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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’s looking to me like it’s not even going to be close in the end. I could see a scenario where greens prefs get Labor close to 50%, then libs split 50/50.
Wow the creep of a hairdresser is only 7 votes up!
Trend is not her friend as i said yesterday !!
Agree Larwood.
It’s realistic that Labor will get 60% of the Greens’ exclusion. That would put them around 47% and require Moore to get close to 90% of the Liberal exclusion.
Even if Labor only get 50% of the Greens’ exclusion (I’d guess that’s a bare minimum) they’ll be around 45% and Moore will need close to 80% of the Liberal exclusion.
My prediction is after the next exclusion it will be around Labor 47, Moore 30, Liberal 23.
And then Moore might get around 75% of the Liberal exclusion, which would result in about a 53-47 Labor 2CP.
Does anyone know whether the Liberal’s HTV in Calwell preferenced Moore above the Labor candidate?
@TPOF: Yep they put Moore 4th, a few spots above Labor.
Trent says:
Friday, May 23, 2025 at 11:57 am
@TPOF: Yep they put Moore 4th, a few spots above Labor.
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Thanks. Should be interesting from here in.
Labor will be on closer to 48 i reckon after the next exclusion and will end up around 53
I will be beyond shocked if Labor is on anything lower than 46.5 and obviously even from there Moore has no chance
Boele’s count is dropping, Kapterian staying the same – down to 5 in front.
Nicolette Boele leads by 5 votes. Abc now.
She will be behind if the trend continues.
Her vote is getting a haircut!
This count feels so tight and good in Bradfield and I didn’t even have sex with it.
Maybe a victory for PP after all. …..now now everyone dont pooh pooh this possible achievement. The Liberals MAY hold BRADFIELD!!
Re Bradfield – didn’t WB or someone say they expect the margin to narrow then blow back out to about where it started through the pref distribution process ?
In any case – Boele is having a short back and sides bowl cut atm lol.
Not me.
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Re Bradfield – didn’t WB or someone say they expect the margin to narrow then blow back out to about where it started through the pref distribution process ?
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Dr Bonham, IIRC
I’ve been down to Albury this week to help the MIL clean out her old house and I get back to see weird stuff:
– Bradfield margin down to 4
– Libs and Nats having a spat.
what else did I miss?
From Dr Bohham’s blog:
The distribution of preferences process formally excludes candidates starting from the candidate in last place, and moving each candidate’s ballots to the next candidate in line as they are excluded. During this process all these moved ballots are checked again. It’s common for the candidate who is more dependent on preferences (in this case Boele) to drop back a little in this process, only to make up for it when the full recount is held.
More Dr Bonham
St Ives PPVC booth strikes again in Bradfield, this was the booth where Kapterian gained 440 because count was incomplete earlier, now gains another 22 (11 votes switched from Boele). Current margin Boele leads by 4.
For those who don’t know Sydney, St Ives – or S’nives as the locals call it – is the wealthiest postcode not on Sydney Harbour. Lots of South Africans, old style mansions and you can send the kids to Masada College at $35k a year.
Liberals used to get 80+ primaries in St Ives. The fact that they only got 50% here in 2025 is emblematic of what has happened to the Liberal heartland.
Meanwhile Woolworths stores from Willoughby to Wahroonga have reported wild scenes of shelves stripped bare of popcorn.
The Bradfield count is excruciating. But knowing the votes just being counted are from S’nives means I still have some hope!
All the big PPVC’s seem to have now posted their full TCP, but there is still 20 odd booths to go. Anyone know when the Postals etc got through the full TCP process?
Youhana prefs now distributed, and as suggested, broke heavily to Moore, catapulting her into outright second – current scores Abdo ALP – 36.59; Moore (Ind) – 25.56 Ghani (LIB) – 21.20 Garcha (GRN) – 16.65. Garcha will be the next leader exclusion, and the good doctor Bonham estimates that if they go 50/50, then Moore would need about 76% of Lib prefs. Of course, the majority of those Green votes are actually prefs from someone else, so anyone’s guess where they’ll go.
You’d put your money on Kapterian at this point in Bradfield!
I think Labor will win in Calwell too, so 94 seats in total in the House of Reps.
Great work William and Kevin Bonham and Antony Green and all the regulars in this thread, a way better and more civil discussion than you get in the open threads.
And I’m up for a beer or two any time with you lads, doesn’t matter what your political stripes are.
Democracy Sausagesays: Friday, May 23, 2025 at 1:41 pm
You’d put your money on Kapterian at this point in Bradfield!
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I did prior to election night. Not so confident now!
+1 of the “way better and more civil discussion”.
Democracy Sausage says:
Friday, May 23, 2025 at 1:41 pm
You’d put your money on Kapterian at this point in Bradfield!
I think Labor will win in Calwell too, so 94 seats in total in the House of Reps.
Great work William and Kevin Bonham and Antony Green and all the regulars in this thread, a way better and more civil discussion than you get in the open threads.
中华人民共和国
I wonder if it is very close in Bradfield will Boele take it to the Court of Disputed Returns? Would she have the resources? A re run in Bradfield would be interesting.
Democracy Sausage — with admission of strong leftie bias, I would still favour Boele. I found Kevin Bonham’s argument, which I’ll term the “Fairfax Effect”, reasonably compelling. The question in my mind is if it’ll be enough.
https://kevinbonham.blogspot.com/2025/05/2025-late-postcount-and-expected.html
EDIT:
YaramahZ (post below mine): on the distribution, they’re basically rechecking votes that strongly favor Boele. Even random errors in these will tend to weaken that signal. I don’t know what the specific error types are, though. But this is why Kevin Bonham argues that the recount could swing it the other way, as far as I understand — since by that point it’s Kapterian-favouring votes that have been least checked.
So I’m a bit confused as to why Boele is losing these votes. I understand the clerical tabulation error. But are these votes being thrown out due to them being informal now, or were they miscounted earlier? And if considered informal, how would she be expected to gain votes on a recount, like what Dr Bonham implied? Would they then be re-argued and some then considered formal?
The problem with any gathering for beers may be geographic diversity! I think we pretty much cover all points.
It remains to be seen whether Dr Bonham’s observations about close contests come to fruition – the potential for Boele (as the candidate more dependent on preferences) to bounce back through the recount process. There is no doubt that the closer the margin the more scope there is for the election result to be voided by a court – for the simple reason that proof of errors is not enough – what also needs to be proved is that the outcome might have been different but for those errors. The greater the margin, the harder it is to get over the second hurdle. These matters need to be proved to the court with evidence.
It would be interesting to see if Labor would change their approach in Bradfield if it was voided and went to a byelection.
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It would be interesting to see if Labor would change their approach in Bradfield if it was voided and went to a byelection.
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You’d imagine there would be no ALP candidate in a byelection.
@ Nathan
Yeah, I doubt the ALP would contest Bradfield if it went to a by-election. Labor’s strategy at the next general election will be interesting, in this seat and others. Maybe they won’t run dead, especially if Kapterian wins
@aweirdnerd (she/her)
Thanks, that makes sense.
Labor is still better off with an Indy holding a seat like Bradfield than themselves.
A mild swing would see it be one of the first seats to fall where as teals could hold on even with a large swing and prevent a majority coalition government. They make it much harder for the coalition to successfully launch culture wars to effect as well
@Hugoaugogo, out of the 16.7% to be excluded from the Greens though, over 5% is from Moslih and I think the fact that Moslih’s preferences flowed over 61% to the Greens indicates there might be pretty a pretty solid follow-rate for the Moslih and/or Muslim Votes Matters HTVCs, both of which had Greens>Labor>Moore. At least, that 5.1% of the total vote that flowed from Moslih to Greens as per his HTVC is probably more likely to have followed the HTVC than other sources.
13.4% out of the 16.7% to be distributed from the Greens belongs to either Greens or Moslih primary votes, so I think there will be pretty strong preference flows to Labor out of that chunk. I can see Labor getting around 60% or so from that exclusion.
YaramahZ @ #376 Friday, May 23rd, 2025 – 1:51 pm
I imagine that there’s a lot more Liberal scrutineers in the Bradfield count at the moment than there was on the Election night, so they’re probably making much more challenges to ballots that went to Boele over Kapterian.
Trent – yes, I’d think so (though there’s really no way to know for sure until it happens). FWIW, AG is reporting scrutineers saying that Moslih’s prefs flow pretty strongly to Labor via the Greens, as per MVM HTV. If that comes to pass, it’s hard to see Labor losing the seat.
So, once again a big bias in the preference flows in Calwell. First 60% flowed to Greens from Moslih, and now 60% flowed to Moore from Youhana.
We can pretty confidently assume that Liberals won’t get enough flow from Greens to get them back into the 2CP, so we’re up to the point of looking at Labor vs Moore. But for a play at predicting flows, I’m going to try to predict how Greens will flow.
About half of the Greens votes (about 50.2%) have come from preference flows. Of those, likely about half came from Moslih votes, so let’s call it 70% from Greens and Moslih combined. Neither of those are likely to flow in a substantial amount to Liberals – let’s say 5%. They put Labor ahead of Moore, so let’s say 60% Labor, 35% Moore. For the other candidates, it’s a bit harder to predict. The two low independents can probably be ignored, anyway. Of the rest, the ones that put Liberal higher than Labor or Moore generally also put Liberal above Greens, so the HTV flow can be neglected. Most of the rest likely put Moore highest because they’re anti-Major voters. So I’m going to say 80% Moore, 10% Labor, 10% Liberal.
Combining these, you’d expect something like 48.5% to Moore, 45% to Labor, and 6.5% to Liberal.
With these numbers, the flow to Moore at Liberal exclusion would need to be about 73.5%.
But let’s look at the Moore vs Labor numbers, given what we know now. The preferences that have flowed to Liberals and Greens cover 12454 votes, while Greens had 7449 and Liberals had 14105. Moore was ahead of Labor on the HTV for most candidates, with the exception of Greens and Moslih. Moslih got 6158 votes. It’s hard to predict how things will ultimately flow, but I think a reasonable ballpark would be 75% to the higher candidate on the HTV (with the low independents, who I couldn’t find HTV cards for, taken as 50/50). Note that this seems to be consistent with the flow from Moslih to Greens, which was about 70-75% of Moslih’s vote, plus a small amount from others. It’s also not dramatically off for flow from Youhana to Moore.
That would get Moore to about 47.2% of 2CP. To get Moore over the line, she’d need it to be more like 30% from Greens/Moslih and 80% from the others (not counting the two low independents). I think that’s plausible once you account for anti-majors bias in how things flow from here.
In addition to the greens htvs putting Labor ahead of Moore, alot of green pvs go to labor 2nd regardless of position on the htv.
Indeed kevin Bonham is saying he has seen scrutineer samples with Labor getting over 60% ahead of Moore.
It seems very unlikely that Labor doesn’t get 11% from the Garcia exclusion. And then given 80% would be the top of what Moore could hope to get from the lib exclusion, we will end up north of 53% 2pp
What we’re seeing in Bradfield at the moment is the distribution following the exclusion of the Labor candidate. About two-thirds of these are preferences to Boele, so she’s losing two votes to formality challenges for every one of Kapterian’s. This dynamic is a lot slower than suggested by the St Ives PPVC correction, which involved 11 votes being shifted from Boele’s column to Kapterian’s — remove that from the equation and Kapterian has only gained two votes today. The likelihood is that such corrections as remain will continue to favour her, but we’re still only talking a handful of votes. Perhaps she’ll finish in front, perhaps not. But we’re very likely looking at a margin smaller than what typically gets shifted by a recount. For the reasons noted by Kevin Bonham, the recount is on balance more likely to favour Boele. But the distinctions involved are so fine that you certainly wouldn’t bet your house on it. And the probability is high that the margin will be close enough that a court challenge will establish that there were enough irregularities (multiple voting, for instance) to invalidate the result.
Thanks WB. If the result is invalidated, then there is a byelection? Who gets to run (anyone, just the prior candidates, etc)?
The court could take it upon itself to determine the winner based on the information available to it, but if it ruled that the issues were things with unknowable impacts in amounts big enough to have decided the result, like multiple voting or people wrongly being refused a vote, the election would be voided and a by-election held. That would be an entirely new process that anyone could contest or not contest as they so desired.
Thanks.
FWIW – Margin is now 2
Kevin Bonham’s blog reports that scrutineers are saying that Greens primary votes are flowing around 60% (conservatively) to Labor over Moore, in addition to the Moslih -> Greens votes flowing stronger than that.
Considering they make up 80% of the Greens exclusion combined, I think we can expect at least a 60% preference flow to Labor out of this exclusion.
(Of the other 3.3% the Greens got elsewhere, 1.4% was from Youhana and will likely favour Moore, the other 1.9% from all over the shop so could go anywhere)
That would give Labor a 3CP of around 47% and it will be hard for them to lose from there.
Boele’s lead out from two to three. If this trend continues …
Looks like 30 polling places remaining to be checked in Bradfield at this point.
One step forward and two steps back?
I believe Desert Rose Band had some trenchant thoughts on the efficacy of that type of travel.
@various — IIRC, multiple voting error is somewhere under 16 votes on average? So margins smaller than that will probably mean another election.
This count in Bradfield is bringing back Herbert 2016 memories for sure.
While do I get the feeling that there is still a “big” move or two left in Bradfield (aka St Ives PPVC or the London Booth)….
…and by “big” I mean a move of 10 at this stage. 🙂
What is the closest result we’ve ever seen?
Except there was this up thread from High Street:
Which I think means some of those 30 have been checked, but their time stamps didn’t update because no changes were made. But I also think this is specific to the checking of Labor first preferences, and that the process will repeat as each batch of votes Labor received as preferences from the various other candidates is checked in turn. If High Street is out there and has nothing better to do, he may correct me if I’m wrong.
What I’m hearing is that the last 2400 out of 22,794 first preference Labor votes are remaining to be dealt with, followed by what I imagine would be about 5000 votes Labor received as preferences, mostly from the Greens so presumably likely to behave similarly to the rest. In other words, we’re about three-quarters of the way through. If I understand the situation correctly, if you exclude the St Ives PPVC correction as a one-off, this process has boosted Kapterian by 15 to 20 votes. So other things being equal, you could guess she’ll end up zero to five ahead.