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Wednesday
The Bradfield recount has been completed with Nicolette Boele 26 votes ahead. Importantly, the AEC reports that its investigation into cases of multiple marks against names on the electoral roll found that only two voters were “likely to have had a second vote admitted to the count”. Should the Liberals (or, in theory, any voter in Bradfield) wish to pursue a legal challenge, they will have to persuade the court that at least 23 errors were made, either to their disadvantage with respect to adjudication of ballot papers or with voters having been wrongly allowed or refused votes.
Tuesday
Nicolette Boele ended the day 27 votes ahead in Bradfield, one down on yesterday. A good result for Boele from the St Ives Chase booth at the start of the day, with six votes knocked out for Gisele Kapterian, was cancelled out later on when Kapterian gained six votes from the Warrawee booth, the first revision in her favour affecting more than one or two votes. That just leaves a handful of votes to be accounted for, which will assuredly be wrapped up at some point today. The largest booth outstanding is Wahroonga with 693 votes – I am told that this is in fact mostly done, with no indication that the result will be substantially revised. There are also the very small Ultimo and Wynyard booths, with 51 votes between them, along with around 185 postals, 160 provisionals and 150 absents.
In short, it seems likely that the present margin will undergo only minor change, in which case the AEC will shortly declare Boele the winner. The question will then arise as to whether the matter ends up in court. The AEC itself can refer the matter to the Court of Disputed Returns (meaning the High Court or the Federal Court if it chooses to delegate the matter), but a media briefing conducted yesterday suggested this was unlikely. The most obvious basis for it to do so involves the incidence of multiple voting being greater than the final margin. Typically the number per electorate has been around 15, but an AEC spokesperson suggested it would be lower than that due to the increased use of electronic certified voter lists, through which it can be determined in real time if a prospective voter has been marked off already.
If so, it will be a matter for the defeated candidate (or perhaps more to the point, their party) to determine if a challenge is worth pursuing. Doing so would almost certainly involve disputing formality rulings, as was done without success by Labor candidate Rob Mitchell in the seat of McEwen in 2007 (who went on to win the seat in 2010 and has held it ever since). After winning the initial count by six votes and losing the recount by 12 (seemingly the only time a recount has reversed the original result at a federal election), Mitchell argued there were 40 ballot papers ranking him higher than Liberal rival Fran Bailey that had been wrongly rejected, along with one where the opposite happened. After reaching its own conclusions concerning 643 ballot papers that had been reserved for the adjudication of the returning officer, the court revised Mitchell’s losing margin up to 27, and duly rejected his appeal.
The precedent of a court determining a declared result to have been out by 15 suggests the Liberal Party would be strongly tempted to pursue the matter further – although its Queensland equivalent chose not to do so after falling 37 votes short in Herbert in 2016. While the chances of a court declaring Kapterian the winner outright would seem rather slim, it might conclude the proper margin to be below than the number of observed irregularities, causing it to void the result and have the election held afresh.
Monday
Nicolette Boele had her best day yet in the Bradfield recount, the 12 vote lead she opened yesterday widening to 28. Rechecking of nine booths, four of them in the Liberal stronghold of St Ives (reflecting the fact that the recount has proceeded more-or-less alphabetically), knocked 14 votes from Gisele Kapterian’s tally and four from Boele’s, while batches of absents and postals cut five from Kapterian and added one for Boele. This leaves the recount nearly 80% done – the 12 booths remaining to be rechecked (only one of which is a pre-poll centre, and that a rather small one) account for 12,056 votes, on top of which I am told that about 3700 postals, 1500 declaration pre-polls and 500 absents are still outstanding.
Saturday
Good news and bad news for tealdom today, the former being a breakthrough for Nicolette Boele in the knife-edge Bradfield recount. After slowly slipping in counting through most of the day, her one-vote deficit at the start drifting out to seven, Boele’s situation was transformed by the Turramurra pre-poll centre, which knocked out 16 of Gisele Kapterian’s votes and none of her own, pushing her to a 12-vote lead. In total, the recount has cut 82 votes from Kapterian’s tally after preferences and 62 from Boele’s. Out of the grand total of 118,851 votes, still to be recounted are 20 out of 52 election day booths, accounting for 20,322 votes, and two out of 13 pre-poll booths, accounting for 975. It’s a lot harder to say where we are with non-ordinary vote types, except that all but the fairly insignificant provisionals category have been revised, postals apparently on six occasions (though I remain unclear if this encompasses the early and especially strong batches for Kapterian).
Proceedings in Goldstein are finally at an end after the partial recount ended with Tim Wilson 175 ahead, in from 270 at the start of the process, prompting Zoe Daniel to concede defeat. It turns out the 50-vote error alluded to yesterday related to a batch being double-counted (which wasn’t the only time such a thing was found to have happened in Goldstein), rather than the maximal scenario of votes for Daniel having been attributed to Wilson.
Friday
The resolution of the last Senate result today in New South Wales turned up the first genuine surprise, with One Nation’s Warwick Stacey winning a seat that I (and to my knowledge everyone else) had reckoned a sure thing for Labor’s third candidate, Emilija Beljic. After Labor (Tony Sheldon and Tim Ayres) and the Coalition (Andrew Bragg and Jessica Collins) elected their top two candidates with full quotas, the remainder of the pack was whittled away until Mehreen Faruqi of the Greens crossed the threshold to win the fifth seat leaving Stacey and Beljic competing for the sixth. At that point, Stacey led Beljic by 0.886 quotas to 0.823, which preferences from Faruqi’s 0.069 surplus were insufficient to close, Stacey winning at the last by 0.891 quotas to 0.867.
As this simplification of the distribution illustrates, Stacey passed Beljic with the exclusion of Legalise Cannabis one step before the election of the Greens (UPDATE: Kevin Bonham in comments notes it was actually two steps, the previous transfer from Family First’s exclusion having put him ahead), a transfer that included 0.2446 quotas worth of first preferences for Legalise Cannabis and 0.1510 in preferences picked up along the way. My model based on preference flows in 2022 had Labor, One Nation and the Greens gaining very similar shares of preferences with the exclusion of Legalise Cannabis: instead, One Nation gained 0.146 quotas, the Greens 0.123 and Labor only 0.066, the 0.0797 gap between the One Nation and Labor shares pushing One Nation to their 0.024 quota winning margin. However, that is only part of the story of how my model’s projection of a 0.112 quota winning margin for Labor proved out by 0.136 quotas: up to the point of Legalise Cannabis’s exclusion, Labor under-performed the model by 0.046 quotas and One Nation over-performed it by about the same amount. Further insights are available to be gleaned from the full ballot paper data that has already been published by the AEC, though this will have to wait for now.
In the Bradfield recount, Nicolette Boele hit the lead today – but not for long, her one-vote advantage being reversed in the last updates for the day. Debate rages as to whether there is any underlying pattern within changes that have collectively reduced her deficit so far from eight votes to one, with what I would guess to be about 40% of the recount remaining to be done, continuing into today. Updates that looked promising for Boele based on the theory that large numbers of first preferences for Gisele Kapterian meant opportunities for them to be knocked out as informal have in some cases failed to deliver, notably today’s revision for the St Ives pre-poll centre, which reduced both candidates’ totals by one. Thirty-seven of 66 ordinary booths have been recounted, plus I assume all of the absent votes and an unknowable but obviously significant share of the 14,666 postals, but none of the 3405 declaration pre-polls.
The theory of high primary vote disadvantage in recounts has looked good in other contexts, including the Bradfield preference distribution where it played to Boele’s disadvantage by harming her main sources of preferences – and also in the partial recount in Goldstein, which seems to be almost finsihed. Tim Wilson has lost a net 63 votes since the start of the recount to Zoe Daniel’s 36, reducing his lead to 233. The AEC advises we can expect a correction tomorrow involving, among other things, a “change of 50” in favour of Daniel – which could mean a reduction in her deficit to around 183, or a transfer from Wilson to Daniel that would get it all the way to 133. Neither would get her as far as the 100 vote threshold she would need for the AEC to determine if it will keep the ball in play by proceeding to a full recount, though the latter might just about get her within striking range if the tide kept flowing in her favour.
AEC confirms only two people voted twice which is very low. So now the Libs have no grounds to argue re multiple voting. Chance of court case –> down.
… conceded as likely by the AEC.
So now all the booths are in we can have a look at how the theories went, but first some figures on the recount:
– The distribution of errors across the booths were even. Both Blue and Teal won 21 each, and 23 were a push (or I ones I missed early on), but of these
– Teals gained an 3.25 votes average / 2 median vs 1.55 / 1 for Blue. This showed itself last week and continued.
– Teals had 7 Big Wins vs 1 (anything 3+) (and it looks like a big win in Postals and Absent, so that is 9 to 1)
The proposed theories were:
1) Big 1P Blue to favour Teals
2) It’s all just random
3) Low Blue scrutiny in initial count will favour Blue
I think #1 and #2 both held true with some caveats when looking at the scatter diag: https://1drv.ms/i/c/1514c40d983e9348/EeDX5C2GUt1OnnGct2cnjaUBa584zlarFD71aeei0w3fpg?e=NMkNad
1) Big 1P Blue to favour Teal: It was more cleanly split on TCP than 1P difference (though the stronger the 1P & TCP is where the big results for Teal came from. Less so for Blue, but they did get one strong result in the opposite corner)
2) It’s all just random: Maybe on the ones that returned 1’s, 2’s and Draws. While there is not much of a pattern or grouping, Blue did do better overall in the top half of the chart (where the initial TCP was Teal). It also does not explain the teal skew in the big results which is what sealed the result.
3) Low Blue scrutiny in initial count will favour Blue: Unless it was one or two particular booths I can’t see anything on this one.
Been a very interesting process to follow along
Thanks to WB for hosting the discussion & providing his commentary and thanks to everyone in the thread for their inputs. Cheers
A few acquaintances of mine, very casual I must emphasise, are big believers in voter fraud.
Multiple voting is a common complaint.
They are not likely to be assuaged by the AEC announcement of two cases, two, in Bradfield.
Just covering up the fraud, they will say.
Not to mention people voting in the name of the dead!
It never occurs to them that both sides might be affected if there was widespread multiple voting.
Their team would never do anything like that.
I doubt “low blue scrutiny in initial count” was even true.
Outsider says:
Wednesday, June 4, 2025 at 3:18 pm
“That rules out one of the potential grounds for a CDR challenge.”
The Libs don’t appeal to many ATM.
Even if they did and the CoDR decided on a new election I can’t see them even getting close.
While not commenting on the level of scrutiny by either side of the votes as far as number of scrutineers are concerned. I suspect it is likely the blue side probably had many more seasoned scrutineers. While on the teal side it was probably people who had only done it twice at most. Though whether past experience in doing it makes a difference I don’t know?
William Bowe says:
Wednesday, June 4, 2025 at 3:50 pm
“I doubt “low blue scrutiny in initial count” was even true”
…and even less true in the recount.
William Bowesays: Wednesday, June 4, 2025 at 3:50 pm
I doubt “low blue scrutiny in initial count” was even true
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I doubt it as well, but it was mentioned so I kept an eye out.
AEC Presser – https://www.aec.gov.au/media/2025/06-04.htm
I don’t recommend putting too much faith in the magical powers of experienced scrutineers, even if they’re Tim Wilson. It’s not rocket science — if a vote that would be for the other team if it were admitted isn’t clearly and sequentially numbered, you challenge it.
From the SMH:
Liberal sources not authorised to speak publicly on the party’s legal plans said there were several points that the party would consider when deciding whether to petition the Court of Dispute Returns.
These include the fact that the first count and the recount produced two different winners, with both results representing less than 0.02 per cent of the total ballots cast. Also, between the two counts about 170 votes that were originally assessed as formal were ruled informal, which is more than six times the margin separating both candidates following the recount.
Another ground they will argue is that the total votes increased between the first full count and the recount, which accounted for about one-third of the final difference between Boele and Kapterian, the Liberal sources said.
A teal volunteer said on election day at the Willoughby North booth that it was going to be very close – so at least he was correct in that, whilst wrong in most other things he sprouted.
The preference flow to IND from all excluded candidates finished a dismal 65.8%. Oddly, whilst is was barely any higher in Mackellar, is was 10% points higher in Warringah and a massive 80% overall in Wentworth (from even on primary’s to win by 8%!)
It is hard to know what drives such different preference flow rates, when the primary vote splits across all 4 seats are pretty similar
William Bowe @ #798 Wednesday, June 4th, 2025 – 3:17 pm
Does the AEC also record how many cases there were of people drawing penises on the ballot paper? That’s clearly a more significant statistic.
William Bowesays:
Wednesday, June 4, 2025 at 4:20 pm
I don’t recommend putting too much faith in the magical powers of experienced scrutineers, even if they’re Tim Wilson. It’s not rocket science — if a vote that would be for the other team if it were admitted isn’t clearly and sequentially numbered, you challenge it.
============================================================
Fair enough.
So Tim’s command for his scrutineers to go into ultra scrutineer mode was probably just more Dim Tim BS. Turns out he didn’t need it, i hope he returned them to factory settings.
@Player One – I don’t know if the AEC records that, but the VEC did in a report on the 2022 Victorian state election, with 1502 cases of what they described as “the usual anatomical drawings”.
https://www.vec.vic.gov.au/-/media/dbb32440950847748761ea3481a397d4.pdf
In and of itself, this is of no consequence.
This is more like it, in that a court may very well reconsider formality rulings. But the 170 figure is wishful thinking, because it refers only to the recount process when most of the votes being knocked out were their own. All ballots adjudicated on will be open for review, and there were 643 of those when the McEwen result was contested in 2007, and no reason to think there will be less this time. The result is just as likely to be net negative for the challenger, as indeed was the case in McEwen. Besides which, the McEwen ruling created case law as to what was and wasn’t a formal ballot paper, and the AEC revised its formality guidelines accordingly. This means there’s less scope for differing interpretation now than there was back then.
BT @ #817 Wednesday, June 4th, 2025 – 4:44 pm
Aha! Clearly, we need to include this vital statistic in BludgerTrack.
@Player One – I don’t know if the AEC records that, but the VEC did in a report on the 2022 Victorian state election, with 1502 cases of what they described as “the usual anatomical drawings”.
https://www.vec.vic.gov.au/-/media/dbb32440950847748761ea3481a397d4.pdf
Aha! Clearly, we need to include this vital statistic in BludgerTrack.
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Maybe that can be your role? We could call it: P1’s P index or PP index?
Went and had a look on Twitter at some of the commentary in response to the AEC’s media release.
Went largely as expected.
Alexandra Smith at the SMH:
She was one pushing Kapterian as The Future Of The Liberal Party. She’s being wishful in the Libs challenging, showing her colours (female moderate Liberal):
“Liberal sources not authorised to speak publicly on the party’s legal plans said there were several points that the party would consider when deciding whether to petition the Court of Disputed Returns.
These include the fact that the first count and the recount produced two different winners, with both results representing less than 0.02 per cent of the total ballots cast. Also, between the two counts about 170 votes that were originally assessed as formal were ruled informal, which is more than six times the margin separating both candidates following the recount.
Another ground they will argue is that the total votes increased between the first full count and the recount, which accounted for about one-third of the final difference between Boele and Kapterian, the Liberal sources said.”
Seems desperate…they missed some informal votes the first time? Simply that it was close? The last one not nearly enough to bridge the gap even if all the “total votes” increase was for Boele.
By the way, how is a change of 34 votes compare to previous recounts?
Nicko @ #822 Wednesday, June 4th, 2025 – 5:16 pm
From what I gather, Herbert in 2016 went from ALP +8 votes to ALP +37 votes in the recount. So that’s about the ballpark we have of such a recent Federal recount.
Grey 1977: 40
Forde 1984: 5
Hinkler 1984: 16
Bendigo 1993: 20
Bass 1998: 62
Hinkler 2001: 8
McEwen 2007: 18
Fairfax 2013: 17
Herbert 2016: 29
William Bowe @ #824 Wednesday, June 4th, 2025 – 5:29 pm
That’s interesting, William, I think I’ll save that.
Some statements from the candidates..
In a statement on Wednesday afternoon, Kapterian said: “The recount has created a different result – while I was ahead at the conclusion of the original count, Ms Boele is now ahead after this recount. I will now carefully review the two counts.” Boele is due to hold a press conference this afternoon.
Boele won the seat on her second attempt, after almost unseating former Liberal frontbencher Paul Fletcher in 2022. She continued campaigning full-time for three years, styling herself as the shadow MP for Bradfield.
Speaking after the count concluded on Wednesday afternoon, Boele said she was “excited, honoured and really grateful” to have won the seat.
She said the drawn-out counting process had been a “rollercoaster ride” but it had given her a “huge boost in confidence in the strength of our democracy”.
Asked whether she thought it appropriate for Kapterian to seek to have the result overturned in the Court of Disputed Returns, Boele said: “It has been a close count, but I have full confidence in the processes of the AEC”.
“I ran in 2022, I ran in 2025, and I will run again in 2028,” Boele said.
https://www.smh.com.au/politics/nsw/teal-candidate-nicolette-boele-wins-final-bradfield-recount-court-challenge-looms-20250604-p5m4v3.html
Grey 1977: 40
Forde 1984: 5
Hinkler 1984: 16
Bendigo 1993: 20
Bass 1998: 62
Hinkler 2001: 8
McEwen 2007: 18
Fairfax 2013: 17
Herbert 2016: 29
Thanks. So on the highish but not out there side this time.
And this…from SMH
Boele’s win will mark the first time in 75 years that the seat is not held by the Liberals but despite the Australian Electoral Commission declaring Boele the winner, Kapterian has not conceded and has indicated she would consider taking the result to court.
William how likely is a special election or rather a victory by the Liberal Party in the Court of Disputed Returns?
If the Liberals are successful are they able to swap out their candidate for another?
My theory is given the dust has now settled for the general election voters, in this electorate would potentially change their vote because:
a) Sympathy for the defeated Liberal candidate (coupled with media framing of a conflicted result)
b) Labor have an absolute majority in the house and an independent/teal may not be as impactful as an advocate as a member of the opposition party
Prohibitionistsays:
Monday, June 2, 2025 at 7:03 pm
William I’d put my money on Liberal lawyers over anything.
Boele will not step foot in the reps. That’s a guarantee.
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A guarantee not worth much now I would say.
Unlikely, but not impossible.
Yes, but they shouldn’t.
I have it on very good authority that there will be no challenge.
So confident am I in my confidante, I have resurrected TB exchange.
Will there be a dispute lodged ?
Yes: $2.80
No: $1.40
Another reason why the guarantee ‘Boele will not step foot in the reps’ is worthless is that ‘step foot’ is a lexical impossibility. ‘To step’ is in an intransitive verb – you can’t step a foot, or step anything; you can only step.
The expression is ‘set foot’, and I can’t see any reason to think Nicolette Boele won’t set two feet in parliament in July.
True Believersays: Wednesday, June 4, 2025 at 6:58 pm
Will there be a dispute lodged ?
Nope – She lost. Time to concede and move on.
For those interested in how the Court of Disputed Returns operates, the 2007/8 McEwen case is probably most similar to the Bradfield outcome.
https://www.austlii.edu.au/cgi-bin/viewdoc/au/cases/cth/FCA/2008/692.html
This judgement covers the background, and the reasoning why the petition failed.
Back to Salesforce then for the fallen Liberal candidate, or either Anthony Roberts resigns (highly unlikely as Labor could potentially win this at a By-election) or they find her a spot in the NSW Upper House (which is even more difficult considering of the 9 Libs, 8 are in Shadow Cabinet)
Appreciate the response William and the updates. Hope you get a holiday soon!
The only thing left to watch in Bradfield will be the TPP count, and if Labor could have won. My predication for the next election is that it will not be the LNP that takes Bradfield off Teal, but Labor.
The urban development driving up the Pacific Hwy to Gordon under the TOD will continue to fundamentally change the demographic balance in the electorate. The TCP indicates that the LNP “stronghold” is the wedge East of the Pacific Hwy and North of MonaVale road (and that is outside the TOD). It will be interesting to see the TPP for the booths to see where Labor sits across the electoral map.
Nathansays:
Wednesday, June 4, 2025 at 7:39 pm
The only thing left to watch in Bradfield will be the TPP count, and if Labor could have won. My predication for the next election is that it will not be the LNP that takes Bradfield off Teal, but Labor.
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My prediction is Labor will look at the money that the Teal is spending to keep it and the Liberals are spending to win it back and say it is a bit rich for us. Spending their money on retaining many of the seats Labor already has instead and only doing a minimal spend on Bradfield.
@Entropy – you could be right. Labor spent little this time so let’s see how the TPP goes.
Nathansays:
Wednesday, June 4, 2025 at 7:58 pm
@Entropy – you could be right. Labor spent little this time so let’s see how the TPP goes.
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I guess it depends on how many Labor supporters tactically voted to give Boele their first preference. If they can pass Boele without doing anything, yes. If they need to get a couple more percentage to pick up a few percentage PV to get above her into the the 2CP. I doubt they will spend the money to attempt it.
Does Labor have a better chance at winning Berowra or Bradfield?
Would think they’d be better trying to dislodge Leeser, who is not an impressive MP.
I reckon Bradfield may be more vulnerable to another community Independent in the form of a Dai Le. Would be interesting to see if this could become the first IND vs IND 2PP. If that has ever happened before?
Nathan@7.39pm
I am also pondering the same demographic changes, and how they have turned the Liberal heartland of the North Shore in Sydney into Teal heartland. I agree that, possibly, some of these seats may go Labor in the future.
My guess is that we are looking at generational change. The north shore: The half-acre blocks with the stately homes, from the late 19th, early 20th century, with the infill quarter-acre blocks, in the leafy suburbs, built between the 1950s and 1980s, comprised Liberal party heartland.
But, the kids were interested in different things. They said “thanks” for the excellent education, and then went to London, Paris, New York, Singapore, Hong Kong etc. for work. Eventually they come back, but they know they can happily live in units or town houses. They want to be close to work, and cafes. They are quite enthusiastic about the new urban developments. And given that their parents and grandparents generation are trying to keep the leafy north shore to themselves, they stop voting Liberal?
The above paragraph is only a guess, but knowing many people of that younger generation, I do not think I am too far off.
I am really interested to hear what others think.
And while this thread is going, I might pose questions a few more questions on demographic trends, that I have , anecdotally, noticed.
Bimetallic Standard @ #841 Wednesday, June 4th, 2025 – 8:05 pm
Bradfield HoR Votes:
LIB: 38.03
IND: 27.01
ALP: 20.29
GRN: 6.73
OTH: 7.94
Bradfield Senate Votes:
L/NP: 37.32
ALP: 34.76
GRN: 10.69
OTH: 17.23
Looks like a possible Labor target to me.
Douglas and Milko @ 8.18 pm
Interesting speculation. But that seems to assume that if the Teals are taking over from the Liberals, it’s because the voters have changed. But the other possibility is that it’s the Liberal Party that has changed, and the Teals are essentially offering what in the past would have been offered by Fraser/Peacock/Turnbull Liberals.
For what it’s worth, my take on the overall election is that it shows that the great bulk of Australians don’t share the Reagan/Libertarian view that government is somehow the enemy. We rather see it as the mechanism by which we work together as a community to deal with problems and issues which are too big for us to handle as individuals. And so what we look for is a party which is committed to making government work well as a service delivery mechanism. The Liberals over the years were pretty good at that: Menzies, for one, would never have wanted to get rid of 41,000 public servants.
But the Liberals have now become increasingly ideological, going off on tangents about issues like transgender sports people, about which most voters couldn’t give a toss. And that basically flips the role from the 1950s and 1960s, when the ALP was ideological – remember their “socialist objective” – and it was the Liberals who were the pragmatical deliverers of government services.
Just a quick note to say thanks to everyone who has made this count so fascinating to follow!
Nathan, thanks for your awesome work and data visualisation, hope the beer with Upnorth and Democracy Sausage goes well 🙂 Cheers to all you awesome people.
And ofc thanks to William for providing the platform. (I’m not flush with cash ATM but dropped a few Pacific Pesos in William’s virtual tin after the election. Hope others have the means to do the same.)
All I can say from the other side of the ditch (or is that dutch?) is that your preferential system is great. Don’t even think about changing it! It provides options for voters, provides subtleties that a first past the post system can never have, caters for a greater diversity of candidates, and (ofc most importantly) it keeps us politics nerds happy 😀
Congrats to Ms. Boele, and go well all 🙂
I will add my thanks to William and all the regulars who have added so much colour and knowledge to this thread since May 3, especially the mighty Nathan, whose passion for the area he and his family reside in is very obvious.
This is Poll Bludger at its best, raw psephology and statistics, way preferable to the open threads(which can be combative at the best of times).
Reading between the lines, I will assume Kapterian will challenge the result in the Court of Disputed Returns, but frankly I don’t like her chances of success, and if she is half as talented as the Liberals and Alexandra Smith of the SMH think she is, then she runs again for Bradfield in 3 years time, or the NSW Liberals propel her into the state upper house. By the way, Paul Fletcher did her no favours by delaying his retirement from politics announcement for so long, Boele had a head start of 3 years.
And if a certain comment hadn’t been made in a hairdressers, Boele would have won by far more than 27 votes.
Speaking about neighbouring Berowra where I live – if Labor wants to have a red hot go at winning the seat in 2028, then they should preselect a high profile local candidate with good local roots, and adequately resource that person, and a visit or two from senior cabinet ministers would be useful too. I would guess this time, all the resourcing went into Bennelong and Parramatta, but those 2 are mega safe seats now, and Andrew Charlton will likely be a minister by 2028 and Jerome Laxale in the outer ministry. So next time, head office might care more about us in Thornleigh, Pennant Hills, and Hornsby. If not, then Tina Brown for the Teals will run again.
Julian Leeser got over the line on May 3 because of the postal votes from the over 60s and retirees, solidly Liberal. Labor in comparison, zero postal voting campaign, no letterboxing, no doorknockng, no railway station appearances. The Labor candidate did virtually nothing during the election campaign, yet he attracted the antipathy to Dutton and surfed to 48% two Party preferred.
@ Bimetallic Standard
> Does Labor have a better chance at winning Berowra or
> Bradfield? Would think they’d be better trying to dislodge
> Leeser, who is not an impressive MP.
Labor in Berowra just took 27.01% of the PV, up from 22.33 in 2022 (a swing of +3.19, allowing for the redistribution). In Bradfield, Labor got 20.29%, which is roughly its regular share since 1949. I feel like these are peak numbers for Labor, but Leeser’s steeply declining appeal will render him vulnerable next time out, especially if the energetic C200 indie runs again and peels another 5 points off him.
I don’t see how Labor can be competitive in Bradfield without getting to that 27% primary vote point – i.e. Boele’s share this time, Labor’s current Berowra share and also Labor’s best-ever number in Bradfield (in 2007). Happy to be told otherwise.
> I reckon Bradfield may be more vulnerable to another
> community Independent in the form of a Dai Le. Would be
> interesting to see if this could become the first IND vs IND
> 2PP. If that has ever happened before?
A disaffected former Liberal staffer and wannabe candidate named Andy Yin ran as an independent in this election and pulled 4.13%. Operating out of Chatswood, he pitched himself to small business owners and the Chinese community; he’s not an environment-focused community indie.
Democracy Sausage @ #847 Wednesday, June 4th, 2025 – 9:42 pm
Yeah, there’s that, but there’s also the case that Labor would do better in consolidating its current seats and not get cocky and assume they will be up for getting a 58-42 result in 2028. The more wiser move would be to back up every new member that won a seat in 2025 to maximise the Sophomore Surge effect, as well as putting electoral resources into seats like Bendigo and Solomon to figure out why they had such harsh swings against them.
Upnorth at 12.41 pm
Peter Beattie had an original hit in his rendition of Mea Culpa Maxima, but not in advocating federal surgery.
The best argument for abolishing the states was made by a Queensland literary icon (poet and novelist) named Rodney Hall, in a short book titled Abolish the States (c. 2004).
A very good assessment of the rather dysfunctional state of the Australian federation it was, with one big flaw. It did not identify key actors for change.