, there are always going to be some ballot papers where there may be arguments about whether the writing is clear or indistinct.
More seats formally declared. Braddon (Tas), Deakin (Vic), Mitchell (NSW) and Kingston (SA) (which was declared on Friday).
Up north
This really would be a win for the True Believers
中华人民共和国
Might have been “hairdressergate” that got Boele across the line – got her name out amongst the punters
As the late, great PT Barnum said:
“I don’t give a f*ck what they print about me, as long as they spell my name right.”
And the wet spinnaker can make some serious knots when the wind is blowing in the right direction.
The underlying desire – amongst the globally scattered voters in the end – was to remind the Liberal Party than we don’t want to come back to a country with any semblance of Trumpism.
Bowlers is the provisional winner in Bradfield by 40 votes. An automatic recount.
The Oz
“Climate-200 backed independent Nicolette Boele, has taken a 40 vote lead in the battle for Bradfield on Sydney’s north-shore with the final pre-poll votes counted by the AEC today.
Despite the teal challenger moving ahead with no votes left to count, the AEC will almost certainly conduct a full-recount meaning an official result may not happen until next month.
Despite a significant skew of postal votes propelling Liberal candidate Gisele Kapterian into the lead last week, declaration pre-poll votes now counted broke in favour of Ms Boele who now holds a wafer-thin lead.
Sky News have called the seat an independent gain with the caveat of a likely recount which could potentially see the Liberals regain their lead. “
Disallowed are votes where the envelope has not meet the criteria to be counted. They are disallowed for a variety of reasons including failing to be signed by the voter. But the late ones are mostly disallowed because the postmark is from a date post the election.
Arkysays:
Monday, May 19, 2025 at 2:39 pm
@kevin Hewitson:
“Amongst all the postulation on the the voting system, I haven’t seen any comments on the number of House of Representatives seats.
The Standing Committee report following the last election noted the we need about 216 members to get back to one person, one vote.”
I was going to say straight up to 216 in one go is too much, but then I imagined how much of a pain it would be to add say 30 now and 30 in another 3 elections.
Maybe they should just add 50 seats in one go, legislate to do it in 2 elections’ time and get the AEC cracking on how the new map would work, with plenty of time for objections processes etc.
– – – – – – – – – – – – – – –
The number of HoR seats is legally derived from the number of senate seats. There’s some maths fudging involved, but broadly, HoR seats = 2 x (senators from the states). The exact number of HoR seats in any election comes down to the AECs calculation of state quotas, rounding of fractions in each state and how many seats territories qualify for.
216 HoR seats would require the senate to be expanded to 108 state-elected members, increasing from 12 per state to 18. That might also see an increase in the territories from 2 seats each to 3, but that is not necessarily the case. In a normal half senate election, this would drop quotas from ~14% to 10% (and if the territories also increased, from 33% to 25% for them). No great obstacle, just something to keep in mind.
FWIW, a 50% increase (as is implied here) is not unprecedented.
The 1949 expansion saw senate seats rise from 6 to 10 per state and the house grow by 48 seats (from 75 to 123, a 64% increase). For comparison purposes, the 1984 expansion saw senate seats rise from 10 to 12 per state and the house grow by 24 seats (to 148).
Boele has been declared the provisional winner in Bradfield. Sky might have egg on its face.
Is Bradfield 2025 the first seat Antony Green has called wrong, not once, but twice?!
The ABC computer had it up as an IND gain at the end of election night, and through Antony hesitated over it, he predicted Boele to finish on 52%. The last Monday morning he very oddly called it for the Liberals. I hope the Liberal Party National Director didn’t apply any pressure on that call….
Well, there’s some good news for the Coalition today at least, all remaining votes have been counted in Longman and the LNP remains ahead by 307 votes.
I wonder if James McGrath will say that we need to wait until the last two votes are counted in Bradfield before he reaches a conclusion.
@High Street:
How could they? Green’s already set to retire; more importantly, by the time Green changed his call, the election was done & dusted – flipping Bradfield would change bugger-all of substance. I’m usually eager to believe the worst of the COALition, but let’s not dig up the tinfoil hats yet. More likely, the weekend counting (esp Sun 4/05) favoured Kapterian by enough that Green expected a continuation of the same – whereas in reality, those votes turned out to be atypical (and over-friendly to Kapterian), causing Green/his algorithm to reassess and call Bradfield in Kapterian’s favour.
@Historic Election:
With such a narrow margin for the vote, I have zero problem with an automatic recount. The certainty of accuracy is worth the marginal extra cost, when we’re talking about the integrity of our electoral system. If you want to see a country which distrusts same, look over at the USA. The GOP spent 4 years raising a song & dance about Biden’s 2020 win for partisan gain; I do not want to see that happen here!
If Ms Boele survives a recount and any court challenges, the number of elected independents in the Parliament will be a record, notwithstanding the loss of Goldstein. The contingent will include all others who won in 2022, plus Ms Boele in Bradfield and Mr Gee in Calare.
True Believer @ #81 Monday, May 19th, 2025 – 3:47 pm
True Boelevers you might say.
B. S. Fairman at 4:04 pm
“Disallowed are votes where the envelope has not meet the criteria to be counted. They are disallowed for a variety of reasons including failing to be signed by the voter. But the late ones are mostly disallowed because the postmark is from a date post the election.”
I think the cases you mention would fall into a different category, “Envelopes rejected at preliminary scrutiny”. I’m pretty sure “Ballot papers disallowed” covers other forms of error. Some voters, for example, might put a how to vote card into the envelope, instead of a ballot paper.